Solicitors & law firms

Websites and redesigns for solicitors and law firms

Central Systems designs and builds new websites for solicitors, and redesigns existing ones. The job is the same either way — help someone with a legal problem work out whether you are the right firm, and get their enquiry to the right team with enough detail to act on.

Talk to Central Systems See website design

New firm websitesWebsite redesignsPractice-area structureEnquiry routingLocal searchAutomationBespoke systemsOngoing care

Illustrative concept

yourfirm.co.uk/contact

What do you need help with?

Buying or selling a home A family matter A will or an estate Something at work A business matter I’m an existing client

Routed

TeamResidential property AskedStage, property type, timescale SentAcknowledgement + owner assigned

Lands as a record, not an email

The job of the site

What a solicitor’s website actually has to do

In short

A solicitor’s website should do more than look professional. For the person reading it, it has to make clear what the firm does, which service applies to their situation, who they would be dealing with, and how to take the next step. For the firm, it has to bring enquiries in with enough information to act on, send them to the right team, and stay practical to keep up to date.

People arrive mid-problem, not mid-purchase

Someone looking for a solicitor usually has a situation rather than a service name. The site has to help them work out which of your practice areas their problem belongs to before it asks them for anything.

Trust is established before contact, or not at all

Who does this work, what happens next, how you charge, and where you are. A firm that answers those plainly on the page spends less of the first call proving it exists.

A poor-fit enquiry costs more than no enquiry

Time spent on work you were never going to take is time not spent on work you would. Better questions on the way in are worth more than more enquiries arriving.

Every practice area is a different conversation

A conveyancing quote, a family matter and a commercial dispute have almost nothing in common. One “contact us” page treats them as though they do, and whoever watches the inbox pays for it.

Most of this happens on a phone

Read on a phone, often out of hours, often in a hurry. If the only route in is a downloadable form or twenty required fields, that is where it ends.

The firm has to be able to maintain it

Fee changes, a new starter, a practice area you have started taking on. If a small update needs a developer and a two-week wait, the site drifts out of date and the firm quietly stops trusting it.

Two ways in

A new website, or a redesign of the one you have

Both are core work for us, and we will tell you honestly which one your firm needs. The difference is not budget — it is whether the structure underneath is worth keeping.

New website

Built from scratch, around the practice

For a new firm, a merger or a rebrand — or a site so far from what the practice now does that keeping it is the more expensive option.

A structure built from your actual practice areas, not a five-page brochure
A page per service that says what it covers, who handles it and what happens next
Solicitor and team profiles, with the roles and qualifications you supply
Office pages that work for a firm with more than one location
Enquiry journeys that ask what that particular matter needs
Mobile-first, accessible, and fast on a phone connection rather than an office one
A content system your own team can update without ringing anybody

See website design

Redesign

Rebuilt on what already works

For a firm whose site still functions but no longer represents the practice — dated, awkward to navigate, poor on a phone, or quietly burying half of what you do.

Existing content reviewed and carried across, not discarded for the sake of it
URLs kept where they are, and redirected properly where they genuinely cannot be
The search visibility you already have treated as an asset to protect, not collateral
Practice areas currently buried three clicks down given pages of their own
One generic contact form replaced with routes that match how the firm is organised
Speed, mobile behaviour and accessibility brought up to current standards
A site the team can edit, so it stops depending on whoever built it

See website redesign

We will say so if a redesign is the better answer.

Where the structure underneath is sound and the shortfall is capability, a redesign is usually the lower-risk piece of work, and it keeps the visibility a full rebuild puts at risk. That conversation happens before the quote, not after it. If you want a read on your current site first, the free website audit is a reasonable place to start.

Structure

Your practice areas are the site’s architecture

Most solicitor websites are built as a five-page brochure with one “Services” page listing everything the firm does. That single page has to explain, and be found for, work that has nothing in common. Giving each practice area a page of its own is the structural change that does the most.

/Home
/services/Practice areas — index
- /services/conveyancing/One page per service you offer
- /services/family-law/Its own audience, its own questions
- /services/wills-and-probate/Written for the person, not the profession
- /services/…/Employment, commercial, disputes, injury — whatever you actually do
/our-people/Solicitor and team profiles
- /our-people/<name>/Role, background and the work they take
/offices/One page per office, with its own contact route
/fees/How the firm charges, in the firm’s own words
/contact/A routed enquiry rather than one form

Illustrative structure. The routes, the labels and the depth are decided with you — a single-office firm with three practice areas does not need the same tree as one with four offices.

