Attorney website design templates: six checks before you pay
Before buying a template, test the demo the vendor publishes. Load it on a phone on cellular data and time it. Count the pages it actually ships. Check whether a fee page exists. Ask, in writing, who owns the code and whether it can be moved. 6 checks, and most take minutes.
Last updated: 5 August 2026
What should you test, and in what order?
Six things, on the vendor's live demo rather than on the screenshots.
Screenshots are rendered by the vendor at their leisure. The demo is the product. Every test below is run on the demo URL, in a browser, by the person about to spend the money, and each one has a stated fail condition so the result is not a matter of taste.
| # | The test | How to run it | What a fail looks like |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Render speed | Open the demo on a phone, on cellular data, not office wi-fi | You notice the wait before the text appears |
| 2 | Shipped page count | Click every item in the demo's own navigation and count | Fewer pages than the firm's practice areas |
| 3 | The fee page | Look for any page where a price could be published | No such page, and no obvious place to add one |
| 4 | Editability | Change a heading in the trial, or ask to be shown it done | The change requires a support ticket |
| 5 | Ownership | Ask in writing who owns the code and the content after payment | An answer that is not a plain sentence |
| 6 | Portability | Ask in writing whether the site can be exported and hosted elsewhere | Tied to the platform it was sold on |
Tests one to four take about twenty minutes between them. Five and six take longer because they are answered by a person rather than a browser, and the delay is itself informative.
How do you check render speed without a tool?
On a phone, on cellular data, with the office wi-fi switched off.
Most template demos are viewed on a desktop machine on a fast connection, which is not how a prospective client sees one. Somebody looking for an attorney is frequently standing outside a building, in a car, or in a hospital corridor. If the text appears late enough that the tester notices, the test has failed, and the number a speed tool would report is beside the point.
This matters in proportion to what the traffic costs. In Dallas, a personal injury click cost $116.39 on 3 August 2026. A page that loses a visitor before the first paragraph renders has spent that and returned nothing, whether the visitor arrived from an advertisement or from an ordinary result.
Run the same test twice: once on the home page, once on the deepest page in the demo's navigation. Templates are frequently tuned on the home page only.
Does it ship the pages a firm actually needs?
Count them. Most demos ship fewer than a working firm requires.
Open the demo's navigation and count what is genuinely there rather than what the sales page lists. A firm needs, at minimum:
- One page per practice area it wants more of, written separately rather than as rows in a grid.
- One page per attorney, named, with the work that person actually handles.
- A page describing what happens in the first two weeks, in plain language.
- Somewhere the fee question can be answered.
- A contact route that works on a phone held in one hand.
If the demo ships a single combined practice-area page and a team grid, the firm is not buying five pages, it is buying two, and everything else has to be built anyway. That is not disqualifying. It is a cost, and it belongs in the comparison before purchase rather than after it.
Is there anywhere fees can go?
Usually not, and it is the check buyers skip.
The United States has no rule requiring a firm to publish prices, so this is a commercial decision rather than an obligation, and a firm's own obligations are a matter for the firm and its own advisers. The commercial argument stands on its own: 15 of the 62 questions buyers ask on these searches are price questions, measured 3 August 2026. It is the single most common thing people want to know and the thing least often answered.
The pattern holds among the suppliers selling to firms, too. Of the 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read in full on 3 August 2026, 12 published a price at all and five of those showed only a range rather than a figure. Among them, idr.legal and onthemap.com published a price; themodernfirm.com did not. We record who published a figure, never what the figure was, because attributing an unverified number to a named business is not a mistake worth making.
If suppliers who sell websites to attorneys mostly do not publish a price, a template built for attorneys is unlikely to ship a page for one. Check before buying, because retro-fitting a fee page into a fixed layout is the change vendors quote for.
Who owns the code, and can it be moved?
Ask both in writing, and keep the answer.
