Specific to law firms and legal practice

This section describes published professional-conduct rules that affect website content. It is information, not legal advice — see the disclaimer at the end. Advertising rules vary by state, and yours govern.

Your website is regulated advertising

What the rule is. In most US states, a law firm website is a "communication concerning a lawyer's services" and falls under the state's advertising rules — typically modelled on ABA Model Rules 7.1–7.5, but with significant state variation. The core prohibition everywhere is on false or misleading communications, which includes true statements that create an unjustified expectation.

What follows for a website. Three things carry the most risk: case results, testimonials, and specialisation claims. Each generally requires a disclaimer, and several states are specific about how prominent that disclaimer must be.

What we did. Every component that can carry a result, a testimonial or an award has a disclaimer slot built into the component itself — rendered at normal body size, immediately beside the claim, not shrunk into a footer. See your state section for the exact wording your jurisdiction requires.

Source: ABA Model Rules 7.1–7.5 · state rules cited in your region section · verified by us 2026-09-04 · 🟡 quarterly

Why the disclaimer is not in the footer

We measured eight well-known firm websites. Only one put the required "prior results" language in the page as readable text; the rest linked to it from a footer, on another page. In Florida that specific arrangement fails the rule — required disclaimers "may not appear in fine print, nor… buried in a footnote" — and other states have comparable prominence requirements.

This is why your results and testimonial blocks look the way they do. It is not a design preference.

Source: The Florida Bar, Rule 4-7.12(d), Handbook on Advertising · our own measurement of 8 firm sites, 2026-09-04 · 🟡 quarterly

Accessibility carries more legal exposure for you than for most businesses

What the rule is. The ADA lists categories of "public accommodation" in the statute itself, and 42 U.S.C. § 12181(7)(F) names "the office of an accountant or lawyer." The argument that has protected some online-only businesses from website accessibility claims does not help a law firm.

What we found in the market. All eight firm sites we examined shipped without a skip link; two had no top-level heading at all; one hid its heading with font-size: 0. These are the exact failures accessibility complaints are built on.

What we did. Your site is built and checked to WCAG 2.2 AA, and it uses no accessibility overlay — the overlay products are a liability rather than a defence, and in one 2026 sample 28% of businesses being sued were already running one.

Source: 42 U.S.C. § 12181 · our own measurement of 8 firm sites, 2026-09-04 · 🟡 quarterly

Your content is held to a higher standard by Google

What the rule is. Google's systems give "even more weight" to signals of experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust for topics that could "significantly impact the health, financial stability, or safety of people" — which is legal content squarely.

Worth knowing, because it is sold to you: E-E-A-T is not itself a ranking factor. Google states plainly: "Thinking E-E-A-T is a ranking factor — No, it's not." What matters is the underlying substance — real authorship, real credentials, accurate content.

What we did. Attorney credentials, bar admissions and jurisdictions are structured content on your site rather than a paragraph, so they are legible to both a reader and a machine.

Source: Google, creating helpful content (updated 2025-12-10) · verified by us 2026-09-04 · 🟡 quarterly

Stock photography beside a client story can itself be a violation

Florida's rules treat imagery that could mislead — a stock photograph presented in a way that implies it depicts an actual client, matter or result — as prohibited. General stock imagery is fine; stock imagery adjacent to a testimonial or case description is where it becomes a problem.

Design-wise this pushes in a useful direction anyway: the firm sites that read as most credible use no stock photography at all.

Source: The Florida Bar, Rule 4-7.13(b)(6) · verified by us 2026-09-04 · 🟡 quarterly

The thing that will win you more work than your website

A 2024 secret-shopper study of 500 law firms found 67% never responded to an email enquiry and 60% never answered the phone — and both figures had got worse since 2019.

Your site's enquiry form delivers to our system and forwards to you, so we can tell you your actual average response time if you want to know it. Most firms cannot measure this. It is very likely the highest-return thing you could change.

Source: Clio Legal Trends Report (2024), secret-shopper audit, n=500 · clio.com · verified by us 2026-09-04 · 🟡 quarterly