Lawyer WordPress Themes that Work and Are Easy to Use
I’m an advocate for small business owners, including attorneys and law firms, building multiple websites. This is why I love WordPress so much – it’s free, simple, and fast to set up new websites.
However, not any WordPress theme is perfect for an attorney website. Lawyer websites must be professional-looking. In my view investing in a premium WordPress theme for an attorney website (or websites) is a good idea.
“I’ve been researching premium WP themes for a while and because of your posts, think I am going to go with Genesis. Thanks for the info.”
- Rich at MarketerAtLaw.com
There are 2 types of attorney websites (or any small business sites for that matter):
- Main business website: this is to profile your law business. It contains the usual pages such as “Services”, “Contact”, “Profiles”, etc.
- Blog-style websites: if you have a stand-alone blog where you post regularly, then use a blog-style format. Note, you can include your blog in your main website.
For main business websites, I like, and recommend a large slider or slide show feature located at the top of the home page. Usually this function is split into two parts – one for some text or navigation buttons – and the other displaying a large image or images.
The following is an example of the slide show function (using the Essence theme by iThemes):
In each of the Featured Sections at the bottom, you can insert images and/or text.
I know for my offline business, when I switched my WordPress website to one using a very nice slide show, my conversion rates (percentage of website visitors who contacted me) more than doubled (I installed the Enterprise theme by StudioPress – but the point is using a modern “business-style” or “professional-style” theme.
UPDATE AUGUST 9, 2011: I ADDED MORE THEMES PERFECT FOR ATTORNEY WEBSITES
13 WordPress Themes Perfect for Attorney Main Business Websites (in addition to the Essence theme above):
1. Deep Focus Theme by ElegantThemes
Click here to view Deep Focus demo
2. Enterprise Theme by StudioPress
Click here to view Enterprise Demo
3. Biznizz Theme by WooThemes
4. Metric Theme by StudioPress
5. Professional Theme by ElegantThemes
Click to view Professional demo
6. Optimize Theme by WooThemes
7. Architect Theme by iThemes
Click here to view Architect demo
8. Kinetic Theme by RocketTheme
Click here to view Kinetic demo
9. Manhattan Theme by StudioPress
Click here to view Manhattan demo
10. Delegate Theme by WooThemes
11. Private Lawyer by Templatic
Click to view Private Lawyer demo
12. Law Firm Theme by Bizz Themes
Click here to view a demo of the Law Firm theme.
13. Associate by StudioPress
Associate is an August 2011 StudioPress release. It’s one of their most stylish business themes to-date perfect for any law firm website.
Click here to view a demo of Associate theme.
5 WordPress Blog-Style Themes for Attorneys
This is just my opinion, but I would create more of a blog-style site for subsequent attorney websites. The reason I say this is you don’t want to confuse your clients and prospective clients with a bunch of different looking websites on numerous domains. I also wouldn’t use the exact same layout on numerous domains because it could be construed as mirror sites with Google, and possibly confuse your clients and prospective clients.
A blog style site is designed to inform. From your attorney blog sites, you can link to your main attorney website (whether in WordPress or not).
1. News Theme by StudioPress
2. Tapestry Tumblog by StudioPress
3. The Journal Theme by Woo Themes
4. Magazine Theme by StudioPress
5. News Blog Theme by ElegantThemes
Business & Lawyer WordPress Themes from Template Monster
Get a 10% discount through this link to Template Monster.
Template Monster is what I call a “Mall” template retailer (along with ThemeForest and Mojo Themes). Read my Mall vs. Boutique theme vendor article to learn the distinction.
I know the news-concept might seem odd for an attorney website, but think about how you could create a newspaper or magazine blog for your firm. You could have all kinds of topics such as caselaw, events, news about your firm, etc. You can get creative, publish tons of content (which is great for search engine rankings), and have some fun publishing an attorney news site.
Don’t forget about creating a Mobile-Friendly Version of your WordPress Website
Read my Handheld plugin review to learn how to create a mobile friendly version of your website in minutes (I use this for all my business mobile websites) .
Let me recap about your attorney WordPress theme selection strategy:
If you’re building your first attorney firm website in WordPress, get a theme that has a traditional static home page – preferably one with a slider or slideshow at the top. If you’re building additional websites for your law firm, then go for a news-style or even a personal blog style them.
Turn your Attorney Website into an iPhone App
Reach the massive and growing iPhone app market with your website. Learn about a WordPress iPhone app plugin here (again, I use this for my business websites).