A practice-area page is not a paragraph under a heading. It is the page that has to answer, on its own, whether your firm is the right one for this particular problem — because for most visitors it is the first page of your site they will ever see.

What it covers, in the words a client would useSomeone searching does not know the legal term for what has happened to them. The page has to meet the question as it is actually asked.

Who in the firm does this workNamed people, linked to their profile. It is the fastest way a page stops reading as a brochure.

What the process looks likeThe stages, roughly how long each one takes, and what the firm needs from the client at each of them.

How you charge for itTo whatever level of detail the firm is willing to publish. A fee range with an explanation beats no fee information at all.

An enquiry route for that matterNot a link to the general contact page. The questions that fit this service, going to the team that handles it.

These are examples, not a template.

Conveyancing, family law, wills and probate, employment, criminal, personal injury, commercial, property and dispute resolution are the areas we see most often. No firm offers all of them, and plenty of firms do work that is not on that list at all. The architecture is built from the services your firm actually takes on — we work that out with you rather than assuming it.

Enquiry capture

Ask what the matter is before asking for a phone number

A single contact form flattens every kind of enquiry into one message that somebody has to read, interpret and forward. The alternative is not a longer form — it is one short question first.

“What do you need help with?”One question, answered by choosing the area it belongs to. No name, no email, nothing personal yet.

Questions that fit the answerA property enquiry is asked about the stage and the timescale. An employment enquiry is not. Two or three fields, not twenty.

Sent to the right teamTo the people who do that work, at the office that handles it — not a shared inbox everyone assumes somebody else is watching.

Answered with something to work fromWhoever picks it up already knows what it is about, so the first reply is a useful one rather than one asking what you meant.

Fewer enquiries the firm was never going to takeA question at the front is a filter at the front. Someone whose matter you do not handle finds that out on the page rather than after a phone call, and the enquiries that do arrive are ones worth opening.
Less back-and-forward before the first real conversationMost of the initial exchange is the firm working out what the enquiry actually is. If the form asked, that exchange has already happened by the time anybody reads it.
Different routes for different peopleA new enquiry, an existing client chasing an update, and a general question are three different things. Putting all three through one address is what makes the important one hard to find.
A record rather than an emailEach enquiry arrives with what the person told you and which page they came from, so it can be assigned, tracked and answered — instead of depending on somebody remembering.

This is triage, not advice.

Nothing on the website tells a visitor what their legal position is, what they are entitled to, or what they should do next. It establishes what kind of matter this is, so the right person at the firm can respond to it. Anything that would amount to legal advice stays with the solicitor, and we design these journeys on that basis.

Where it earns its keep

What we can build into the site, where it is worth building

None of this is standard and none of it is included by default. Each one is worth doing only where it saves the firm real work, or answers a question a visitor genuinely has — and we would rather talk you out of the ones that do not.

Enquiry qualification

A short set of questions per practice area, so an enquiry arrives with enough detail to be actioned rather than investigated.

Service selector

For the visitor who knows their problem but not the legal name for it. They describe the situation and arrive at the right practice area.

Appointment and call-back requests

Preferred times and a call-back window captured up front, rather than a phone number and a hope that both ends are free at once.

Document upload

Where a matter genuinely needs something up front, collected through the site properly instead of as an email attachment nobody can find later.

Fee and cost estimates

For work that is genuinely priced by rule — conveyancing against a purchase price, for instance. Built from your own fee scale, and only where an honest figure can be given.

Eligibility and questionnaire tools

Structured questions that help someone see whether a service applies to their situation — written as information, never as an opinion on their case.

Acknowledgements and reminders

The person knows their enquiry arrived, who has it and when to expect a reply. The firm gets a nudge on the ones that have gone quiet.

Delivery into your inbox or CRM

Enquiries landing where the firm actually works. What that connection looks like depends entirely on the system — we check before quoting it.

Analytics and conversion tracking

Which practice areas people actually arrive for, and where enquiries are being lost. Measured, so decisions about the site stop being guesses.

And the automation around them

Automation earns its place on a solicitor’s website in the dull parts: moving an enquiry to the right place, telling somebody it arrived, and reminding a person that they said they would do something. It is not the headline here, and none of it gives anyone legal advice.

