Put your case types where the photograph of a courthouse usually goes
The first screen should list the work you do, not columns, a flag and a gavel.
Stock legal photography tells a visitor nothing and costs load time on the exact device where load time matters. A short list of the case types you take, in the words a client would use, answers the only question they arrived with.
Write the list as situations rather than statute names. Someone got a letter they do not understand. A relative was picked up. An employer has offered to sponsor them. Someone filed a year ago and has heard nothing since.
Keep the phone number and a call button in the header, visible without scrolling, on every page including the blog.
Underneath the list, one line about the office and one about languages. Very little else earns space that high on the page.
A templated site will call it a county and your reader will notice
National legal-marketing templates are written for other states, and Louisiana readers catch the seams quickly.
Louisiana runs on a civil law tradition rather than the common law used everywhere else. Immigration is federal, so the difference does not change your casework, but it does change what boilerplate is safe to buy.
Vendor copy about counties, other states' courts and other states' procedures ends up sitting on the pages that were meant to build trust. A visitor from Metairie who reads the word county has learned something about you that you did not mean to say.
Have someone local read every page before launch, including the ones nobody expects anyone to read: privacy policy, disclaimers, the areas served list, the footer.
Keep anything touching state matters general, and point readers to their own counsel. Your site is not the place to explain how state law works.
Ask who is asking, and ask whether you may leave a voicemail
The inquiry form for this trade needs different fields than the ones a template ships with.
Start with the relationship. Is the person filling this in the one with the case, a family member, or an employer? The answer changes the entire first call.
Then location and reachability. Which parish, whether the person is in the country, the best number, and whether it is safe to leave a voicemail or send a text. Households share phones and workplaces are not private.
Ask for the date on the most recent letter they received, and let them attach a photograph of it instead of hunting for a number they may not be able to find.
Keep the field count low and put one sentence beside the button saying what happens next and who reads the information.
Give every case type page the same five blocks so a reader can compare
Consistency of structure does more for comprehension than any layout trick.
Five blocks in the same order every time: what the case is called in plain words, who it is for, what you need from the client, what the engagement generally costs to begin, and the next step.
Same order means a returning visitor can find the fee line without reading the page again. People comparing two firms are scanning for exactly that and nothing else.
Write the cost block carefully and generally. A range with a clear note about what it covers beats silence, and silence usually gets read as expensive.
End each page with one action. Not four competing buttons in three colors.
Write the English pages for someone reading English as a second language
Plenty of readers who choose the English version are still reading in their second or third language.
Short sentences. Common words. One idea per paragraph, and headings that state the point instead of labeling a container. No Latin, and no term of art unless you define it on the spot.
Translated pages, where you offer them, should be written rather than machine translated, and should only promise a language your intake can answer in every day. A Spanish page attached to an English-only phone line creates a bad first call and a lost file.
Read the copy out loud. Anything you would not say to a person sitting across a desk from you comes out on the first pass.
Reading level is an accessibility question as much as a marketing one, and so are contrast, tap target size and text that survives being enlarged.
Test the site on a phone in a Gentilly parking lot, not on the office wifi
Performance is measured on the worst realistic connection your clients have, not the best one you have.
Take a mid-range phone off wifi and load your own site. Count the seconds until the phone number is usable. That is the number worth arguing about.
The usual culprits are all third party: chat widgets, review carousels, translation plugins, tag managers stuffed with scripts nobody remembers adding, and a hero video. Each one is a paragraph the reader never reaches.
Size images for a phone, hold the font files to a couple, and load anything below the fold later. Most legal sites can cut half their weight without changing a single design decision.
Re-test after any marketing tool gets added. Sites get slow one well-intentioned tag at a time, and nobody notices until inquiries drop.
Questions we actually get
- Do we need a new website or can the current one be fixed?
- Start with a measurement rather than a quote. Load the site on a mid-range phone over cell data, time it, and check whether the first screen names your case types and shows a call button. If the content is close and the platform is not fighting you, a rebuild of the templates and the intake form usually gets most of the benefit for a fraction of the cost.
- Should we publish our fees?
- Publishing a range, with a clear note about what changes it, generally helps more than it hurts. It filters out people who were never going to hire you and reassures the ones who assume a lawyer is out of reach. Keep the wording general and have your own counsel confirm it sits comfortably within your advertising obligations.
- Is a chat widget or an AI chatbot worth adding?
- Only if a human answers within minutes during business hours. Otherwise it slows the page, collects messages nobody reads, and for this practice it invites questions that should not be answered by software. A visible phone number and a short form outperform an unattended chat bubble.
- Should we use a legal-industry website vendor?
- They can be fine for the shell, but the copy is where they cost you. Templated legal content is written for common law states and shows up here talking about counties and other states' procedures. If you use a vendor, plan on replacing every word of the substantive pages and having someone local read the rest.
- Can we show client photographs or testimonials?
- Treat both cautiously. Confidentiality in this practice makes client images and detailed stories difficult, and lawyer advertising rules add their own constraints. Build credibility from your own side instead: named attorneys, real office photographs, and a clear written description of how the work runs. Worth confirming the specifics with your own counsel.
