Law Firm Website - What It Must Include and What to Avoid 2026

People rarely look for a lawyer in a calm moment. They have just received a termination notice, a lawsuit, divorce papers or an inheritance they do not know what to do with. They usually reach for their phone, type something like "divorce lawyer Wrocław" into Google, open three or four results and decide within seconds whom to call. They decide based on the website.

A law firm website therefore has a very specific job: to show quickly whether this lawyer handles my kind of case, who they are and how to get in touch. At the same time it operates within limits no other industry has. In Poland, the codes of ethics for advocates and attorneys-at-law restrict what lawyers may say about themselves online.

This guide covers both topics. First, the elements a law firm website must have. Then the rules of the Polish bar associations. Finally, technical SEO that lets a firm be visible in Google without intrusive advertising.

Disclaimer: this is a practical guide written from the perspective of website builders, not legal advice or an interpretation of ethics rules. What is binding is the current text of your bar's code and the position of its bodies.

How clients choose a law firm online

Before designing the site, it helps to understand the situation of the person who lands on it. A law firm's client differs from a shop's or restaurant's client in three important ways.

First, they have a specific legal problem, not a general need for "a lawyer". They are looking for someone who handles employment law, inheritance or disputes with a developer. If the first screen only says "Comprehensive legal services", the client does not know whether they are in the right place and goes back to the search results.

Second, they judge trust, not price. They do not compare price lists, because there usually are none. They look at who is behind the firm: photos of the lawyers, their experience, specialisations and publications. An anonymous site with a stock photo of a judge's gavel builds less trust than a simple site with a real face.

Third, they are often stressed and on a phone. A site that takes several seconds to load, has small text and a ten-field form loses this client to the next search result.

Everything else in this guide follows from these three observations.

What a law firm website must include

Practice areas: a separate page for each

This is the most important element of the site, both for clients and for Google. Each practice area (family, inheritance, criminal, commercial, employment, real estate) should have its own page with:

• its own H1 heading naming the field, e.g. "Family law and divorce",
• a description of the cases you handle, in the client's language rather than the statute's: "no-fault divorce", "child support", "contact with the child",
• how the cooperation works: the first meeting, documents to prepare, what the client can expect,
• a question-and-answer section with questions clients actually ask,
• clear contact details at the end, including which lawyer handles cases in this field.

A single "Services" page with a ten-item list is the most common mistake on law firm websites. The client will not find an answer to their question there, and Google has nothing to show for a search like "employment lawyer Wrocław".

Lawyer profiles

In the legal industry, clients choose a person, not a logo. A lawyer's profile should include:

• a real, professional photo,
• the professional title (advocate, attorney-at-law, trainee) and the bar they belong to,
• the practice areas they handle,
• education, experience, publications and talks,
• the languages in which they work.

All of this is verifiable and factual, so it fits well within the limits of informing about one's practice. Avoid adjectives such as "outstanding" or "the best specialist", which are evaluative.

About the firm

A short history, values and way of working. It does not have to be long, but it should explain why the firm works the way it does: whether cases are handled personally, how clients are kept informed, whether remote consultations are possible.

Frictionless contact

The contact page is where law firm websites most often lose clients. A good one has:

• a phone number that can be tapped on a mobile (click-to-call), also visible in the header,
• an address with a map and directions, if clients come to meetings,
• opening hours, including how to get in touch outside them,
• a short form: name, preferred contact method and a short message. Do not ask for a detailed description of the case at first contact,
• details identical to the Google Business Profile: the same name, address and phone number everywhere.

Legal documents of the website

A privacy policy, an information notice next to the form and a cookie banner are mandatory. We cover them in our guide to the GDPR on a business website. For law firms this matters even more, because messages sent through the form often contain sensitive data about health, family life or criminal charges.

Ethics rules: what is allowed and what is not

This is where a law firm website differs from any other business website. In Poland, the professional self-governing bodies regulate how lawyers may inform about their work. The rules for advocates (adwokaci) and attorneys-at-law (radcowie prawni) are similar in spirit but start from different points.

Advocates: advertising banned, informing allowed

The Code of Advocates' Ethics and Professional Dignity (§ 23) prohibits advocates from using advertising, acquiring clients in a way contrary to the dignity of the profession, and cooperating with entities that acquire clients in breach of the law or the principles of social coexistence.

This does not mean a ban on having a website. The chair of the Ethics Committee of the Polish Bar Council has stated that an advocate has the right to publish information about their firm on a website. The line is drawn by the content. The code lists, among other things, a ban on comparative, unreliable, untrue, intrusive and evaluative information, and on invoking acquaintances or influence.

Keep in mind that the code is amended from time to time. Before publishing the site, check its current text on your bar's website.