Routing. The practice area chosen at the start decides which team and which office the enquiry reaches, without anybody forwarding it.
Internal summaries. A structured submission restated as a short summary at the top of the internal notification, so a fee earner sees what it is in one line. It repeats what the person entered — it does not interpret it.
Acknowledgements. Sent immediately, saying what happens next and by when, so the firm is not judged on a silence it never intended.
Triggers and reminders. An enquiry unanswered after a set time, a document asked for and never returned, a call-back that was promised. Worth automating only where the firm can state the rule in one sentence and still agree with it next month.

More on how we approach this: business automation and AI integrations.

We do not claim integrations we have not built.

Case and practice management systems vary enormously, and several have no usable interface for this at all. If connecting the website to the system you already run matters to you, raise it at the first conversation — we will tell you plainly whether it is already covered, whether it is custom work carrying its own cost and risk, or whether it is something we would decline.

Being found

Practice area, place, and the way people actually search

Someone looking for a solicitor searches for the problem and the place. The pages that earn visibility are the ones where a service the firm genuinely offers meets somewhere it genuinely works — not a page generated for every possible combination of the two.

Service × place/services/conveyancing/<town>/

Earns a page when the firm genuinely acts on purchases and sales there, and there is something local to say — the market, the searches, the way that council handles things.

Service × office/services/family-law/<town>/

Earns a page when you have an office there and a team that takes this work, so the page can name the people rather than repeat the service description.

Service on its own/services/wills-and-probate/

Most services only need one strong page. Splitting it by location before there is anything different to say makes both versions weaker.

A page exists because there is something to sayIf a location page would differ from another only by the town name in the heading, it should not exist. We will build fewer, better pages rather than more thin ones, and we will tell you when a page you have asked for falls into that category.
No doorway pagesPages built purely to catch a search term, with no real service behind them, are exactly what search engines are looking for — and a poor experience for whoever lands on one. We do not build them.
The technical foundation comes firstSpeed, heading structure, internal linking, structured data, and a site that can be crawled properly. That work benefits every page on the site, including the ones you have not written yet.
We do not promise rankingsNobody can honestly promise them. What we can do is build the structure and the content properly, and be straight with you afterwards about what moved and what did not.

Where this goes further: SEO & growth.

Beyond the website

Need more than a website?

The short answer

If an off-the-shelf CRM does not fit how your firm works, we can build a bespoke management system around your actual process. Central Systems does not sell a solicitor CRM product — there is no such product to buy from us. What we do is build software to order, for firms whose working week is the real problem rather than the website.

Most firms should try the off-the-shelf option first, and we will say so where that is the honest answer. A bespoke system is worth considering once a firm has already outgrown or worked around what it has: when the process everyone follows lives in somebody’s head, when the same information is typed into three places, or when the system in use is dictating how the firm works rather than the other way round.

These are the kinds of thing we can build. None of them is a product sitting on a shelf — each is scoped, specified and quoted against how your firm actually operates.

Enquiry

Enquiry managementEvery enquiry in one place with an owner, a status and a next action — whether it came from the website, the phone or the front door.

Intake

Lead and matter intakeThe information gathered once, at the start, in the form the firm agreed — rather than reassembled later from an email chain and somebody’s notebook.

Pipeline

Matter pipelinesWhere each piece of work has got to, what it is waiting on and who it is waiting for, laid out in the stages your firm actually uses.

Tasks

Internal task trackingWho is doing what by when, attached to the matter it belongs to rather than to a separate list nobody opens.

Documents

Document workflowsRequested, received, checked and filed against the matter, with a record of what happened and when.

People

Staff dashboardsWhat each person needs to deal with today, rather than a report they have to interpret first.

Reporting

ReportingThe handful of numbers the partners actually want, produced by the system rather than assembled by hand at the end of each month.

Clients

Client communication workflowsAcknowledgements, updates and reminders that go out because the system knows they are due, not because somebody remembered.

Bespoke

A bespoke CRMWhere none of the above is genuinely separable — one system, built around your firm’s process, containing only the parts you need and nothing you do not.

Where this stops.

This is business software built to a specification we agree with you. It is not a regulated legal case-management product and we do not present it as one. Anything carrying compliance, client-money or regulatory obligations has to be specified, built and validated for your firm specifically — and that is a conversation to have before any of it is scoped, not during the build.

Working with us

Why a firm would choose us for this

We are not going to claim legal-sector specialism we cannot evidence. What we do is build websites and business systems for organisations whose work arrives as enquiries and has to be handled properly — and we are straight about the limits of that.

