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What should an attorney profile page include? Most law firms get this wrong. A complete guide based on more than a decade of creating corporate websites for law firms.
The attorney profile page is one of the most visited pages on any law firm website. This is where a potential client comes to understand who they'll be working with: what experience the lawyer has, what areas they practice in, and whether they can be trusted. And yet, this is exactly where we see the most mistakes.
Low-quality photographs, missing direct contact information, pages with no links to practice areas or industries, weak or generic descriptions. The result: a page that should build trust ends up working against the firm.
We touched on this topic in our article on the five key elements of a law firm website. Here, we go deeper - sharing what an attorney profile page should include, based on more than a decade of building corporate websites for law firms at Smotrów Design.
The most obvious element - and one of the most common mistakes. On a surprising number of law firm websites, team photographs are either missing entirely or taken without proper attention to quality. When building a website, we always recommend a full studio photoshoot.
A white or light grey background works best - these images are the easiest to adapt to any design direction during post-production. Appearance matters just as much as the shot itself. The legal profession is inherently conservative, and clients expect to see a polished, professional image. A well-fitted suit, attention to detail, proper lighting - all this shapes the first impression before the visitor even reads the lawyer's name. Some firms opt for a more informal style, but this remains an exception rather than the rule.
One final point: we advise against using AI tools for photo retouching. Regardless of how advanced the technology has become, the result still looks artificial - and that is precisely the kind of signal that undermines trust. Clients want to see real people, not digitally perfected images.
Not all clients reach out through the general contact form. Our analytics across law firm websites reveal a different pattern: in many cases, the client already knows which lawyer they want to contact. They navigate to the team page, find the individual, and write to them directly - most often by email, less frequently through LinkedIn.
This means the attorney profile page must include: a corporate email address on the firm's domain (not Gmail or Hotmail - this immediately looks unprofessional), a link to the lawyer's LinkedIn profile, and the office address if the firm operates from multiple locations. A direct phone number may be appropriate in some cases, though this is less common among Ukrainian firms than their European counterparts.
Two elements that are frequently overlooked but consistently valued by clients: a vCard button for saving the contact instantly, and a downloadable PDF profile summarizing the lawyer's key credentials. In our experience, both see regular use.
Equally important is what should not appear on the page. No personal social media accounts - Instagram, Facebook, or similar platforms. No personal email addresses. If the firm chooses to include WhatsApp, it should be a business account only. The attorney profile page is a professional tool, and every element on it should reflect that.
Clients rarely read everything on a lawyer's profile. But they almost always read the first block and scan the rest. That's why the structure and order of sections matter — the most important information should be at the top.
Here are the sections we recommend including on every attorney profile page:
A concise overview of the lawyer: their specialization, key practice areas, and professional focus. Think of it as the first impression in text form. Within a few seconds, the client should have a clear sense of the individual's experience, direction of work, and level of expertise. This is also the place to mention the most significant matters or achievements. For firms that value a personal touch, this is also the place to include a brief note about the lawyer's motivation, interests, or community involvement — details that humanise the profile and give clients another level of connection.
A list of the areas in which the lawyer works, with active links to the corresponding pages on the site. This is a critical element - it connects the profile to the broader site architecture and prevents it from becoming a dead end. We discussed this in detail in our article on the five key elements of a law firm's website.
University degrees, professional certifications, completed programs and courses. This section demonstrates not only baseline qualifications but also a commitment to ongoing learning - which matters especially in fast-evolving areas of law.
Positions in legal rankings such as Chambers and Legal 500, professional awards, and association memberships. For many clients, this is the deciding factor - an independent assessment of the lawyer's competence.
Key matters and transactions the lawyer has been involved in. Where confidentiality allows, include client names and deal values. Where it doesn't, describe the type and scale of the work without disclosing specifics. This section transforms the profile from a CV into proof of expertise.
Articles, media commentary, conference appearances. This section not only demonstrates expertise but also creates links to the firm's Insights section, strengthening the site's internal structure.
For international firms, this is essential. The client should immediately see which languages the lawyer can work and communicate in.
Where resources allow, a short introductory video can be a powerful addition. It gives the visitor a sense of the lawyer's personality and communication style - something no written bio can fully convey.
Client feedback placed directly on the lawyer's profile - rather than only on a general testimonials page - carries significantly more weight. A specific endorsement next to the lawyer's name and photo creates an immediate trust signal.
This is rarely discussed, yet it's where one of the most common mistakes in law firm website design occurs. An attorney profile should never exist in isolation. Its role is not only to present the individual but to serve as a point from which the visitor naturally moves further - to practice areas, legal cases, publications, and other team members. And the reverse should be equally true: every article, every case study, every practice page should lead back to the relevant lawyer.