Attorneys-at-law: a right to inform, with limits

The Code of Ethics of Attorneys-at-Law (Art. 31) treats informing about one's practice as a right of the attorney-at-law, regardless of the form and means of communication. Art. 32 lists what is not allowed: informing contrary to the law and good practice, undermining the dignity of the profession, breaching professional secrecy, misleading, non-factual, and imposing or intrusive.

In a 2024 opinion, the Ethics Committee of the National Council of Attorneys-at-Law stressed that the code does not ban advertising legal services, but marketing activities are subject to the limits of Art. 32, and each message is assessed individually, in context.

An important detail for anyone commissioning a site from an agency: an attorney-at-law is also responsible for communication carried out on their behalf by other entities. The content of a site prepared by an agency is therefore the attorney's content.

What this means for the website in practice

Translating the rules of both codes into specific elements of the site:

Website element	Safe approach	Risky approach
Heading	"Family and inheritance law in Wrocław"	"The best divorce lawyer in Wrocław"
Experience	"We have handled employment cases since 2012"	"100% of cases won"
Lawyers	Title, bar, specialisations, publications	"An outstanding expert trusted by thousands"
Cases	A description of the types of cases you handle	A description of a specific client's case and its outcome
Reviews	None, or only after checking your bar's position	Rankings and "5-star" ratings
Contact	Phone, form, address	Pop-ups and intrusive chat windows

Pay attention to case descriptions. Even an anonymised description may allow the client to be identified, and so breach professional secrecy. If you want to show experience, describe types of cases and typical problems rather than specific stories.

SEO for law firms: visibility without intrusive advertising

The good news is that the most effective SEO for law firms is also the safest from an ethics perspective. Google rewards sites that answer users' questions accurately, and the codes of ethics favour informing over advertising. It is the same strategy.

What clients search for

Law firm clients search in three ways:

1. Field + city: "divorce lawyer Wrocław", "employment lawyer Kraków". Practice area pages answer these searches.
2. A problem: "how to divide an inheritance", "dismissal during pregnancy". Knowledge base articles answer these.
3. The name of the firm or lawyer: after a recommendation or after seeing the Google Business Profile. Here consistent details and a good home page matter.

Each type needs a different page. That is why a single "Services" page is not enough.

LegalService structured data

Schema.org has a LegalService type intended for law firms. Describing the firm in JSON-LD (name, address, phone, hours, practice areas), plus FAQPage for the questions section and BreadcrumbList for navigation, helps Google understand what the firm does and where it operates. You will find details and code examples in our Schema.org guide for businesses.

Google Business Profile

For local searches ("lawyer Wrocław Krzyki"), a large share of clicks goes to the map results. A Google Business Profile with the right category, hours, photos and details identical to the website is the foundation. We explain how to complete it in our Google Business Profile guide.

Speed and accessibility

A law firm's client is often stressed, uses a phone and may be an older person. The site must load quickly, use legible typography and good contrast, and work with a keyboard. This is not just convenience: speed is one of the signals Google takes into account.

Example: the Kowalski & Partners demo site

To show these principles in practice, we built a demo site for a law firm, Kowalski & Partners. The firm is fictional, but all the numbers were measured on the live site.

The site has eight practice areas, each on a separate page, lawyer profiles and LegalService structured data. After a performance audit we measured in PageSpeed Insights (21 October 2026):

• Performance: 89 on mobile and 99 on desktop,
• accessibility: 100,
• LCP on mobile: 3.6 s (4.6 s before the audit).

You can check these results yourself, because the site is public.

The most common mistakes on law firm websites

When reviewing law firm websites, we keep seeing the same problems:

1. One list of services instead of separate pages. Neither the client nor Google finds an answer to a specific question.
2. Stock photos instead of lawyers. A gavel, scales and a shelf of statute books do not build trust.
3. A hidden phone number. Only in the footer, or as an image that cannot be tapped.
4. A long form asking for a description of the case. Clients do not want to describe their divorce in a form before speaking to a lawyer.
5. Superlatives and promises. "The best law firm" or "guaranteed win" are evaluative, risky from an ethics perspective and not very credible to clients.
6. Slow loading on mobile. A heavy theme, a slider and a few plugins can stretch loading to several seconds.
7. A missing or outdated privacy policy. Especially painful with a form that collects data about clients' cases.

Summary

A good law firm website does not need to promise anything. It just needs to answer the client's questions quickly and accurately: do you handle my kind of case, who will handle it and how can I reach you. Such a site is in line with the spirit of the ethics rules and effective in Google at the same time, because both reward factual information.

If you want to build such a site, see how we work on websites for law firms, or, if you are based in Wrocław, on websites for Wrocław law firms.

Need a website for your law firm? After a short conversation you will receive a fixed quote within 24 hours. We always agree the legal content with you. Get in touch