We build both ends

The website, and what happens to an enquiry the moment it is submitted, are the same problem. Most of the industry stops at the form and hands you an email.

Bespoke, not a legal theme with your logo on it

The structure comes from your practice areas, your teams and your offices. There is no solicitor template here waiting to have the colours changed.

You own all of it afterwards

Domain, hosting, the site and full administrator access, on standard technology you could hand to a different developer tomorrow without anybody’s permission.

We tell you what is not worth doing

The calculator that cannot give an honest figure, the integration that does not exist, the rebuild where a redesign would do. That conversation happens before the quote.

How a build actually goes

1
A conversation about the firmWhich practice areas bring the work in, what an enquiry goes through between arriving and being answered, and which part of that is visibly costing you. Free, and not a sales call with a deck attached.
2
A scope in writing, and a fixed priceThe deliverables, the price, and the dates by which we need things from you — all of it agreed before you are committed to anything.
3
Structure signed off before design startsPractice areas, page structure and enquiry routes agreed first, because that is the part that is expensive to change once the site is built.
4
Built in the openYou review real pages on a staging site as they are finished, rather than approving a description of them at the end.
5
Handed over properlyFull access, a site your team can genuinely edit, and ongoing care afterwards if you want somebody keeping it current — updates, security, and the changes nobody quite gets round to.

Straight answers

Questions solicitors ask us

What should a solicitor website include?

At minimum: a page for each practice area the firm offers, profiles of the solicitors who do that work, clear contact details for every office, an explanation of how the firm charges to whatever level of detail it is willing to publish, and an enquiry route that matches how the firm is organised internally. Beyond that it depends on the firm — a two-partner practice and a firm with four offices do not need the same site.

Can Central Systems redesign an existing solicitor website?

Yes, and for a lot of firms it is the better piece of work. A redesign keeps the content and the URLs that already earn visibility, protects the search equity a full rebuild puts at risk, and puts the budget into structure, mobile behaviour, speed and enquiry handling instead. We will tell you at the first conversation which of the two your site actually needs.

Can a solicitor website route different types of enquiries?

Yes. Rather than one contact form, the site can ask what the enquiry is about, follow with two or three questions that fit that answer, and send it to the team and the office that handle that work. New enquiries, existing clients and general questions can each take a different route, and each one lands as a record with an owner rather than as an unattributed email.

Can Central Systems build a bespoke CRM for a law firm?

Yes, as bespoke software built to an agreed specification. We do not sell a ready-made solicitor CRM and there is no such product to buy from us. If an off-the-shelf system fits your firm, we will tell you to use it. Where one genuinely does not, we can build a management system around how the firm actually works — scoped and quoted like any other build, not licensed.

Can a solicitor website integrate with existing business systems?

Sometimes, and it depends entirely on the system. Where a documented interface exists we can use it; several practice and case management systems have nothing usable for this. We check before quoting rather than after, and we will not describe an integration as available until we have confirmed it exists. Where it does not, we say so rather than building something fragile on top of a gap.

How much does a solicitor website cost?

It depends on how many practice areas and offices the site has to carry, and how much of the enquiry handling and automation you want built. We quote against an agreed written scope rather than giving a number over the phone, and there is no separate legal-sector price list. The first conversation costs nothing, and you get a fixed price before anything starts.

How long does a solicitor website take to build?

For most firms, six to ten weeks from agreed scope to launch. The delay is rarely the build — it is content: practice-area copy, fee wording and partner sign-off. We tell you at the start exactly what we need from you and when, so it does not sit waiting on a decision nobody knew they owed us.

Who writes the content for the practice-area pages?

We structure it and we will draft it from what you tell us — but a solicitor has to own what the site says about the law and about the firm. In practice a partner reviews and approves every practice-area page before it goes live. Regulatory and professional information is supplied by the firm and published exactly as given; we do not write it, source it or infer it.

Next step

Tell us how enquiries reach the firm today

Which practice areas bring in the work, what happens to an enquiry once it arrives, and which part of that is visibly costing you. We will tell you honestly whether the answer is a new website, a redesign, or something that is not a website at all.

Talk to Central Systems See website redesign

No cost for the first conversation, and a fixed written quote before anything starts.

All industriesEvery sector we build for Professional servicesAccountants, consultancies Estate & letting agentsProperty agencies Bespoke systemsSoftware built to order