How to Create High-Quality Law Firm Website Content

Your law firm’s website content is crucial for attracting new clients, especially for UK-based solicitors. To achieve this, the content must serve multiple purposes. It should be well-written to ensure it’s easily understood by non-solicitors and structured effectively for search engines to discover it. Additionally, it needs to establish trust with potential clients and be engaging enough to encourage them to return.

Solicitors face several challenges when managing their website content, with time constraints being one of the most significant. While solicitors are skilled writers, crafting content for a law firm’s website is a unique communication form requiring a different approach. It’s essential to consider how potential clients perceive and engage with the content, ensuring it resonates with their needs. Additionally, balancing website content planning with a busy workload can be daunting, so making a clear and efficient content strategy is crucial.

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In this guide, we’ll provide practical tips and recommendations to help you create engaging, high-quality website content that appeals to readers and performs well in search rankings.

Solicitors should start with their law firm website goals

There are a number of goals solicitors must set to build and maintain a successful law firm website. Two of the key elements of goal setting for your law firm website are defining clear objectives and taking an audience-centric approach.

Defining clear objectives

What do you want your website to achieve? Do you intend to create a brochure-style website to enhance your brand awareness? Or, is it your intention to create a website that is easily found in search and attracts new clients and business? You must appreciate there is a massive difference in content provision for each of these types of websites!

Our most recent Legal Trends Report indicates:

· According to legal professionals, their law firm’s website is one of the most-used channels for promoting their services: 74% of surveyed lawyers currently use their firm website to promote or market their services to potential clients.

· However, potential clients can’t find the information they’re looking for on law firm websites. While the majority of shoppers could find contact information on the law firm’s website, they struggled to understand the step-by-step process of hiring or working with a lawyer or to find any pricing information.

There has been some movement on the question of fee transparency and the cost of legal services. The SRA introduced Price Transparency Rules in 2018 which was followed by the Law Society of Scotland’s introduction of Price Transparency Guidance. This means that fees and associated costs should be published on your law firm’s website for certain types of legal work.

Audience-centric content approach

The tone or voice of your content will depend on the audience you are trying to engage with. For instance, if you provide corporate or regulatory services, your tone must be much more professional than the rather more informal professional approach you take with consumer-type legal services such as conveyancing and private clients.

Keep your content snappy, readable, and relevant. Most of all, focus on the benefits the prospective client will enjoy from your legal services.

Crafting a user-friendly UK law firm website

Your law firm’s website must be user-friendly, with content presented cohesively and be easily accessible. This requires optimising your website for user experience and adhering to best practices for readability. A well-designed, user-friendly website improves navigation and enhances your law firm’s credibility, leaving a strong impression on potential clients.

Optimise your law firm’s website for user experience

Remember that design isn’t the overriding priority. Your website must load quickly, especially on mobile. To check how quickly your website loads on mobile and desktop, use Google PageSpeed Insights. It will not only score your website but also make recommendations for improvement. You can also use our Law Firm Website Scorecard to see how your website measures up to industry best practices.

Navigation is also key. Don’t let your visitors get lost or make it difficult for them to access the information they are looking for. Keep your navigation design simple, with menus that are correctly laid out and easily accessible.

Finally, provide many opportunities for website visitors to contact you while consuming your law firm website content. Your phone number and email address must be clearly visible on every page. Include contact forms and buttons, encourage visitors to fill out their questions and submit them to you. Use phrases such as “book your consultation now” and “get in touch with us for more information” to encourage potential clients to interact with you.

Best practice for readability

When you create content for your law firm website, you must bear in mind those who will visit your website. They are not other lawyers. You must treat them with respect and explain complex concepts in plain language, in a structure that makes them easily consumable.

For instance, divide your law firm website content into short readable sections interspersed with headings and sub-headings. Use short sentences, preferably twenty words or less. Paragraphs should be no longer than one hundred and fifty words and no more than three hundred words between headings or sub-headings.

Use active rather than passive language and incorporate transition words into your text. By doing that, your text will flow as you lead the visitor through your law firm’s website content to the call to action points on each page.

