A Law Firm Website, Built as a Concept
Pickering Law Firm is a fictional two-partner general practice we designed and built to show how we approach a website for a small Ontario law firm. The firm, its lawyers, its phone number and its reviews are invented. The structure and the decisions are the ones we would make for a real firm, and below we list what we would change before a real firm could publish it.
- Type
- Concept build (fictional firm)
- Practice
- General practice, 6 areas
- Firm size
- Two partners
- Pages
- Home, About, Services, Team, Contact
The Brief
What a small Ontario general practice needs from its website
A small general practice serves people with very different problems on the same day: a tenant facing eviction, someone dismissed from their job, a couple separating, a driver with a ticket. Each needs to see, within seconds, that this firm handles their kind of matter.
Most will have been referred or will be comparing two or three firms. Before they call, they want to know who the lawyers are, what the first conversation costs, and what happens next.
The Build
How the concept handles it
Practice areas in plain language
Six areas, each described by the problems people actually have ("wrongful dismissal, severance packages, employment contracts") rather than by legal category alone, with the specific matters listed underneath.
Fees on the page
Consultation and hourly ranges are published for each practice area, with HST stated. Most small-firm sites say nothing about cost, which is the most common reason a prospective client never calls.
The lawyers up front
The homepage introduces the two partners and the firm’s history, and each lawyer has a full profile with their year of call and the matters they handle.
One clear next step
Phone number and "Book Consultation" in the header of every page, a consultation request form with the type of matter as a required field, and office hours including Saturday appointments.
Licensing stated
The footer says that legal services are provided by licensed lawyers under the Law Society of Ontario, as rule 4.2-1.1 requires, with a short note that the site is general information and creates no lawyer-client relationship.
Before a Real Firm Launched It
What we would change
A concept can say things a real firm can’t. Before a firm could put its name on this site, we would revise the points below against the Law Society’s marketing rules.
"Real Results" in the hero
A tagline promising results risks "raising expectations", one of the examples in the commentary to rule 4.2-1. For a real firm we would replace it with a specific description of who the firm helps and with what.
"Specializes in" on the lawyer profiles
Rule 4.3-1 reserves "specialist" for lawyers certified by the Law Society, and wording that suggests certification is risky. We would describe practice focus instead: "her practice focuses on…".
A free consultation in one place, a paid one in another
The homepage offers a free 30-minute consultation while the services page lists an initial consultation fee. A real site needs one consistent offer, both for the client’s sake and because the rules treat offers that differ from what clients actually get as "bait and switch" marketing.
Fees that do not mention disbursements
Rule 4.2-2 requires advertised fees to state whether disbursements and third-party charges are extra, not only HST.
A testimonial
The demo’s About page quotes a placeholder client. A real firm would use only genuine, unedited reviews, without emotional appeals, or leave testimonials out entirely.
An open message box on the intake form
A free-text box invites people to send confidential details before any retainer or conflict check. We would ask for the other parties’ names for the conflict check and a brief description, with a note not to send confidential information yet.
Planning a site for your firm?
We build websites for small and mid-size Ontario law firms at fixed, published prices, written to the Law Society’s rules from the first draft.