Key points at a glance
- A good firm website answers three questions quickly: can you help, what does it cost, what happens next.
- Every practice area or service gets its own page, written from the client's point of view.
- Fee transparency builds trust: your billing model, the first consultation and, where a statutory fee scale exists, a pointer to it.
- Contact options must be confidential: an encrypted form, no case details before you accept the matter, a link to the client portal.
- Accessibility is often not mandatory for small firms, but it still pays off for readability and for Google.
This post is general information, not legal or tax advice for your individual case. Laws, professional guidelines and chamber fees change: check the details with your chamber, the relevant authority or your professional association before you make a decision.
What a firm website has to do
A firm website is not a brochure. It is where someone decides whether to call you or the next firm in the search results. Most visitors arrive from Google on a subpage, not on the home page: they searched for “tax adviser GmbH formation Graz” or “tenancy lawyer Cologne” and land straight on your page about that topic. Every page therefore has to make sense on its own and offer a clear next step.
At the same time, firms are held to a stricter standard than other businesses. Professional rules require factual information, confidentiality applies from the very first contact, and the legal notice carries more mandatory details than a plumber's. Good content does both: plain language for laypeople and wording that will stand up in front of your professional chamber (Kammer).
The site structure at a glance
| Page | Content | What matters |
|---|---|---|
| Home page | Who you are, who you work for, where you are based, contact | Say in one sentence what you do and for whom; phone number visible straight away |
| Practice areas or services | An overview and one page per area | Your clients' problems, not a catalogue of statutes |
| Team | Professionals and staff with photo and background | Titles and professional designations exactly as awarded |
| Fees and process | Billing model, first consultation, typical course of a matter | Mark clearly whether prices are net or gross |
| Contact | Phone, form, online booking, directions, opening hours | Confidentiality notice in the form |
| Insights or FAQ | Answers to recurring questions, deadlines, checklists | Show the date of the last update |
| Client portal | Link to upload, document exchange or login | Clearly visible in the header |
| Legal notice and privacy | Mandatory professional disclosures, privacy policy | Differs by profession and country |
| Careers | Vacancies, training, how you work | Often the most visited subpage for firms that are hiring |
The mandatory details in the legal notice vary a lot by profession and country. Lawyers have to give different information from notaries, and in Austria the disclosure under the Mediengesetz (Media Act) comes on top. The details are in our legal notice guides, for example for lawyers in Austria, tax advisers in Germany or mediators in Austria. The legal notice generator puts the details together for you.
Describing practice areas and services clearly
The service pages are the heart of the site. Write each one as if the client were sitting across the desk: what situation is she in, what can you do, how does it work, which documents does she need, which deadlines are running? A good employment law page does not open with “We advise comprehensively on individual and collective employment law” but with “Have you just been dismissed?”, and then explains why the first few days count.
Examples from the six professions
- Law firm: one page each for family law, employment law, tenancy law or inheritance law, with how proceedings typically run and a note on legal expenses insurance.
- Tax advice: pages by audience rather than by type of tax, such as “founders”, “landlords”, “doctors” or “online retail”, each listing the documents you need to get started.
- Accounting and bookkeeping: a precise outline of what you take on (ongoing bookkeeping, payroll) and where you work together with a tax adviser.
- Mediation: the process in phases, duration and cost per session, how it differs from going to court, the role of each party's lawyer.
- Audit: types of audit with their thresholds, the timeline of a statutory annual audit, what management has to prepare.
- Notary's office: services by life situation, such as buying property, a will, a lasting power of attorney or forming a company, with a list of documents to bring to the appointment.
Team: people, not an org chart
Instructing a firm is a matter of trust, and trust has a face. Show the people your clients will actually deal with, with a current photo, education, professional title, languages and areas of focus. Two or three personal sentences on why someone works in inheritance law or in payroll say more than any list of memberships.
Pay attention to designations. Write academic degrees and professional titles exactly as they were awarded. Mark staff who are not licensed professionals with their actual qualification, for example as Rechtsanwaltsanwärter:in (trainee lawyer) in Austria, Rechtsanwaltsfachangestellte (qualified legal assistant) in Germany, Steuerfachassistent:in (tax assistant) or Notariatskandidat:in (trainee notary). If you share offices with other professionals without forming a partnership, your team page must not give the impression of a single joint firm.
Talk openly about fees and the first consultation
Fear of unpredictable costs keeps many people from picking up the phone at all. A page that explains how you bill removes that hurdle. It does not have to be a price list. It is often enough to explain whether you charge by the hour, a flat fee or under a statutory fee scale, what the first consultation costs and when you give a cost estimate.
