LEGAL
Turn the person searching at 11pm about their RAF claim into a consultation booked before morning.
Short answer
A law firm website needs a separate page for each practice area, attorney profiles showing qualifications and admission year, plain-language explanations of what happens after the first call, a visible phone number and WhatsApp, LPC and Law Society registration details, Google reviews, and a short enquiry form that loads fast on a phone.
Nobody browses law firms for fun. The person landing on your site has been served with an eviction notice, has a CCMA date in eleven days, has just been told the other driver's insurer is disputing liability, or has decided tonight that the marriage is over. They are frightened, they are on a phone, and it is late.
Here is what they do next. They search something specific and local: divorce attorney Centurion, RAF claim lawyer Durban, labour lawyer near me. They open two or three firms in separate tabs. They spend roughly twenty seconds on each deciding whether these people look like they know what they are doing and whether they can be reached. Then they phone one.
Notice what they are not doing. They are not evaluating your legal ability, because they cannot. They have no way to judge whether your pleadings are better than the firm down the road. So they judge the things they can assess: is there a real human face on this page, does someone explain in normal words what a RAF claim involves, is there an admission year that tells me this attorney has been doing this for fifteen years, can I phone right now or must I fill in a form and hope.
This is why a practice-area page beats a homepage every single time. A page titled Personal Injury and RAF Claims that speaks only about road accident matters, in Randburg, will out-convert a beautiful homepage that lists nine services in a grid. The searcher wants confirmation that you deal with their problem, specifically, not that you are a general practice that could probably help.
The site was built around 2011, half the content is a PDF, and the mobile version is the desktop version zoomed out.
Rebuilt mobile-first, because that is where the enquiries come from. Anything worth reading becomes a real page that Google can index and a person can pinch-free read. PDFs are kept for the things that genuinely need to be documents, like a mandate form.
The copy is written for other attorneys. The homepage opens with a paragraph about jurisprudence and the practice areas are described in Latin.
Rewritten in the language the client used when they searched. A page about eviction says what a Section 4(2) notice is, how long the process usually takes, and what it will cost them in time. Precision stays, the posturing goes.
Every service lives on one Services page. There is nothing for Google to rank against "medical negligence attorney Bloemfontein".
Each practice area gets its own page with its own heading, its own explanation of the process, its own FAQ and its own call to action. That is the page that ranks, and it is the page that converts, because it only talks about one thing.
The only way to make contact is a form. No direct number, no WhatsApp, no indication anyone is reading it.
Phone number in the header on every page, tap-to-call on mobile, WhatsApp button that opens a chat with the firm's name already in it. The form stays for people who prefer writing, but it is never the only door.
No attorney photos. The site could be three people in a Sandton office or one person with a laptop, and the visitor cannot tell.
A bio page per attorney with a proper photograph, degrees, year of admission, the courts they appear in, languages spoken and the matters they handle. This is the page anxious clients read longest, and it is the one that gets the phone call.
Nothing on the site signals that the firm is properly registered or that an enquiry stays private.
LPC registration and Law Society membership displayed in the footer and on the about page. A short, plainly worded confidentiality line next to every enquiry form. Small details, but they are the ones that decide whether a person types out their situation or closes the tab.
One page per area you want work in. RAF and personal injury, divorce and maintenance, labour and CCMA, evictions and rental disputes, conveyancing, deceased estates, criminal defence. Each written around the client's problem and the suburb or city you serve, so it can rank on its own.
Photograph, LLB and any further degrees, year of admission, whether admitted as an attorney of the High Court, notary or conveyancer, areas of practice, languages. Real credentials, stated plainly. No stock photos of gavels.
What happens after the consultation, what documents to bring, roughly how long a matter of this type runs, and who they will be dealing with. Most firms never write this down. It is the single thing clients say afterwards made them choose you.
A short form that asks only what you need to triage the matter, or a live calendar for firms that want slots booked directly. Enquiries land in your inbox and on WhatsApp, so nothing sits unread over a weekend.
A clear statement next to every form explaining that the enquiry is treated confidentially and what happens to the information. POPIA-aware privacy wording written for humans, not a copied template full of clauses about cookies you do not use.
LPC and provincial Law Society details displayed where people look for them, plus your Google reviews pulled onto the page. A firm with fourteen reviews and a registration number visible reads as real. One with neither reads as a risk.
Legal search in South Africa is almost entirely local and almost entirely problem-led. People type the problem plus the place: attorney for unfair dismissal Johannesburg, RAF attorney Port Elizabeth, eviction lawyer Cape Town. Three things decide whether your firm appears.
The first is your Google Business Profile. For legal searches Google leans heavily on the map pack, and a firm with a complete profile, correct practice categories, real office photographs and a steady flow of reviews will appear above firms with better websites and worse profiles. If yours has never been claimed or was last touched in 2019, start there. We wrote a full walkthrough in how to set up your Google Business Profile in South Africa, and we set it up properly as part of every build.
The second is the practice-area pages. Google needs a specific page to rank for a specific search. A homepage cannot be the best result for both divorce attorney Pretoria and RAF claim attorney Pretoria. Two pages can.
The third is reviews, and law firms are terrible at asking. A matter closes, the client is relieved and grateful, and nobody sends the link. Ask at that moment, every time. Ten honest reviews mentioning the practice area by name will move your ranking more than most things you can do to the site itself.
Underneath all of that sits the boring technical work: the site loading in under two seconds on a phone on mobile data, each page carrying proper headings and LegalService schema, and every practice-area page linking sensibly to the attorney who handles it. We do that on every build without being asked.
Yes. The Legal Practice Council permits marketing that is truthful and not misleading. What you cannot do is guarantee an outcome, claim a success rate you cannot substantiate, or tout for work in a way that pressures a person in distress. A website that explains your practice areas, lists your attorneys and their admission years, and invites an enquiry sits comfortably inside those rules. We build the pages and your firm signs off the wording before anything goes live.
It depends on how many practice areas you run, how many attorney profiles you need, and whether you want consultation booking wired into a calendar. A two-attorney family law practice in Randburg needs a different build to a twelve-attorney firm covering RAF, labour and conveyancing. Send us your practice areas and attorney list and we will quote you free, with the scope written out so nothing is hidden.
One page for every area you genuinely want work in, and none for the ones you do not. Someone searching personal injury attorney Randburg or CCMA representation Pretoria will not find a homepage that lists nine services in a row. They find a page about their specific problem. Most firms we build for start with four to six practice-area pages and add more once they see which ones bring enquiries.
No. Your own photos, qualifications and admission year are public professional information and are exactly what a nervous client checks before phoning. The confidentiality risk sits with client material, so we never publish case details, client names or testimonials that identify a matter. Enquiry forms are kept short and the page states plainly that anything sent is treated as confidential.
Tell us which areas you want work in, how many attorneys need profiles, and which suburbs you serve. We come back with a scope and a free quote, no obligation and no sales call you have to sit through.
Get a free quote →