A law firm website has exactly one job: to make sure that someone with a specific problem calls you rather than the firm two streets away. Design, technology and load time either serve that job or work against it.
The deciding factor is not the design. An instruction is given on trust, and online, trust is built through precision. A carefully designed page that never makes clear what kind of cases are handled here will lose to a plain page that says it in two sentences.
How a prospective client actually reads your website
Nobody browses for a lawyer. They have a termination letter in the post, a notice with a deadline, an inheritance matter or a warning letter — and they have two questions: is this someone for my case, and how do I get to a conversation quickly? Everything that does not answer those two questions is decoration.
The typical pattern is three or four firms opened in parallel browser tabs, most of them closed again within seconds. So the decision is not made on your about page, it is made in the upper part of whichever page the person lands on. That is where it has to say what you handle, who handles it, and what the first step looks like.
Areas of law: name them, do not list them
The most common mistake on law firm websites is a list of fourteen practice areas on the home page. It is well meant — nobody wants to turn away an instruction — but it achieves the opposite. A firm that offers everything is recognisably right for nothing.
The better decision is the inverse: three to five areas you genuinely want, each with a page of its own. The remaining work can still be mentioned, just not with the same weight. A dedicated page per area is also the only place where you can get specific:
- The situation clients are typically in when they come to you — in their words, not in statutory references
- What has to happen in the first few days, and what can wait
- How you work: who handles the matter, how often clients hear from you, how fees are calculated
- How you recognise an instruction you would decline — that builds more trust than any self-description
A side effect: people search for something like "employment lawyer Offenbach", not for "law firm". A page devoted to exactly that subject can answer such a search; a bullet point on the home page cannot. That still does not translate into a guaranteed position — anyone promising you first place is selling something nobody can deliver.
What makes competence verifiable
Trust is not created by claims about yourself, it is created by statements that can be checked. Three of them are available to every firm, and websites routinely sell them short.
Specialist lawyer titles
A Fachanwalt title, the German specialist qualification, is the single strongest piece of evidence on a law firm website, because the firm does not award it to itself. It belongs next to the individual’s name, not in the firm’s header, and it is stated exactly as it was conferred — no additions, no embellishment. Where several lawyers hold titles, each title belongs to its own profile.
Career history
An instruction is given to a person. A profile with the year of admission, previous positions, focus areas and languages answers the question "who am I going to be speaking to?" better than any promotional sentence. And if you previously worked in a public authority, in industry or at another firm, that is the relevant part, not a footnote.
Publications and talks
Articles, commentary, talks, teaching posts, contributions to professional journals — they show that you have engaged with a field beyond the individual case. State the title, the publication or organiser, and the year. A complete reference can be checked; a blanket phrase such as "numerous publications" cannot, and it reads that way.
| Element | Why it creates trust | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| A dedicated page per area of law | The searcher sees within seconds that their kind of case is handled here | Only include areas you genuinely want to take on. Concrete situations rather than chains of statutory references |
| Specialist title on the individual profile | Evidence awarded by the bar association, not by the firm itself | State it exactly as conferred, with no additions and no embellishment |
| Photo and career history for every lawyer | The client sees who they will be speaking to before they call | Real photographs. Year of admission, previous positions, languages. No stock library subject |
| Publications, talks, teaching | Evidence of engagement with the field beyond the single case | Title, publication or organiser, year. Include nothing you cannot substantiate |
| How a first consultation works and what it costs | Removes the biggest barrier before the first phone call | Only promise what the firm keeps — the statement gets tested on the call |
| Phone number, visible on every page | Legal matters are urgent; a form is often the wrong channel for them | As a clickable link, with the hours you are reachable and a callback promise that holds |
| Mandatory disclosures and bar membership | Care in small things is read as care in large ones | Reachable from every page and kept current. The scope is set by your professional rules, not by the agency |
The route to a first conversation
A form with three fields gets filled in; one with twelve does not. Every additional mandatory field — title, street, reference number, area of law as a dropdown — costs you enquiries you will never see. Name, a way to reach them, one free-text box: a first contact needs no more. The rest you clarify in conversation, and you do it better there.
What happens next matters just as much. Put on the page who will get in touch and within what period, then keep that promise. The phone number belongs visibly in the header of every page, not only in the legal notice — some of your callers will never use a form. Online appointment booking is an additional route, not a replacement for the number.
