When a Law Firm Website Says Everything Except What the Firm Does

Law Firms Often Describe Qualities Before Capabilities

Words such as strategic, commercial, responsive, innovative and solution-oriented appear so frequently across law firm websites that they have gradually stopped telling the reader very much.

There is nothing inherently wrong with describing a firm as commercial or responsive, but those qualities become meaningful only after a visitor understands what the firm actually does.

A prospective client visiting an intellectual property practice page is more likely to want to know whether the firm handles trademark prosecution, enforcement, licensing, portfolio management and disputes than whether the team describes itself as commercially minded.

Someone looking for disputes counsel may want to know the kinds of disputes the team handles, the industries in which it regularly works and whether its lawyers appear in court proceedings, arbitration or both.

A business looking for corporate advice may want to understand whether the firm works on transactions, commercial contracts, shareholder arrangements, investments, restructuring or general advisory work.

These are not unusually complicated questions, yet law firm website content often answers them much later than it should.

The result is that a visitor is asked to form an opinion about the firm's expertise before being given enough information to understand what that expertise actually covers.

Law Firm Practice Area Pages Should Explain the Practice

One of the most common problems with law firm website copy is that a practice area page begins by explaining the area of law rather than explaining the firm's work within it.

A trademark page may spend several paragraphs discussing the importance of protecting brands, while a corporate page may explain that businesses operate in an increasingly complex commercial environment and a disputes page may begin by describing how litigation can be demanding and time-sensitive.

None of this information is necessarily wrong, but it often tells the visitor something they already know.

Someone who has reached a law firm's trademark, corporate, employment or disputes page is usually not trying to understand whether that area of law exists. They are trying to determine whether this particular firm provides the legal services they need and whether its lawyers have enough relevant experience to justify making contact.

A useful law firm practice area page therefore needs to move beyond broad introductions and explain the actual work performed by the team.

That may include the types of matters the lawyers handle, the stage at which they normally become involved, the industries in which they have experience, the kinds of clients they commonly advise and the specific services that sit within the broader practice.

A strong intellectual property page, for example, might distinguish between prosecution, advisory work, enforcement, litigation, licensing and portfolio management rather than presenting intellectual property as one large and undefined service.

A disputes page might explain whether the firm handles commercial litigation, contractual disputes, shareholder disputes, intellectual property litigation, arbitration or regulatory proceedings.

The purpose is not to turn every practice page into an exhaustive list of legal services, but to give a prospective client enough information to decide whether the firm's experience appears relevant.

Experience Is More Convincing When It Becomes Concrete

Law firms also tend to rely heavily on phrases such as extensive experience, deep expertise, sophisticated advice and a strong track record without always showing the reader what those descriptions actually mean.

The problem is not that these statements are necessarily inaccurate. The problem is that almost every law firm can make them.

Law firm website content becomes far more persuasive when experience is translated into something a visitor can recognise.

Confidentiality naturally limits how much a firm can disclose about particular matters, especially where clients have not consented to being identified, but that does not usually prevent the firm from describing representative work in a useful way.

A firm can explain that it advises technology companies on licensing arrangements, supports consumer brands with trademark enforcement, represents businesses in cross-border commercial litigation or assists founders and investors with shareholder arrangements without revealing confidential details.

A corporate practice may explain that it regularly advises businesses on commercial contracts, acquisitions or investment transactions.

An employment team may describe its experience with senior-level exits, workplace investigations, employment documentation or contentious employment matters.

These details allow a prospective client to understand the firm's experience instead of simply being asked to accept that the experience exists.

They also make lawyer profiles stronger because the reader begins to see how an individual lawyer's work fits within the broader capabilities of the firm.

Lawyer Profiles Should Help Explain the Firm Too

A law firm website is often structured as though the homepage explains the firm, the practice area pages explain the services and the lawyer profiles simply provide biographies.

In reality, prospective clients do not always move through a website in that order.

Someone may arrive directly on a partner's profile after searching the lawyer's name, following a LinkedIn link, seeing the lawyer mentioned in an article or receiving a referral from another professional.

That profile may therefore be the visitor's first meaningful interaction with the firm.

A lawyer profile should certainly include qualifications, positions and professional experience, but it should also help the reader understand what the lawyer actually works on.

A long list of credentials becomes much more useful when it is accompanied by a clear description of the lawyer's practice, the types of matters they regularly handle, the industries they understand and the nature of the clients they advise.

This does not require turning every biography into a sales page.

It simply means recognising that a lawyer profile is part of the firm's wider website content and should help somebody outside the firm understand why that lawyer may be relevant to them.

Good Law Firm Website Content Should Make Decisions Easier

Someone visiting a law firm website is often trying to make a decision.

They may be deciding whether to contact the firm, which lawyer to approach, whether the firm has enough experience in a particular area to be added to a shortlist or whether it appears suitable for a referral.

The purpose of the content should therefore be to reduce uncertainty rather than create more of it.

Clear descriptions of legal services, useful examples of experience, relevant lawyer profiles and an obvious next step can do far more for a prospective client than another paragraph filled with professional adjectives.

This is particularly important because many visitors will not spend long trying to decode what a law firm means.

If the website repeatedly requires them to move between different pages simply to understand whether the firm handles a particular type of work, the problem is not necessarily the visitor's attention span. It may simply be that the information has not been presented clearly enough.

Good law firm website content does not need to oversimplify complex legal work, nor does it need to reduce sophisticated practices to a list of services.

It does, however, need to explain that work clearly enough for somebody outside the firm to understand what the lawyers do, where their experience lies and whether contacting them makes sense.

A law firm website can look impressive, sound professional and contain all the right language, but if the reader reaches the end of it still wondering what the firm actually does, the content has missed one of its most important jobs.