Attorney website design in Chicago: what design decides

Design decides where the answer sits, not what it says. On a Chicago attorney site the first 40 words of every page have to carry the answer, because 39 of 54 money searches we measured on 3 August 2026 returned an AI Overview. Our build is $2,900, fixed.

Last updated: 5 August 2026

What does design decide, and what does it not?

Design decides order, speed and reach. It decides nothing about whether the words underneath are worth reading.

What it decides: what loads first and what is pushed below it, how the page behaves on a phone, how many taps separate a paragraph from the inquiry form, whether a named fee earner has a page a client can be sent to, and whether an answer engine can parse the page at all.

What it does not decide: whether the firm has written the answers, whether anybody replies to the inquiry, and whether the page ranks. We cannot promise a ranking and neither can anyone else — eight of the forty legal-marketing suppliers we read on 3 August 2026 claimed a guarantee of some kind, and none of them controls Google's ranking either.

A damaging admission before the price appears. A rebuilt site does nothing for a firm whose constraint is fee-earner capacity rather than inquiries. If the phones are already busier than the calendar, this is the wrong purchase.

Where does the answer have to sit?

In the first forty words of the page, above anything decorative, on every template.

This is the design decision with the largest measurable consequence. Across the whole keyword set measured for this program, 863 of 1,235 terms return an AI Overview, and on the money searches it is 39 of 54. A page whose first screen is a photograph, a slider and a strapline gets summarized from whatever the engine finds further down, and the summary appears without the click.

Three template habits cause it, and all three are design decisions rather than writing ones: a full-height image before any text, a carousel that delays the first paragraph, and an opening paragraph about the firm's history rather than the reader's question. None is expensive to fix, and all three are commercial-template defaults.

What does each template have to carry?

Six templates cover a law firm site, and the content owner is different on almost every row.

The right-hand column is the part suppliers leave vague. A design engagement that does not name who writes the fees page usually ends with nobody writing it, and the page a buyer most wants is the page that ships empty.

What does a fees page look like when a firm publishes one?

Specific enough to be checked, which is rarer than it sounds.

There is no rule in the United States requiring a firm to publish prices, and this is not a statement about anybody's obligations — how advertising rules apply to a particular firm is a question for that firm and its own advisers. It is a statement about what a prospective client needs before they call. Of the 62 questions buyers ask on these searches, 15 are about cost, and of the 40 suppliers we read, 12 published a price at all while 5 of those showed only a "from" range.

The design job on that page is to make the figure findable in one scroll, to keep the qualifying conditions beside the figure rather than in a footnote, and to date it.

What decides how many templates a Chicago site needs?

The number of practice areas the firm wants more of, not the number it is capable of.

Six templates cover the site. The page count grows with practice areas, and each one wants its own practice-area page, its own question pages and its own entry on the fees page. A Chicago firm doing immigration and probate work — 4,400 immigration searches a month at $15.46, and 1,760 probate searches at $17.59, measured 3 August 2026 — needs two practice-area pages built properly, not eight built thinly.

Eight near-identical practice-area pages, or a page per neighborhood with the practice area swapped in, is the doorway pattern. Google removed roughly 80% of doorway pages in measured 2024 core-update cases, and the penalty in those cases attached to the set rather than to the weakest page in it. A design proposal priced per page has a quiet incentive to propose more of them.

What will a rebuild not fix?

Three things, and a firm should hear them before the invoice rather than after it.

It will not fix intake. Who answers, how quickly a web inquiry gets a reply, and what is recorded afterwards are operational questions inside the firm, and a supplier claiming to solve them is describing software or a call center. It will not produce matters this quarter — that is paid search, and we do not manage ad spend. And it will not make a practice area searched for: if nobody types the query, a better-looking page changes nothing.

Which suppliers design law firm sites, and which publish a price?

Four we read in full, and the single thing we recorded about each.

The fourth is a portfolio showcase rather than a supplier of law firm sites: useful for looking at, not for buying from. Of 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read in full on 3 August 2026, twelve published a price at all, five showed only a "from" range, eight claimed a guarantee, and one offered work with no minimum term. We recorded whether a figure was visible on the page and nothing more — not what the figure was, not what any of them sells, not how well.

Where one of them is the better answer. A firm that wants a distinctive visual identity, photography and a brand system is buying a design studio, and that is a different purchase from a fixed-scope build aimed at getting answers found. If the site is a positioning statement for a large practice rather than a route to inquiries, buy it from a studio and expect to pay studio prices.

What does it cost, and why never per inquiry?

$1,450 for the Practice Sprint, $2,900 for the build. Fixed, published, no minimum term.

Never per inquiry, per matter or per client. We charge for the work, by scope and time. Referral fees are restricted in prescribed legal business, which includes personal injury, and the restriction binds the firm paying as well as the party being paid.

What this is worth where you are

In Chicago, 11,000 people a month search for a family or divorce attorney, and Google charges around $34.89 for one of those clicks, measured 3 August 2026. The dataset treats family and divorce as one category, so that figure covers both. We hold the same figures for 52 cities.

The free report gives you yours, plus which pages are missing from your site, and what 40 suppliers charge.

Get the report →

No call required. Our own prices are on that page.

Where should I read next?

On the words the templates above have to hold: law firm website content.

If search rather than the site is the constraint: seo for law firm and lawyer seo marketing.

If the firm needs matters this quarter: ppc for law firm and law firm ppc agency.

Frequently asked questions