A law firm website should have one practice area page for every distinct legal service the firm wants to be hired for. There is no universal number. A two-attorney estate planning practice might do well with six to ten pages. A personal injury firm that handles car accidents, truck crashes, dog bites, and wrongful death claims across several cities could justify 30 or more.
At Peak Marketing, we use a simple test with attorney clients: if a potential client would type it into Google as its own problem, and your firm actually takes those cases, it deserves its own page. If it fails either half of that test, it belongs as a section on a broader page or not on the site at all.
The rest of this post explains how to apply that test, what a sensible structure looks like at different firm sizes, and where adding pages starts to hurt you.
Why One “Services” Page Is Not Enough
Many firm sites still list every practice area as a bullet on a single “What We Do” page. That page cannot rank well for any one of those services. Google matches a search to the page that answers it best, and a page with two sentences on DUI defense and two on expungement is not the best answer to either.
Separate pages also help the person reading. Someone searching for help after a workplace injury wants to see that you handle workers’ compensation claims in their state, how the process works, and what it costs to talk to you. A dedicated page can answer those questions directly. A list item cannot.
Google’s own guidance on helpful, people-first content rewards pages that leave a reader feeling they found what they came for. For a law firm, that usually means one page per legal problem.
How to Work Out the Right Number for Your Firm
The number should come from your caseload and your market, not from a template another firm used. Work through these steps in order.
- List every case type the firm accepts today. Be specific. “Family law” is a category; divorce, child custody, and protective orders are case types.
- Mark the ones that bring in revenue or that you want to grow. A page for a matter you turn away wastes budget and attracts the wrong calls.
- Check search demand for each one. Google Keyword Planner, Search Console, and the “People also ask” box all show whether people search the term on its own. If almost no one does, fold it into a parent page.
- Decide whether location pages make sense. A firm with offices in Boise and Idaho Falls can support a page for each office. A firm with one office should be careful about building pages for every nearby town.
That last point matters. Google’s spam policies name “doorway abuse” as a violation, and city pages that only swap the town name are the textbook example. A location page earns its place when it has something real to say about that area: the courthouse, local procedures, the attorney who handles cases there, or results from that county.
What a Sensible Structure Looks Like at Different Firm Sizes
These ranges come from the site structures we build and audit for law firm clients. They are starting points, not rules.
| Firm type | Typical page count | Example structure |
| Solo or two-attorney niche practice | 5 to 10 | Estate planning parent page, with child pages for wills, trusts, probate, and powers of attorney |
| General practice, one office | 8 to 15 | Separate parent pages for family law, criminal defense, and estate planning, each with two to four child pages |
| Personal injury, one market | 15 to 25 | Car accidents, truck accidents, motorcycle accidents, slip and fall, dog bites, wrongful death, and similar case types |
| Multi-office firm | 25 to 60+ | Core practice pages plus office pages that carry local detail and link to the relevant services |
The parent and child arrangement matters as much as the count. A parent page such as “Family Law” gives a short overview and links down to each child page. Each child page links back up. This keeps the site easy to crawl and shows Google how your services relate to each other.
Signs You Have Too Many Practice Area Pages
More pages do not automatically mean more traffic. Past a certain point, extra pages compete with each other and spread your authority thin.
Watch for these warning signs:
- Two pages target nearly the same search, such as “rear-end collision lawyer” and “rear-end accident attorney.” Google will often rotate between them and rank neither well. Merge them.
- A page has fewer than 400 words and nothing specific to say. Thin pages drag down how search engines view the whole site.
- Search Console shows a page has earned zero impressions after six months. Either the topic has no demand or the page is not good enough to compete. Improve it or fold it into a parent page.
- You have pages for services the firm stopped offering. These confuse visitors and produce calls you cannot take.
A practice area page audit once a year catches most of these problems. Pull every service URL, note its traffic and leads, and decide whether to keep, expand, merge, or remove it.
What Peak Marketing Puts on Every Practice Area Page
A page only counts if it is good enough to rank and convert. When we build or rewrite a practice area page, it covers the questions a prospective client is already asking:
- Who the page is for, stated in the first paragraph. “If you were hurt in a trucking accident in eastern Idaho” is clearer than a paragraph about the firm’s history.
- How the legal process works for that case type, in plain steps.
- What affects the outcome or timeline, such as statutes of limitation, insurance limits, or custody factors the court weighs.
- Which attorney handles these cases and what experience they bring.
- A short FAQ built from real intake calls.
- One clear next step for the reader.
This structure also helps with AI search. Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode rely on the same SEO fundamentals as regular results, including content that is easy to reach through internal links. A page that answers one legal question clearly, near the top, is easier for those systems to understand and cite than a page that covers six topics at once.
Word count follows the topic. Most of our strong practice area pages land between 800 and 1,500 words. A complex area like medical malpractice may need more. A narrow child page may need less, as long as it says something useful.
The Short Version
Build one page for each case type you want, that people search for on its own, and that you can write about with real substance. Group those pages under a few parent categories. Add location pages only where you have something local to say. Review the whole set once a year and cut or merge what is not pulling its weight.
If you are not sure whether your site has too few pages, too many, or the wrong ones, Peak Marketing can audit your current practice area structure and show you where the gaps are. Reach out through our website to schedule a review, and we will map out the pages your firm needs to compete in your market.
Sources
- Google Search Central, “Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content.” https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content
- Google Search Central, “Spam policies for Google web search” (doorway abuse). https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies
- Google Search Central, “AI features and your website.” https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features