Incorporate images into your text. Make sure they are relevant and help support and compliment your website content. When you are creating a law firm website for a UK law firm, make sure the images you incorporate have a UK slant. Avoid using images incorporating dollar signs or other US or far east indicators.

Gathering and promoting client testimonials is essential, and ReviewSolicitors is an excellent service that lets you gather and display testimonials on your website quickly and easily. Remember to incorporate your Google and Facebook reviews as well. Good reviews on your website, particularly if they are dynamic, encourage people you do not know to gain trust in your services.

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Creating SEO content for UK audiences

One of the most challenging aspects of creating content for your law firm website is to make it search-friendly. Your content must be written to attract people looking for the services you provide through search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo (to name but a few). Before you start writing your content, carry out some keyword research and follow that up with a check on your competitors’ websites and how they are performing compared to your website. Effective content marketing involves strategic planning and promotion to reach and engage your target audience.

Learn more about SEO here: A Handbook for SEO Services for Law Firms

Keyword research for UK search behaviour

Decide on the content you wish to write and then research the keywords and key phrases people use on search engines to find this type of legal content. One of the most challenging aspects of creating law firm website content is to make it search-friendly. That means choosing the right words that resonate with your potential audience. Remember, UK clients will look for a solicitor, not an attorney. They will search for property terms rather than real estate terms. You can use short single keywords or longer key phrases. When researching keywords, always keep in mind that the more detailed the key phrase you use, the lower the number of visitors. However, those lower numbers are much more likely to be interested in the services you are providing as outlined in your content because your key phrase was much more in tune with their needs.

Always remember that a large proportion of your clients will be local to your office. That means focusing on your location as well as the actual services themselves. Do not be afraid to mention the locations where you provide your service. This will give you a much better chance of those who live or work close to your location finding your law firm website and content.

Many consider SEO a complex or even mysterious practice—and some technical aspects might feel that way. However, when it comes to content, gaining a solid understanding of what SEO is and how it can benefit your law firm is crucial.

Competitor analysis of UK legal websites

As you craft your law firm’s website content, monitor your closest competitors. What topics do they discuss on their websites? Are they adding regular content, or is their website static?

As with all competition, to keep ahead of the game, the aim is to be better than your competitors. This holds equally true with your law firm website content. It makes sense that if your content attracts more visitors than theirs, you stand a higher chance of winning more new business.

Developing a realistic content strategy

When you decide to address the content of your law firm website, you need to develop a realistic content strategy. This strategy includes three elements: setting content goals and metrics, determining your audience personas, and deciding on content types and channels. A well-defined content creation process is essential for maintaining consistency and quality.

Content goals and metrics

There are dozens of law firm KPIs you can use to measure the success of your law firm content strategy. You can, of course, measure the number of visitors, where they came from and the pages they viewed on your website. These baseline performance checks ensure that your website is being seen and that people are interacting with it. However, a better metric is the number of enquiries your website generates. Check each month the number of enquiries you have received from the forms and email addresses and, if you have one, a tracked phone number on your website. Focus on the posts and pages containing the working forms and links and create more of those to increase visitor interaction and enquiries.

Audience personas for UK legal clients

When you embark on your law firm website content strategy, decide who it is you want to attract. This means working out who your ideal client is. You need to consider their characteristics, wants and needs, fears, and concerns. You can develop different personas for the range of services you provide. Then, when you write your content, you can address it directly to that persona.

Start by looking at the clients you have served in these areas. What is their demographic, and what are their loves, hates, wants and fears? If you can’t work that out, start asking questions of your existing client base through a survey to find out. Once you’ve worked out your ideal client, you can craft your law firm website content to meet their needs.

Content types and channels

Your website will have static pages. At a bare minimum, these consist of a Home page, an About Us page, a Services page, a People page, and a Contact page. Great care should be taken when crafting the content for these pages, as they must be optimised for search because you will not likely be updated very often.

Create a blog and add to it regularly. Add a minimum of four optimised articles each month to your blog, and over time, you will build up a comprehensive catalogue of legal content designed to meet your clients’ needs.

