By Jonathan Fitzgarrald, Managing Partner at Equinox Strategy Partners on March 26, 2026

As a client development coach, I often hear some version of this: “I don’t really focus on my website biography or LinkedIn. I focus on relationships.” The instinct is understandable. Relationships drive revenue. Conversations convert. Trust closes. But here’s the disconnect: before most of those conversations ever happen, you’ve already been researched and in many cases, disqualified.

More often than not, it’s your firm’s website quietly undermining your efforts. So how can law firms design or update their websites to ensure they support—rather than hinder—client development? Let’s get into it.

Why Your Website Is Losing Prospects Before You Even Talk to Them

Law firm websites are still too often treated like static brochures—overbuilt, overinclusive and under-strategic. They try to say everything, to everyone, all at once. The result? They say nothing clearly to anyone who matters. From a client development perspective, that’s a fundamental miss. From a capabilities standpoint, a family law attorney might be able to handle employment or real estate matters. From a client development perspective, absolutely not!

Prospective clients are not visiting your website to admire your full capabilities. They are there to answer a simple question: “Is this the right lawyer for my specific problem?” If your website doesn’t answer that quickly and convincingly, the prospect moves on to a competitor.

Focus Attracts Clients: Stop Trying to Be Everything to Everyone

One of the most common (and costly) website mistakes is lack of focus. Many firms position themselves as broadly capable across dozens of practice areas and industries. Every lawyer is “preeminent.” Every service is “full-service.” Every bio reads like it could belong to anyone. That approach may feel safe internally, but it creates confusion externally.

Client development requires specificity. Your website should reflect the type of work you want more of, not a historical archive of everything you’ve ever done. Focus attracts. Generalization repels.

Attorney Bios: The Single Most Important Page for Client Development

If there’s one area where firms consistently miss the mark, it’s attorney biographies. Bios should command roughly 85% of your website’s client development focus. After all, 85% of law firm website traffic goes directly to attorney bio pages. Not practice pages. Not news sections. Not firm history. Yet most bios read like résumés, that’s to say chronological, generic and disconnected from how clients actually make hiring decisions. A strong bio should clearly communicate:

• Who you help, and it should be a clearly defined audience, not just anyone with a pulse and a retainer check
• What problems you solve; be specific, even when you can’t provide client names
• What that experience looks like in practice, highlighting how you are unique in terms of experience, industry expertise or service delivery

That means providing representative matters are not optional, they are essential. And not just any matters. They should:

• Be current, ideally within the last 24 months
• Be updated consistently throughout the year, as you continue to deliver client wins
• Reflect your target work, not just your past work
• Especially for early-career attorneys: you don’t need to have been the lead on a matter to include it; collaborate with the partner in charge to craft a description that accurately conveys the value you contributed

If your bio doesn’t show relevant, recent experience, you are forcing a prospect to “assume” your capabilities, and assumption is the enemy of engagement.

Keep Your Website Current: Show You’re Active and Relevant

Another major gap: firms rely too heavily on static content. A website that rarely changes signals one of two things: either you’re not active, or you’re not paying attention. Neither is helpful. While your website houses foundational content, it should still reflect movement:

• Updated representative matters
• Refreshed bios
• Timely insights tied to your focus areas
• Video content that allows prospects to get a sense of you as a person; videos also capture five to six times more attention than static content

Contrast that with platforms like LinkedIn, which provide dynamic reinforcement. The strongest digital presence combines both: a focused, well-structured website and ongoing signals of relevance elsewhere.

Let Marketing Experts Handle Design, You Focus on Client Development

Here’s another hard truth: too many lawyers are overly involved in website design. You should not be designing websites; you should be practicing law, making connections and developing business.

Design, functionality and user experience should be led by marketing professionals who understand how buyers actually behave. The role of the lawyer is to provide clarity around focus, experience and target clients—not to debate font size, color palates or homepage layouts. When lawyers drive design decisions, the result is often a site that reflects internal preferences rather than external buying behavior.

Make It Easy for Prospects to Contact You

Even with strong messaging, firms often create unnecessary friction. If a prospective client has to hunt for your contact information, you’ve already lost ground. And for those concerned about spam from listing contact details on your bio, consider this: the occasional nuisance is a small price to pay compared with the risk of losing a prospective client. Your website should make it effortless to connect:

• Click-to-email links
• Click-to-call phone numbers
• List assistant contact information for the times you’re unavailable

Accessibility is not a minor detail. It’s part of the client experience.

And for B2B law firms, this extends further: avoid 1-800 numbers and generic chatbots. These tools can dilute the perception of a high-touch, sophisticated, relationship-driven practice. (For B2C practices, they may have a place—but we will save that for another time.)

Align Your Online Presence with Your Business Development Goals

Ultimately, the problem isn’t just poor execution, it’s misalignment. Lawyers say they want more of a certain type of work. But their website highlights something else. Their bios emphasize legacy matters. Their representative experience is outdated. Their positioning is vague. When your digital presence doesn’t match your business development goals, it creates friction, and friction slows or stops engagement.

Treat Your Website as Your First Client Development Test

Your website is not a marketing formality. It is your first client development test. Before the call. Before the meeting. Before the relationship. So the better questions to ask are:

• Does my website reflect the work I actually want more of?
• Does my bio make it easy for someone to understand why they should hire me?
• Does my experience look current and relevant?
• Is it easy to contact me or am I making people work for it?

Law firms that get this right don’t necessarily have the biggest websites or the most content. They have the most focused, relevant and usable ones. Relationships still drive business. But in today’s market, relationships are almost always preceded by research.

And if your website isn’t helping that process, it’s hurting it.

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Jonathan R. Fitzgarrald is the Managing Partner of Equinox Strategy Partners (ESP), a business development coaching and training firm serving lawyers, accountants, and business management professionals nationwide. Through ESP’s formalized coaching programs, clients consistently achieve an average of 20 percent year-over-year practice growth. For more information, visit EquinoxStrategy.com.