Most people choose a lawyer the way they choose a roofer: they look at websites. But a law firm's website is marketing, and much of what looks like evidence on one is decoration that any firm can buy. A few things on the page are verifiable and worth your attention: who the attorneys are, where they actually practice, whether the content shows real working knowledge, and what the firm says about fees before you call. Here is how to tell those apart from the rest.
There is nothing wrong with a law firm having a polished website. We have one. But it helps to know what you are looking at, because the conventions of legal marketing have drifted a long way from what actually predicts whether a lawyer will do good work for you.
A useful frame: almost everything on a law firm's website falls into one of two buckets. Some of it is checkable, meaning you could confirm or disprove it in a few minutes. The rest is atmosphere, meaning it is designed to make you feel a certain way and cannot be tested at all. Neither is dishonest. But only one of them tells you anything.
Start With the People
The single most useful page on a law firm's website is the one listing the attorneys, and the most telling thing about it is whether it exists.
Look for each attorney's name, photograph, law school, year of admission, and the courts they are admitted to. Those are facts. They can be checked. A firm that presents itself as a team but never names anyone is asking you to trust an entity rather than a person, and you will be working with a person.
Then check whether the attorney who will handle your matter is actually identified. Some sites list a roster but never connect anyone to a practice area, which leaves you unable to tell whether the person writing your will has done it a hundred times or twice. On our attorney pages each biography lists what that attorney handles, which is a convention worth expecting anywhere.
One easy verification: the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania publishes a free attorney search showing license status and any public discipline. It takes a minute, it works for any Pennsylvania attorney, and it is independent of whatever the website says.
Read One Article Closely
Content is where the difference between a practicing firm and a marketing package shows most clearly, and you only need to read one piece carefully to see it.
Signal looks like specifics. A writer who practices somewhere knows that a particular Register of Wills is on the third floor of an annex, that a given county takes qualification appointments by video, that a specific form asks a question people routinely get wrong. Those details are tedious to fake and useless to someone who has not been there. When we wrote our county courthouse guides, the addresses, hours, and procedures came from the offices themselves, because that is the only part of such a page that helps anybody.
Atmosphere looks like adjectives. "Aggressive advocates." "Committed to excellence." "Fighting for your rights." None of it is false, exactly. It just carries no information, because no firm's website says the opposite.
A few practical tells:
- Does the article have a byline, a date, and an author biography? Syndicated content usually has none of the three. Firms that buy their blog from a content service often publish the same article appearing verbatim on dozens of other firms' sites. You can check by pasting a distinctive sentence into a search engine in quotation marks.
- Does it name a statute, a court, or a county? Pennsylvania estate and real estate practice is intensely local. Writing that could apply to any state usually was written for any state.
- Does it tell you when you do not need a lawyer? A firm confident in its work will tell you that some estates skip probate, that some transfers do not need counsel, that a situation is simpler than you feared. Content that funnels every possible reader toward hiring someone is selling, not explaining.
Awards, Badges, and Ratings
The wall of logos near the bottom of the page is the hardest part of a law firm's website to read honestly, because the good and the meaningless look identical.
Some legal ratings are peer-reviewed, use published criteria, and are genuinely difficult to obtain. Others are directories that invite an attorney to buy a listing, a badge, and a commemorative plaque, and the badge looks exactly as impressive. Some organizations do both.
The practical test: can you find the selection criteria published somewhere other than the law firm's own website? If the organization explains how attorneys are chosen and who does the choosing, the badge means something. If the only thing you can find is a page inviting attorneys to apply, treat it as decoration.
Client reviews are more useful than badges, with one caveat. Testimonials the firm has selected and published on its own site have obviously been chosen. Reviews on an independent platform where anyone can post, including unhappy people, carry more weight because the firm does not control the sample. Read the middle-rated ones. That is where the texture is.
What the Fee Page Tells You
Many law firm websites say nothing at all about money. That is not a scandal, because legal fees genuinely depend on facts the firm does not have yet. But how a site handles the question is informative.
A firm that explains how it charges, even without naming a number, is telling you that the conversation about cost happens early and openly. A firm that says nothing, and offers only a form, is telling you the conversation happens later. Neither is wrong, but you can decide which you would rather have. We put ours in writing because it is the question people are most nervous to ask out loud.
Watch for a related signal: whether the site is clear about what a free consultation includes. A genuine initial meeting to assess your situation is a normal professional courtesy. A sales appointment described as a consultation is a different thing, and you usually find out which one you booked after you arrive.
What a Website Cannot Tell You
Be honest about the limits here, because the most important things are not on the page:
- Whether they will call you back. Responsiveness is the single most common complaint about lawyers, and no website has ever disclosed a slow one.
- Whether you will understand them. Legal writing that reads clearly on a website is a decent proxy, but the real test is a conversation.
- Whether the firm will still be there. Solo and small-firm attorneys retire, and documents left behind can be genuinely hard to track down. It is a fair question to ask, and no site answers it.
This is why the last step is always the same: talk to a person. The website's actual job is to help you decide whether the call is worth making, and to tell you enough that you arrive with good questions.
A Short Checklist
Before you call any firm, spend five minutes on:
- The attorney page. Is the person who will do your work named, with their credentials?
- One article, read closely. Specifics or adjectives? Byline and date, or neither?
- The license check. Pennsylvania's Disciplinary Board search, one minute.
- Independent reviews, not just the testimonials on the site.
- The fee page. Does it exist, and does it explain the method?
- The address. Is there a real office, and is it somewhere you could reach if you needed to?
None of this guarantees a good experience. It does filter out the situations people most often regret, and it costs you an afternoon coffee's worth of time.
We would rather you apply this to us than take our word for anything. The attorneys are named with their credentials, the county guides cite the offices they describe, the fees are explained before you call, and the reviews are on Google where we cannot edit them.
Bring your questions to a free consultation and ask the hard ones. Anyone worth hiring will answer them.
This article provides general information about evaluating legal services and is not legal advice for your specific situation. Consult an attorney about your own circumstances.
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