Free, no tool, about twenty minutes
Audit your own law firm website
Eighteen checks, in the order that matters: is the site indexed, does it publish what a regulated firm has to publish, can an interested visitor reach you, and does anyone arrive in the first place. You need a browser, your own phone and twenty minutes. No tool, no email address, no score out of a hundred.
The order is deliberate. Each group depends on the one above it, so working from the top down stops you polishing a fee page on a site Google has never indexed. Write the failures down as you go and decide what to do at the end.
Printing it works. The print stylesheet drops the navigation and adds a tick box beside every check, which is how most people end up using this.
- 18 checks, in dependency order
- 8 regulated services need a price and service page
- 20 minutes, no tool, no email address
- Websites from £1,200
- SEO from £399 a month
- ICO registered ZC207002
- Built in Wrexham, working with firms across England and Wales
Indexed
Four checks. Nothing else counts until these pass.
The site is in Google at all
How: Search site:yourfirm.co.uk in Google. Count roughly what comes back.
It fails when: Nothing, or one result. Every other check on this page is academic until this one passes, because a page that is not indexed cannot rank, cannot be quoted by an AI assistant, and cannot be found by a client who has your name on a compliment slip.
The right pages are in it
How: In the same results, look for the practice areas you actually want work from, and the fees pages.
It fails when: Your home page and your privacy policy are there and your conveyancing page is not. That usually means thin content, or a page that exists only after JavaScript runs.
One address, not four
How: Type your domain four ways: with and without www, with http and https. Watch where each ends up.
It fails when: Any of them serves a page instead of redirecting to the one true address. Google then has several copies of the same firm and picks between them.
Search Console exists and somebody reads it
How: Ask whoever built the site for access, or set it up yourself. It is free.
It fails when: Nobody has it. Then nobody knows what the site is being shown for, and every decision about it is a guess.
Compliant
Six checks against what a regulated firm has to publish.
A price and service page for each regulated service you offer
How: Open the site as a client would. Try to find what a straightforward probate costs.
It fails when: You cannot find it in three taps, or it is a PDF. The rules ask for information that is clear and accessible, and a document a phone struggles to open is neither.
Each fee page carries the whole set
How: Total cost or a range with the basis of the charge, the disbursements, whether VAT applies to each, what is included and what is not, the stages, the timescale, and who does the work.
It fails when: A figure with nothing around it. A number alone tells a client less than it appears to, and it is the part reviewers look at hardest.
The fee page is reachable from the practice page
How: From your conveyancing page, can you reach conveyancing fees without going back to the menu?
It fails when: The only route is a footer link. Filed is not the same as found.
The digital badge is the live badge
How: Right click it. A live badge is code from the SRA, not a picture.
It fails when: It is an image somebody saved. It may also be out of date without anyone noticing, which a live badge cannot be.
Complaints information is on the site and findable
How: Search the site for the complaints page as a dissatisfied client would.
It fails when: It is a paragraph at the end of the terms. This is the page a client looks for on their worst day with your firm.
Every fee page carries a reviewed-on date and an owner
How: Look for a date. Then ask who inside the firm owns it.
It fails when: No date, or a date from two years ago. A page is right on the day it is published and stays right only if somebody owns it.
Contactable
Four checks on whether an interested visitor can reach you.
A phone number you can tap, at the top, on a phone
How: Open the site on your own mobile. Tap the number in the header.
It fails when: It does not dial, or there is no number above the fold. We have found a dead placeholder number live on a client site that every desktop test missed.
The form asks for the least it can
How: Count the fields. Ask what each one changes about what happens next.
It fails when: Nine fields including a mandatory matter type. Every field that does not change the next step costs you enquiries.
The form actually arrives
How: Submit it yourself, from outside the office network, and time how long the email takes.
It fails when: Nothing arrives, or it lands in spam. This is the single most common fault we find, and nobody discovers it until a client mentions a message they never got a reply to.
The page says who will answer and roughly when
How: Read the contact page as a stranger.
It fails when: It says we will be in touch shortly. A named person and a real timescale convert better than a promise nobody owns.
Findable
Four checks on whether anyone arrives in the first place.
The Google Business Profile is complete and current
How: Search your firm's name. Check the hours, including Saturday, the address, and whether the services are ticked.
It fails when: Hours wrong or missing. Being open at the time somebody searches is one of the strongest local signals there is, and it costs nothing to get right.
The name, address and phone match everywhere
How: Compare the site footer against the profile, letter for letter.
It fails when: Suite 2 in one place and Second Floor in the other. Small inconsistencies dilute a signal that is otherwise free.
Each page has its own title and description
How: View source, or use your browser tab titles as a rough guide across ten pages.
It fails when: The firm name repeated on every tab. Google then has nothing distinguishing one page from another, and neither does a searcher deciding which to click.
Reviews arrive steadily, not in bursts
How: Look at the dates on your reviews.
It fails when: Eleven in one week two years ago and nothing since. Recency counts, and a routine at the desk beats a campaign.
Reading your own result
Count the failures by group rather than in total, because where they cluster tells you what kind of problem you have. Failures concentrated in Indexed are a build problem and nothing on the site will work until they are dealt with. Failures in Compliant are almost always a shape problem rather than a content problem: the firm supplied the figures and they ended up somewhere a client cannot reach. Failures in Contactable are the cheapest thing on this page to fix and the most expensive to leave, because they waste every visit the site is already getting.
Failures spread evenly across all four usually mean the site was built once, signed off, and never owned by anyone since. That is a common and fixable position, and it is worth saying plainly that it is not a reflection on the firm.
If the compliance group is where yours falls down, the two pages worth reading next are the transparency checklist and the guide to what goes on the page and how to write it. What a rebuild costs is on the pricing page, with figures rather than bands.
Questions firms ask us
Do I need a tool to do this?
No, and that is deliberate. Every check on this page is done with a browser, a phone and your own eyes. The tools that score a site out of a hundred are measuring things that are easy to measure, which is not the same as the things that decide whether a client rings you.
How long does it actually take?
About twenty minutes for the first pass if you do not stop to fix anything. Resist fixing as you go. Write the failures down, finish the list, then decide the order, because the order is usually not the order you found them in.
Which failure should we fix first?
Whichever one is highest on this page. The groups are in dependency order, not importance order: a beautiful fee page on a site Google has not indexed helps nobody, and a form that does not deliver wastes every visit the site already gets.
We failed most of the compliance checks. Is that unusual?
It is common, and it is usually a build problem rather than a compliance problem. The firm gave its previous developer the right figures and the developer put them in a PDF, or on a page nothing links to. The information exists; it is in the wrong shape.
Is this an SRA compliance check?
No. It tells you whether the information a regulated firm publishes is present and findable on the website, which is the part we can see from outside. Whether the content itself is correct and current is for the firm and its COLP, against the SRA's own text and guidance. We build the pages and lay out the figures the firm gives us. We are not the firm's compliance adviser.
Reviewed on by Daniel Stoychev. Check 10 on this page asks firms to date their own pages and name an owner, so this one does the same. The SRA’s current text and guidance are the reference for anything regulatory, not this page.
Eighteen checks, honestly answered
Tell us the domain and we will send back what failed, in the order we would fix it.