Do not simply restrict yourself to blog articles. Look at providing case studies, and FAQ sections to address common questions and explainers taking your website visitors through common UK legal processes and procedures.

You do not need to rely solely on search for your law firm website content to be found. You should consider adding short summaries or excerpts to your social media pages with links to the corresponding content on your website. In addition, consider using Google Ads to direct people to specific landing pages on your website designed to engage with people seeking specific services and capturing their contact information.

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Planning and executing content creation

Do not start creating your law firm’s website content without a plan. You need a content creation workflow and a content calendar to do this.

Content creation workflow

A content creation workflow takes each piece of content through a process. You decide which of your services you wish to promote. Then you decide who the audience persona you wish to attract. Then, you carry out the keyword research and, armed with that, set out the content outline. If you are working in a collaborative environment or need the content to be signed off, make sure you incorporate start, review and publish dates and the person involved in the review process. The more seamless the process, the quicker and easier it will be to achieve publication.

Determine the URL or website address for your content. This is the address that will appear when the content item has been found. Also, consider what Title and Metadata you want the search engines to use when presenting the short summary in the search results. There are tools that can help with this.

Your process should include the following:

A clear content brief: Often a process in itself, the brief should include the keywords you’re targeting with this specific piece of content and what other content is competing for the same keywords. Perhaps most importantly, you should have an outline of the content. You can include additional detail, like a search engine-optimised URL, page title, and meta description.
Brief review and approval: Determine who needs to review the brief, including any subject matter experts who would know the topic best. Also, determine who will give the creator the final go-ahead.
Content creation: Assign the work to a writer or content creator. Be sure to give a concrete deadline.
Content editing: Assign an editor (or editors) who can review the work for technical accuracy as well as grammar, spelling, and SEO.
Image/graphic sourcing: Determine who is going to find or create any images or media that accompanies your content.
Content approval: Final sign-off of the content including images.
Uploading and publishing: Add the content to your website content management system and schedule the go-live date.
Promotion: Get the word out about your new content via email, social media, and other channels.

You can iterate and improve this process over time to continue making your content creation process as efficient as possible.

Building your content calendar

Create a specific content calendar for your law firm website content. Before the start of each month, enter the content title with a link to the content outline and keywords. Include a deadline for when the content needs to be delivered, and stick to that as much as possible. You can also categorise the content items based on their current status (e.g., not started, awaiting review, approved, published, etc.).

Work out if certain of your services should be promoted at specific times during the year. For instance, the festive period in the UK is notorious for the number of couples who split up. You might consider a blog article on their options should that occur. January, the month for resolutions, is a good month to target for Will and Power of Attorney writing. When there is a UK or Scottish Budget, consider the provisions announced and work out if you have something to say about those that will be helpful to your clients.

There are loads of options for different events occurring throughout the year. You might run an article on flight delay compensation in the main vacation season. What about focusing on Power of Attorney content during UK dementia week? These are just some of the options you have to target content at specific times of the year.

Leveraging tools and resources

Hundreds of SEO tools are available to help you improve your law firm website content. There are also options for outsourcing your law firm content website creation if you do not have the time or inclination to do this yourself.

Consider outsourcing options

While creating a website and adding content may seem quite simple, it can be a massive challenge. Not only do lawyers need to find the time to develop the design and structure of their law firm website, but they also need to create properly structured, optimised content to attract visitors and win new business. This might be simply too much for the busy solicitor. That’s why there is a wide range of options to outsource your website creation and law firm content provision. Outsourcing is a popular choice for the busy solicitor.

You’re ready to create great web content for your law firm

Your law firm website and its content are an investment that will help you reap rewards for many years to come. Make your law firm website the go-to place for potential clients to find out about you, the services you provide and how they can benefit when they engage you to represent them.

If you haven’t yet started and are considering getting off the starting blocks, check out Clio’s UK website builder for law firms, an out-of-the-box solution for the busy solicitor.

Create a website in minutes with our simple legal website builder

Easy-to-edit templates, no coding required—get your website up and running in the time it takes to make a cup of coffee.

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We published this blog post in January 2025. Last updated: January 3, 2025.

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