That's why, when designing attorney profile pages, we always build comprehensive connections with the rest of the website architecture: a block of related publications and news, projects and matters involving the lawyer, links to the practices and industries they work in, and a section of related colleagues from the same areas. All of these connections are managed through the CMS and displayed on the page automatically.
The result is that the website stops being a collection of separate pages. It begins to function as a single system where every element is linked to others. A visitor who arrives at a lawyer's profile moves on to a practice area. From the practice area - to a publication. From the publication - back to another lawyer. Every transition keeps the visitor on the website, deepens their understanding of the firm, and builds trust. For search engines, this is equally important: internal links between pages strengthen the visibility of each one.
This is the kind of architecture that separates a professional law firm website from a digital business card. Not isolated pages, but a connected ecosystem where everything leads forward and everything works toward a single goal - demonstrating the depth of a firm's expertise, regardless of where the visitor starts.
A significant share of visitors to law firm websites browse on mobile devices - especially when looking up a specific lawyer's contact on the go, before a meeting, or during an event. The mobile version of an attorney profile page is not a scaled-down copy of the desktop layout. It is a separate design challenge.
The photograph should remain large and sharp even on a small screen. Contact channels - email, phone, LinkedIn - must be tappable and accessible without scrolling. The vCard button becomes especially valuable on mobile: one tap and the contact is saved. Content blocks for practices, publications, and matters should collapse logically and not turn into an endless scroll that the visitor abandons halfway through.
We recommend testing the attorney profile page on mobile devices separately from the rest of the website, because this is the page most likely to be opened on a phone.
An attorney profile page is not only a tool for clients who already know the firm. It is a potential entry point from search engines. When someone searches for a lawyer by name, or types something like "M&A lawyer Kyiv," a properly optimized profile can appear in the results.
To make this possible, every attorney profile page should have a unique title tag that includes the lawyer's name, position, and firm name. The meta description should be a concise summary of their specialization and experience. The H1 heading should be the lawyer's full name. H2 subheadings - one for each section (About, Education, Experience, and so on) - help search engines understand the structure of the page.
Where the technical platform allows, it's worth adding structured data using the Person schema type. This helps Google generate a rich snippet with the lawyer's name, title, photo, and contact details directly in search results. For lawyers whose names regularly appear in media and legal rankings, this is particularly effective.
It may seem like a minor detail, but the order in which lawyers appear on the team page is a signal clients read instantly. There are several approaches, and the right choice depends on the firm's structure and strategy.
Partners at the top, followed by counsel, associates, and support staff. This is the most common approach in law firms and the most familiar to clients. It immediately communicates hierarchy and makes it easy to find key people.
Within each category, lawyers are listed alphabetically. This works well for larger firms with dozens of professionals, where a client is searching for a specific person by name.
Lawyers are grouped by their area of work. This approach suits firms where clients come with a specific problem rather than a specific name - and are looking for the right specialist.
The most effective approach is a combination: seniority as the primary order, alphabetical sorting within each level, and practice-based filtering as an additional tool.
For firms with more than 15–20 lawyers, a team page without filters becomes difficult to navigate. Clients will not scroll through a long list - they are more likely to leave.
The minimum set of filters: by office (if the firm operates across multiple locations), by practice or industry, and by position (partner, counsel, associate). For larger firms, it's useful to add a name search - a simple text field that filters the list in real time.
An important detail: filters should work without reloading the page.Every reload is a loss of attention. Smooth, instant filtering creates a sense of a responsive and thoughtfully designed interface - one that matches the standards of a professional law firm.
Attorney profile pages are living content that requires regular maintenance. An outdated profile does just as much damage as an outdated news post on the homepage.
What needs updating: new matters and projects, changes in rankings and awards, new publications and speaking engagements, changes in position or practice focus, and photography - we recommend scheduling a team photoshoot at least once every two years.
The optimal rhythm is a quarterly review. This doesn't mean rewriting the entire profile - it means checking whether new matters have been added, whether rankings have changed, and whether the information is still accurate. For search engines, regular page updates are a positive signal that affects the visibility of not just the individual profile but the site as a whole.
We recommend assigning one person within the firm to be responsible for keeping the team pages current, and setting a calendar reminder. Without this, updates are postponed indefinitely.
The attorney profile page is not a formality. It is a full-scale communication tool that works for the firm around the clock. It shapes the first impression, builds trust, and guides the client further - to practice areas, publications, and contacts. Or it does none of these things, if designed without attention to detail.
Everything we've discussed - photography, contact channels, information structure, site-wide connections, mobile design, SEO - these are not separate tasks. They are elements of a single system, where each one affects all the others. A strong photograph loses its purpose if there are no contact details beside it. Contact details are useless if the page can't be found in search. SEO delivers nothing if the visitor leaves after five seconds.
This article is a continuation of our guide to the five key elements of a law firm website, where we first identified the People section as one of the most underestimated parts of a law firm's digital presence. Here, we've shown how to design it so that it fulfils its purpose.
