The single most important thing to check before hiring a web designer for your law firm is whether they've actually built law firm websites before, with real examples you can look at, not just general small business sites with "attorney" swapped into a case study title. Legal marketing has specific requirements around compliance, trust-building, and client psychology that a generalist designer simply hasn't had to solve before, and that gap shows up in the finished site whether or not the designer realizes it's missing.
We get calls regularly from firms who hired a designer, got a site that looked fine in the proposal mockups, and then watched it underperform for a year before realizing the problem wasn't bad luck, it was that the designer had never actually thought through how a scared, urgent client decides to pick up the phone. Here's what to actually check before signing a contract.
Table of contents
Ask for law firm work specifically, not general portfolio pieces
Ask how they think about conversion, not just design
Ask about their process for practice area content
Ask who owns the site and the content after launch
Ask about their understanding of legal marketing rules
Red flags that should end the conversation
FAQ
1. Ask for law firm work specifically, not general portfolio pieces
A strong portfolio for this specific hire includes multiple law firm websites, ideally across more than one practice area, with the designer able to speak specifically about why certain decisions were made for a legal audience. If a designer's portfolio is mostly restaurants, dentists, and boutiques with one law firm thrown in, that one project likely didn't benefit from much legal-specific thinking either.
Ask to see examples of practice area pages they've written or structured, not just homepages. The homepage is the easiest page on any site to make look good. The practice area pages are where the real strategic thinking shows up, and where most generalist designers reveal they've never had to think hard about how someone decides to call a personal injury lawyer versus how they decide to buy a bouquet of flowers.
2. Ask how they think about conversion, not just design
A good law firm web designer should be able to explain, specifically, how their design decisions are meant to move a visitor toward calling or filling out a contact form. This includes things like where the phone number appears, how many steps stand between a visitor and starting a conversation, and how trust signals are placed throughout the page rather than dumped in one testimonials section at the bottom.
If a designer's answer to "how does this convert better" is vague, something like "it's clean and modern so people will trust it," that's a sign they're thinking about aesthetics without thinking about the actual client journey. We've written at length about what separates the firms getting this right in what the best law firm websites do differently, and a designer worth hiring should be able to speak to most of those ideas without needing to read the article first.
3. Ask about their process for practice area content
Ask directly who writes the practice area page content, and how they approach it. A designer who outsources this to a generic copywriting service with no legal marketing background, or worse, expects you to write all the content yourself with no strategic guidance, is handing you a design shell without the substance that actually makes the pages work. The strongest law firm website projects involve someone on the team who understands how to write for a legal audience in distress, structuring content around real client questions rather than generic service descriptions.
This is also where you should ask specifically about trust signals: how they plan to incorporate case results, attorney credentials, and client reviews into the actual page design rather than treating them as an afterthought. The trust signals every law firm website needs covers exactly what should be on the table in this conversation, and a designer with real legal experience should already be raising most of these points unprompted.
4. Ask who owns the site and the content after launch
Before signing anything, get clear answers on what platform the site will be built on, who owns the login credentials and the domain, and whether you can make basic content updates yourself without paying the designer every time. Some agencies build on proprietary systems that effectively lock a firm in, making it expensive and painful to ever leave or switch providers. You should own your domain, have admin access to your content management system, and understand exactly what it takes to make a simple update like changing an attorney's bio.
Also ask what happens if the relationship ends, whether that's by your choice or theirs. Will you retain full access to the site and its content, or does something become unusable without their continued involvement? A designer confident in the quality of their work shouldn't need to hold your site hostage to keep your business.
5. Ask about their understanding of legal marketing rules
Legal marketing has specific compliance considerations around things like advertising claims, client testimonials, and case result disclaimers that vary by state bar association. A designer with real experience in this space should be able to speak intelligently about these without needing a full legal briefing from you, even though final compliance responsibility always sits with the firm and its attorneys, not the designer.
This doesn't mean the designer needs to be a legal expert. It means they should have encountered these issues before and know enough to flag them, rather than building a site with case result claims or testimonial language that could create a problem with your state bar down the line.
6. Red flags that should end the conversation
A designer who can't show any previous law firm work, who talks entirely in generic marketing language without specifics, or who pushes hard for a decision before you've had time to check references, are all signs worth taking seriously. So is a proposal with no clear content plan, just a design mockup and a vague promise that "copy will be provided during the build," since that usually means thin, generic content gets written in a rush right before launch.
Timeline promises worth double-checking too. If a designer promises a fully custom, content-rich law firm website in two weeks, that's either an overly aggressive sales pitch or a sign the content won't get the attention it needs. We've covered realistic expectations for this directly in how long does a law firm website take to build, and comparing a designer's quoted timeline against that reality is a useful sanity check before you commit.
The bottom line
The designer you hire is making dozens of small decisions about how a scared, urgent person experiences your firm online, long before that person ever speaks to a human being at your office. Hire someone who's already thought carefully about that moment, not someone learning it for the first time on your dime.
FAQ
Is it worth paying more for a designer who specializes in law firms?
Usually yes. A specialist designer avoids costly mistakes a generalist is likely to make, and the specific content and conversion strategy knowledge they bring tends to pay for itself in better results.
How many references should I ask for before hiring a web designer?
Two to three is reasonable, ideally including at least one law firm client you can speak with directly about their experience and results, not just the finished design.
Should I ask a designer to show me ongoing results, not just the finished website?
Yes, if possible. Ask if any past law firm clients saw a measurable increase in consultation requests or search visibility after launch, since that's a better indicator of real capability than visual polish alone.
What questions should I ask about SEO during the hiring process?
Ask specifically how they approach practice area page content for search visibility, whether they implement schema markup, and how they handle local SEO elements like Google Business Profile alignment.
Is it a bad sign if a designer wants a deposit before starting work?
No, a deposit is standard practice in web design. The concern should be around the total payment structure and what happens to your access and ownership if the relationship doesn't work out, not the existence of a deposit itself.
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