Confidentiality is a website issue
A law firm website must not give away any instruction, not even inadvertently. Client names, logos and reference lists are the obvious part. The less obvious part: even an anonymised account can be identifying once sector, location, period and subject matter appear together. When in doubt, the case stays off the site.
Then there is the technical side, and that is the agency’s responsibility: where the form data goes, who runs the mailboxes, where the site is hosted, and which external services are embedded. A short note beside the form asking people not to send confidential details through it belongs there too. It protects both sides.
Why gavels, scales and handshakes do damage
German courtrooms do not use a gavel. All the same, one sits on the desk on countless law firm websites, usually next to a figure of Justitia, a handshake in a meeting room and a wall of statute books. These subjects come from stock libraries and appear identically on hundreds of other sites. They say nothing about you — and anyone who views three such sites in a row cannot tell them apart.
The replacement is unspectacular and it works: photographs of the people who handle the matters, of the meeting room, the entrance, the street. Half a day with a photographer covers it and carries the website for years. And if there is no budget for that, the better decision is to do without imagery altogether and work with typography, white space and a clear structure. No picture is more credible than someone else’s.
Professional conduct rules: tighter than ordinary advertising
What a firm may say publicly about itself is governed by the German rules of professional conduct for lawyers — BRAO and BORA — and they are drawn more narrowly than the rules for a trade or a retailer. What is required is factual, profession-related information. The risk area is promotional puffery, promises of success, figures about rates or cases won, and comparison with named colleagues.
In practice, for the website, that means no superlatives, no numbers about the outcome of proceedings, no wording that holds out a result. This is no loss, because the sentences that create trust are the concrete ones anyway — what you handle, how you work, what a first consultation costs — not the loud ones. We are aware that you know your own professional rules considerably better than we do: our job is the website, not the interpretation of your professional code.
What to prepare before commissioning the work
The timeline of a website project almost never depends on the technology; it depends on content and approvals. For a law firm there is the added point that nobody but you can take responsibility for the substance of texts about areas of law. Working through this list before the first meeting shortens the project noticeably — and makes the quote more precise, because the scope is then settled:
- Decide which three to five areas of law the website should carry — based on what you want to handle in future, not on what happens to be in the files
- Note three to five bullet points per area: the typical starting situation, the first steps, what you take on. It does not have to be finished copy
- Assemble the details for each lawyer: year of admission, previous positions, specialist titles exactly as conferred, languages, focus areas
- Collect publications, talks and teaching posts with title, publication or organiser, and year
- Schedule a photo session for people and rooms — or decide deliberately against imagery
- Decide how a first contact should run: who takes it, within what period you call back, what a first consultation costs and how it is billed
- Assemble the mandatory professional disclosures that belong on the site. You determine their scope; we make sure they are reachable from every page and kept current
- Name one person who signs things off. In a partnership this is the single most reliable cause of a project running long
- If a website already exists, list its addresses. After the switch that list cannot be reconstructed, and without it you lose everything that was previously being found
Frequently asked questions about law firm websites
From a website point of view: a dedicated page per area of law, profiles of each lawyer with career history and titles, a visible route to a first consultation, and the mandatory disclosures. Which disclosures are compulsory in your case is set by your professional rules. The order is what matters: what you handle and who handles it belongs at the top, not on a sub-page.
Lawyers in Germany are permitted to advertise, but it has to stay factual and profession-related; BRAO and BORA draw tighter limits than general competition law. The critical areas are promotional puffery, promises of success and statements about cases won. Whether a particular formulation is permissible is decided by your bar association, not by your agency — this article is not legal advice.
We have two fixed packages: Standard at 1.250 € for up to five pages in 2–4 weeks, and Pro at 2.100 € for up to ten pages plus a blog in 4–6 weeks. A firm with several areas of law and individual profiles usually falls within the Pro scope. Anything larger is quoted individually; either way the price is fixed before the project starts.
The measure is the duty of confidentiality, and it reaches further than it first appears: even an anonymised account can be identifying once sector, location, period and subject matter come together. As a rule of thumb for the website: no client name, no logo, no case description without express clearance. You demonstrate depth better through publications and through describing how you work.
The strongest lever is local: a complete Google Business Profile with the correct address, plus a dedicated page for each area of law you genuinely want. People search for area plus location, rarely for the firm name. Nobody can promise positions. You get access to Google Search Console from us and can see for yourself which searches you are found through.
Free consultation
We look at your website up front and show you the biggest levers for more enquiries.
