Two proposals can both promise a “custom law firm website” while pricing and delivering entirely different systems. One may supply a new visual direction and five templates. Another may include content planning, real component states, CMS implementation, migration, campaign assets, and a handoff your staff can operate.
Page count and portfolio polish will not expose the difference. Buy the operating scope: what the firm needs to communicate, which team will produce each dependency, how the site and campaigns behave with real content, what must survive launch, and what the firm can use after the engagement ends.
Write the buying brief before asking for design
State the business problem without prescribing the visual answer:
Prospects and referral sources cannot distinguish our employment-counsel work for employers from the individual claims we do not handle. Our marketers recreate every campaign asset, and the website team needs three weeks to publish a new service page.
Then define:
- priority audiences and services;
- the decisions each audience needs to make;
- current paths, assets, and evidence worth preserving;
- required website and campaign applications;
- attorney, intake, marketing, and technical capacity;
- systems and integrations that must continue working;
- target dates and fixed external events; and
- success and acceptance conditions.
The brief lets a provider recommend an appropriate system. “Make us look premium” invites a mood board without explaining the practice.
Require every finalist to map its scope to the same work packages:
Scroll sideways to review every column.Each row is shown as a labeled card.
| Work package | Questions the proposal must answer |
|---|---|
| Positioning and identity | Is strategy included? New logo or evolution? Color, type, imagery, voice, and usage rules? |
| Content architecture | Who inventories pages, maps audiences and services, and decides page relationships? |
| Writing and review | Who interviews attorneys, drafts, edits, sources claims, and manages approval? |
| UX and visual design | Which unique page types, reusable components, mobile states, and error states? |
| Development | Which CMS, integrations, accessibility responsibilities, performance work, and browser/device support? |
| Campaign system | How many original concepts, applications, sizes, editable templates, and destination checks? |
| Migration and launch | Content transfer, URL map, redirects, metadata, analytics, forms, indexability, and post-launch checks? |
| Training and support | Who can update what, which documentation, warranty period, maintenance, and response terms? |
Name exclusions. “Copy included” might mean moving existing text. “Campaign templates” might mean flattened exports. “Custom” might mean a unique visual skin on a fixed theme. Each can be reasonable when the buyer knows what it is.
Compare components and states, not a page count
A law firm site is a set of reusable behaviors: attorney profiles, services, offices, resources, proof, calls to action, forms, search, navigation, and alerts. Ask which components will be designed and implemented, then test the states each must support.
A form has default, focused, completed, invalid, submitting, accepted, and failed-delivery states. An attorney directory may need one office, several offices, no current photograph, long credentials, and role changes. A resource card needs to handle actual titles rather than a three-word placeholder.
Give finalists the same representative content pack: one long service page, one attorney with multiple roles, two offices, a multilingual contact path if relevant, and one campaign concept across a banner, social placement, and email. Ask them to explain what is unique, reusable, and adapted.
This reveals whether the proposed system can carry real work after the homepage presentation.
Make content and photography part of the production plan
Design depends on the material it must communicate. Assign owners and dates for:
- page inventory and disposition;
- attorney interviews and factual review;
- service boundaries and jurisdiction language;
- biographies, proof, and image permissions;
- photography brief, shot list, crops, releases, and delivery;
- metadata and internal links; and
- final content entry and quality control.
Approve representative real content before extending a design. A layout approved with idealized sample copy may fail when a practice page needs conditions, process detail, and several attorneys.
Photography also needs an application plan. A wide environmental portrait, square social crop, small biography image, and press headshot have different requirements. Specify which files, crops, and usage rights the project delivers.
Inspect portfolios through the firm’s task
Open live work on mobile. Find a particular service, the attorney who handles it, an office boundary, and the next step. Trigger a form error. Read a long page. Check whether the visual identity remains useful beyond the homepage.
Ask the provider what it actually contributed. A portfolio entry may combine another agency’s brand, client-supplied writing, and third-party development. The division is legitimate; the buyer needs to know which capability the example proves.
Ask why a consequential design decision was made and what evidence informed it. “It looked clean” is a taste judgment. “The service distinction was invisible, so we separated audience and matter type in the navigation and validated the labels with task sessions” is a work explanation.
Juris Digital’s law firm website design company comparison can help form a shortlist. Treat the ranking as a starting point, then evaluate the proposed people and scope for this project.
Protect content, traffic, and working paths during migration
A redesign changes acquisition when it changes URLs, content, internal links, metadata, forms, analytics, or indexability.
Require a baseline inventory that distinguishes:
- pages with relevant search or referral demand;
- URLs with useful external links;
- service and attorney paths intake depends on;
- campaign destinations and tracked phone numbers;
- forms and integrations with working owners; and
- content to retain, revise, redirect, archive, or leave unresolved.
The migration plan should map old URLs to deliberate destinations, preserve needed content and metadata, update internal links, verify redirects, inspect indexability, reconcile analytics and forms, and test the public result after launch.
No provider can responsibly guarantee unchanged rankings. It can define a process for reducing avoidable migration risk. Juris Digital’s current law firm website design service describes migration protection within launch and rebuild work; it does not promise rankings or a business outcome.