These are the two questions a demo cannot answer and a sales call answers ambiguously. The wording worth sending, verbatim:
- After final payment, who owns the site files and the content? A plain sentence naming the firm is the only acceptable answer. Anything conditional means the answer is no.
- If we leave, can the site be exported and hosted elsewhere, and what comes with it? The useful follow-up is what specifically transfers: pages, images, forms, redirects, and the search work accumulated in the URLs.
A firm that cannot move its site cannot change supplier without starting again, and starting again means new URLs, which means losing whatever those URLs had earned. That is the cost that arrives years later, which is exactly why it is worth ten minutes now.
What we would say if asked: the firm owns the site and everything in it, and it can be moved. We would rather write that here than be asked for it.
What does the license actually permit?
Read the paragraph about how many times you may use it, and where.
Three clauses worth locating before paying:
- Single site or multiple. Firms with a second brand or a spin-off practice sometimes discover the license covers one installation.
- Resale and modification. Whether an outside developer may alter the template on the firm's behalf.
- What happens when support ends. Whether the site keeps working, and whether updates stop.
None of these are unusual terms and none are traps. They are simply the parts nobody reads until the day they matter.
Which of these checks would we fail?
Two of the six, plainly.
We do not publish a demo you can load. Our sites are built for one firm, so there is nothing generic to test on, which means check one and check two cannot be run against us before a conversation. A template vendor beats us on that, and a buyer who wants to see the product before paying is right to weigh it.
We are not fast in the way a template is fast. A template is live in days. We are not, and a firm that needs something acceptable by the end of the month should buy one.
What we do answer plainly: Practice Sprint $1,450, build tier $2,900, fixed, published, no minimum term. Of the 40 suppliers we read, one offered work with no minimum term and eight claimed a guarantee of some kind. We decline the guarantee, because nobody controls Google's ranking.
We never charge per inquiry, per case or per matter. We charge for the work, by scope and time. Lawyer advertising in the United States runs through ABA Model Rule 7.2(b), adopted differently state by state.
What this is worth where you are
In Dallas, 6,600 people a month search for a personal injury attorney, and Google charges around $116.39 for one of those clicks. We hold the same figures for 52 cities, measured 3 August 2026.
The free report gives you yours, plus which pages are missing from your site, and what 40 suppliers charge.
No call required. Our own prices are on that page.
Where should I read next?
For the built alternative and what it includes: website design attorney and law firm website examples.
By practice area, where the page set differs: family law attorney website design and immigration attorney website design.
On the part a template never ships: law firm website content writing.
Frequently asked questions
What should you check before buying an attorney website template?
Six things, on the vendor's live demo: render speed on a phone, the number of pages it actually ships, whether a fee page exists, whether headings can be edited without a support ticket, who owns the code, and whether the site can be moved.
How do you test a template's speed without a tool?
Open the demo on a phone using cellular data rather than office wi-fi, on the home page and again on the deepest page in the navigation. If you notice the wait before text appears, it failed, and a score from a speed tool will not change that.
How many pages should a template ship?
Enough for one page per practice area the firm wants more of, one page per attorney, a page describing the first two weeks, somewhere fees can be answered, and a contact route that works one-handed on a phone. Most demos ship fewer.
Do template demos include a fee page?
Usually not. The United States has no rule requiring firms to publish prices, but 15 of the 62 questions buyers ask on these searches are price questions, and retro-fitting a fee page into a fixed layout is the kind of change vendors quote for.
What should I ask in writing before paying?
Two things: who owns the site files and content after final payment, and whether the site can be exported and hosted elsewhere. A plain sentence naming the firm is the only acceptable answer to the first, and anything conditional means no.
Why does portability matter later?
A firm that cannot move its site cannot change supplier without starting again, and starting again means new URLs, which discards whatever those URLs had earned. The cost arrives years after the purchase that caused it.
Which of these checks would you fail?
Two. We publish no demo to load, because our sites are built for one firm, and we are not fast in the way a template is fast. A firm needing something acceptable by the end of the month should buy one.