Suppose you prefer to build a lawyer WordPress theme from scratch
It’s possible now with what I call WordPress theme generators. These are themes that enable you to build a webiste in WordPress from scratch WITHOUT knowing any coding at all. 3 Excellent WordPress theme generators are as follows:
These 4 WordPress theme generators enable you to customize the design, layout, and navigation without knowing any coding at all. That said, they don’t have any design to them. The good news is adding your law firm logo and images is very easy to do. So is fully customizing the entire color scheme, typography, and layout.
Why build more than one attorney website in the first place:
Maybe you’re wondering why I would suggest building more than one website for your firm. Especially when your flagship site likely has a blog function to it already where you can publish as much content as you wish.
The reason for more than one attorney website is simple: with another site on a new domain, you can capture a lot more traffic in the long run. How? The keyword you use in your domain will have a good chance of ranking very well in the search engines. Therefore, the more websites with new domain names, the more keywords you can rank well with.
But, you can’t just go and build websites in any old way – and you especially don’t want to publish a bunch of copy-cat sites or mirror sites. You must build your fleet of sites in a particular method. I’ve actually experimented a lot (for over 1 year and with dozens of websites) using WordPress to build multiple websites for a small localized business (not unlike a law firm). After working out the kinks, the traffic for my small business is incredible – and that’s largely due to multiple websites with carefully selected domain names.
Another reason for building more than one website for your law firm is it’s very easy to build links with other lawyer websites you don’t compete with (i.e. in other cities and states/provinces).
If you have one website, the best you can offer is a reciprocal link exchange. Reciprocal linking isn’t that effective (it works, but you can do better). A better strategy is if you have 2 unique sites, you can link one site with your linking partner. Then your linking partner can link to your other site (the site you don’t link to your linking partner). This way every site receives a one-way link.
The Simple Solution for Starters
Build your main firm site. Then build a blog site where you post news about your firm. Another easy strategy is build two websites, each focussed on a different practice area (i.e. personal injury and criminal law).
About choosing a domain name
Once you have a domain for your firm name, choose generic domain names such as duiattorney.com or floridapersonalinjuryattorney.com (of course finding ones available is another matter). The reasons for doing this are twofold:
- You create an asset you can sell to any firm in the same practice area; and
- You gain a search engine ranking advantage for the keyword(s) in the domain name.
Which theme do I use for my business website?
I use Enterprise for my main offline business websites and Magazine theme for my news-style blogs. Both of these themes are by StudioPress. It converts well and I like the Genesis Theme Framework. However, I’ve used themes from all the other theme providers except Headway and Thesis (I included Headway and Thesis because they’re theme generators – I’ve used Builder and Catalyst to build WordPress websites from scratch).
Nevertheless, all the above WordPress themes, in my view, will work very well for a lawyer website. It really boils down to personal choice.
I’m an advocate for small business owners, including attorneys and law firms, building multiple…
I’m an advocate for small business owners, including attorneys and law firms, building multiple…
Hi. Do you recommend any particular website (not blog) theme or company that sells themes, which will permit me to use the latest and greatest WP plug ins and extensions? Basically I want to make sure I can use things like FB like /share button, and maybe also a mobile version of the sites. Do you know if any of these theme companies work with all plug ins. Example: woo sites–the only work with a small list of extensions per their own website.
Thanks and great post!
Hi Tina,
I believe 2 theme developers fit the bill well (there are certainly others, but I’m extremely familiar with these 2):
1. StudioPress; and
2. ElegantThemes.
StudioPress has several business style themes. I use all kinds of free and paid plugins with my websites built with StudioPress. Also, StudioPress has several themes that include responsive design. Responsive design changes the layout and presentation of your website for mobile devices. In fact the layout will adjust according to the size of the mobile device (iPhone vs. iPad).
ElegantThemes has many business themes and their themes work with all plugins that I’m aware of (not that I’ve tried every plugin, but I’ve never encountered a plugin that doesn’t work with ET – same with StudioPress).
Instead of responsive design, ElegantThemes created the Handheld plugin which creates a mobile version of your theme. It actually works for any WordPress theme. I’m using it on this site (I set it up before SP rolled out responsive design). When you buy an ElegantThemes membership, Handheld is included.
I hope this answers your questions.
Twitter: togeorgemathew
says:
Thank you for this article – pretty cool – we are a law firm currently with Enterprise Child theme of StudioPress and looking for a simpler theme
George Mathew recently posted..Why you should have a cover letter for immigration in Singapore?
Twitter: michaelehline
says:
Can anyone help me find a personal injury firm template with a contact us box up near the top?
Michael Ehline recently posted..Understanding The Wrongful Death Claim
Hi Michael,
You can add a contact form at the top of the sidebar. That’s what I do for client business sites.