Define ownership as the ability to continue
List the domain, hosting, CMS, source code, repository, design files, content, photographs, templates, analytics, tag manager, call tracking, forms, fonts, stock assets, plugins, and vendor accounts.
For each, state:
Scroll sideways to review every column.Each row is shown as a labeled card.
| Control | Required answer |
|---|---|
| Owner/licensee | Firm, provider, or third party |
| Access | Admin, editor, source file, export, or none |
| Transfer | What is delivered at termination and in what format? |
| Dependency | Subscription, proprietary builder, vendor account, or license |
| Renewal | Cost, owner, date, and failure effect |
| Maintenance | Who updates, verifies, and supports it? |
Fonts show why “we own the design” can be incomplete. Adobe’s font licensing guidance distinguishes finished work from a client’s direct access to edit with fonts. The applicable license and future use need project-specific review; do not assume font files transfer.
Request a rights and dependencies register at handoff. Ownership without credentials, editable files, documentation, or a viable replacement path is weak control.
Test the people and governance before selecting them
Ask for the named strategist, designer, writer, developer, project lead, and launch owner. Meet the people doing consequential work. Then run two table exercises.
Mid-project change: the firm adds a new office after architecture approval. Who assesses service scope, navigation, location content, photography, structured data, campaign assets, schedule, and fee?
Post-launch failure: a form works in staging but stops delivering on the live site. Who detects it, who receives the escalation, which response time applies, and where are missed contacts reconciled?
The answers show whether the proposal describes a team or a collection of deliverables.
Put pass/fail gates before a scorecard
Require a pass on:
- accurate and reviewable service claims;
- named work owners and attorney-review process;
- representative components and states;
- migration and launch verification;
- asset rights, account access, and export;
- security and integration responsibilities;
- pricing, change control, cancellation, and handoff; and
- a maintainable system within the firm’s staffing.
Then score problem understanding, content capability, design reasoning, implementation, campaign adaptation, project governance, team fit, cost, and support. Write the reason beside each score. A beautiful portfolio cannot cure a failed ownership or migration gate.
Work through two competing proposals
Consider a fictional eight-attorney employment firm with a $75,000 project ceiling, 30 attorney-review hours, and a fixed conference launch in five months. It needs a 35-page site, eight attorney profiles, two office paths, five service pages, a resource migration, and one campaign system. The current site has 112 indexable URLs; 27 receive relevant search or referral visits, and 14 have external links. Four forms feed two intake queues.
Two finalists propose:
Scroll sideways to review every column.Each row is shown as a labeled card.
| Scope | Studio A | Studio B |
|---|---|---|
| Fee | $58,000 | $72,000 |
| Identity | Visual refresh and style sheet | Positioning workshop, identity evolution, application rules |
| Content | Client supplies final copy | Interviews, 12 priority-page drafts, editing of 23 pages |
| Website | 5 templates; unspecified states | 7 component families with mobile/error/empty states |
| Campaigns | 12 resized exports from one concept | 2 concepts; chosen system adapted to 6 formats plus editable templates |
| Migration | “SEO-friendly migration” | 112-URL disposition, redirect map, 27 priority-page checks, link/form reconciliation |
| Attorney time | Not estimated | 24 scheduled review hours, 6-hour reserve |
| Handoff | CMS training | Source/design files, account register, code/content export, two training sessions |
Studio A is $14,000 cheaper. It also leaves writing, states, migration evidence, and attorney time unresolved. Filling those gaps may exceed both the budget and the five-month date.
The firm does not select Studio B from the higher price. It runs the gates. Studio B demonstrates the form failure path, supplies a sample URL disposition, and names the working team. Its 24-hour review plan fits inside the 30-hour limit. The firm reserves $3,000 of the remaining $3,000 ceiling for an approved photography overage only after confirming the base scope includes planned photography; otherwise the arithmetic is invalid. Total current commitment remains $72,000.
Studio A could remain viable if it prices and owns the missing work. The firm requests a revised like-for-like scope rather than awarding points to ambiguity. If A adds $12,000 of writing and $8,000 of migration work, its comparable total becomes $78,000 and exceeds the ceiling. That is a hypothetical procurement comparison, not a market price.
The firm selects Studio B subject to milestones: representative content and two component families before visual-system approval; complete URL disposition before build freeze; all four form routes passing controlled tests; and handoff artifacts delivered before final payment. It delays optional second-concept production if the reserve is needed for migration, because launch integrity outranks an extra campaign variation.
The decision is consequential: scope, attorney hours, deadline, migration risk, and control determine the winner. Portfolio preference breaks a tie only after those conditions pass.
Ask Juris about the diagnosed scope
Juris Digital is a commercial candidate in this category. Its current website design page is evidence that it accepts direct launches and rebuilds, addresses migration risk, works through four stated phases, and identifies delivery roles. The public page does not supply the project price, ranking or conversion result, or every responsibility this buyer guide requires.
Send the same buying brief, representative content, URL and integration inventory, campaign applications, attorney-hour limit, and acceptance gates to Juris and competing finalists. Require each written proposal to assign content, design, development, migration, testing, training, rights, support, fees, and exclusions. That gives the firm comparable evidence before selection and enforceable acceptance conditions afterward.
