For global law firms, a website redesign project is never just a design exercise. It sits alongside brand positioning, talent acquisition, and client confidence as a strategic decision that touches every part of the business.
These firms are buying a website, they’re buying assurance at scale.
The website’s real job
At the enterprise level, the website is not expected to generate demand. That work happens through reputation, referrals, and relationships built over decades. A General Counsel at a FTSE 100 company doesn’t Google “best M&A lawyers”; they already have a shortlist based on peer recommendations and the names they recognise from comparable deals.
The website’s job is different: to confirm credibility at the highest possible level.
Visitors arrive already aware of the firm. What they need to see is proof of scale and seriousness. Evidence of experience in comparable matters, confidence that this firm can be trusted alongside (or in place of) existing counsel.
This distinction matters, as firms that approach their website as a lead generation tool end up with something that feels misaligned with how their clients actually use it. The strongest enterprise law firm websites assume every visitor already knows the name, instead they’re built to confirm that awareness was well-placed.
Speed to reassurance
Senior decision-makers engage with law firm websites under time pressure. They’re preparing for a call in twenty minutes, or validating a recommendation before a board meeting. Some are assessing capability across multiple jurisdictions while reviewing three other firms in parallel.
The expectation is immediate relevance, and sites that fail to deliver it lose the moment.
This drives a specific set of requirements:
- Exceptionally clear information architecture
- Intuitive pathways to people, experience, and insight
- Minimal friction between arrival and reassurance
The strongest enterprise sites design for decisive users, not casual browsers. Every element answers an implicit question: Can this firm handle a matter of this complexity, in these jurisdictions, at this level of scrutiny?
A GC spending four minutes on your site before a call has one objective: verification. The site either confirms their instinct to proceed or gives them pause.
Organisation that reflects client reality
Traditional law firm websites mirror internal practice group structures (Corporate, Litigation, Real Estate, Tax), which organises information in a way that makes sense to the firm but often fails the client.
A client facing a cross-border acquisition with regulatory implications and potential disputes doesn’t think in practice group terms. They think in terms of their problem and whether this firm can coordinate the expertise needed to solve it.
The most sophisticated firms recognise this gap. Modern approaches layer client-problem entry points on top of practice group structures: a CFO preparing for a cross-border financing, or an in-house lawyer researching a specific regulatory question. Different visitors find different entry points into the same underlying structure.
Internal structure stays intact. The difference is a client-facing layer on top of it, routing visitors through their problem rather than your org chart.
Search as a strategic capability
For large firms with hundreds of lawyers across multiple offices, dozens of practice areas, and decades of matters, search becomes a primary interface.
Enterprise expectations of search go far beyond utility. The search experience becomes a proxy for how well the firm understands its users.
What matters isn’t volume; it’s relevance. Results should work across people, matters, jurisdictions, and insight. A search for “energy regulatory London” should surface the right partners, the right experience, and the right thought leadership in a way that feels considered, not mechanical.
Firms with deep benches and global reach face a particular challenge: their scale can become an obstacle if visitors can’t navigate it efficiently. Search that returns forty-seven results for a specific query has failed. What enterprise visitors expect is the three most relevant answers, surfaced immediately.
Proof that earns trust
Enterprise clients are sceptical of generic claims. “Leading firm in corporate transactions” means nothing without context. What carries weight is relevant experience, clear patterns across matters, and demonstrated depth in the specific area a client cares about.
This places a premium on how proof is structured. Case studies and experience records need enough detail to be credible but enough restraint to avoid overselling. Lawyer profiles should connect naturally to matters, publications, and practice areas, creating a web of evidence rather than isolated highlights.
“We have extensive experience in financial services regulation” is a claim. A profile showing a partner who has advised three of the four major clearing houses on the same regulatory question is evidence, and senior clients can tell which is which within seconds.
Familiar enough, distinctive enough
Enterprise firms don’t want to confuse their audiences. Their clients expect recognisable conventions, predictable navigation, and professional continuity with peer firms. Someone who has visited twenty law firm websites has developed expectations about where to find people, how practices are organised, and what a credible site looks and feels like.
At the same time, these firms demand distinction. The strongest enterprise sites feel familiar in structure but sharper in thinking, more deliberate in execution, signalling that this firm operates at a level of sophistication that matches the matters it handles.
This is a difficult balance to strike. Innovation for its own sake can undermine trust (an unusual navigation pattern or unconventional layout creates friction for visitors who need to move quickly), while mediocrity signals that the firm hasn’t invested in getting this right.
The firms that succeed put their innovation budget into structure: better information architecture, smarter content relationships, more intuitive pathways to proof, whilst visual flourishes come second.
Relationships built for the long term
The largest firms select agency partners with long-term reliability in mind.
These are complex stakeholder environments: partners with strong opinions, marketing teams managing competing priorities, and risk and compliance functions with real concerns about what can and cannot be said. The agency partner becomes embedded in this ecosystem.
What matters extends beyond the initial build: Can this partner operate within complex governance structures? Do they understand the internal politics of a partnership? Will they design systems that scale over time, not just perform well at launch?
Trust, discretion, and consistency matter as much as creative output, and the relationship resembles a professional services engagement more than a typical supplier arrangement.
The firms that get this right build credibility infrastructure: sites that validate trust at the speed their clients require, organised around how those clients actually think, backed by proof that earns belief on its own terms.
The website confirms the firm’s reputation. For enterprise clients making high-stakes decisions under time pressure, that confirmation needs to happen in the first four minutes.