- Lawyers in Germany: without an agreement, a first consultation for consumers is capped at 190 euros plus VAT (§ 34 RVG); in court, the RVG (Lawyers' Remuneration Act) sets the minimum.
- Lawyers in Austria: fees can be freely agreed; the bar associations themselves offer a free orientation meeting called the “Erste Anwaltliche Auskunft” (first legal information).
- Tax advisers in Germany: here too, a first consultation for consumers is capped at 190 euros (§ 21 StBVV); different fees require an agreement in text form.
- Notaries: in Germany, fees are set by law (GNotKG), and agreements on them are void. In Austria, the first legal information from a notary is free of charge, and notaries may not advertise fee advantages.
- Tax advice in Austria, accounting and mediation: fees are freely agreed; giving a range per hour or per session helps clients gauge the cost.
If you state prices, make it unambiguous whether they are net or gross; in Austria, § 5 (2) ECG (E-Commerce Act) expressly requires this. If you address consumers in Germany, the Preisangabenverordnung (Price Indication Ordinance) requires the total price including VAT. Advertising with “cheap” or discounts is risky for firms and ruled out for notaries.
Contact options that suit your firm
Offer several ways to get in touch, but only ones you reliably answer. A phone number with clear availability times, a contact form, an email address and, if it fits your workflow, online booking through tools such as Microsoft Bookings, eTermin or Calendly. Add how quickly you reply, whether appointments are possible by video and which languages you advise in.
For lawyers, one piece of information in the form is important and often missing: before accepting a matter you have to run a conflict check. So ask for the name of the opposing party, but not for the full facts of the case. A line like “Please describe your matter in just a few sentences; we will go through the details at the appointment” protects both sides.
Confidentiality and the client portal
A contact form that forwards enquiries by unencrypted email does not fit a profession bound by confidentiality. At the very least, expect your website to offer encrypted transmission, hosting in the EU, a data processing agreement and no tracking services that report visits to your divorce or insolvency page to third parties.
How to get it right
- Offer document upload through the portal of your practice management software
- Put a “Client portal” or “Upload documents” link in the header
- Point out that pleadings and deadlines run through beA, beSt or ERV, not through the website
- Use cookie-free analytics if you want to measure visits
Better avoid
- Ask for tax assessments or court files as email attachments
- Embed third-party chat widgets without checking where the data goes
- Forward enquiries automatically to a private mailbox
- Name clients in reference lists without their express consent
Tax and bookkeeping firms often work with the portals of their software, such as DATEV Unternehmen online, BMD Com or the RZL Klientenportal. The website does not replace these portals, it simply leads there in a visible place. Clients notice the convenience: they find the login without digging out the email with the link.
Accessibility: required or optional?
Since 28 June 2025, the Barrierefreiheitsgesetz (BaFG, Accessibility Act) has applied in Austria and the Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz (BFSG) in Germany. They cover electronic services for consumers that lead to a contract, such as booking a paid first consultation online. A purely informational website is unlikely to fall under them, and microenterprises with fewer than ten employees and turnover or a balance sheet total of no more than 2 million euros are exempt as service providers. That covers most new firms.
Accessibility is still worth it: readable font sizes, sufficient contrast, alt text for images, navigation that works with a keyboard and forms with clear labels. Older clients benefit, as do people with impaired vision and everyone reading your site on their phone on the tram. Search engines also understand cleanly structured pages better; more on that in our guide to local SEO.
Checklist for your firm website
- Home page says in one sentence what you do, for whom and where
- A separate page for each practice area or service, written from the client's point of view
- Team with photos, correct titles and professional designations
- Fees page with billing model and first consultation, marked as net or gross
- Phone, form and, if you use it, online booking with availability times
- Confidentiality notice in the form, encrypted transmission, no tracking
- Link to the client portal in the header
- Legal notice under your professional rules, privacy policy, disclosure (Austria)
- Easy to read on a phone, images with alt text
- Google Business Profile linked, see our guide to the Google profile
What a website with this content costs and which running costs to budget for is covered in our guide What does a firm website cost?.
See what this looks like in practice
Browse example websites for lawyers, tax advisers and bookkeepers, with service pages, team, fee information and contact form.
Sources
- RIS – E-Commerce-Gesetz § 5 (price information)
- Rechtsanwaltsvergütungsgesetz § 34 (consultation)
- Bundesrechtsanwaltsordnung § 43b (advertising)
- Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz § 3 (microenterprise exemption)
- USP – Barrierefreiheitsgesetz (BaFG)
- GDPR (Regulation (EU) 2016/679)
- ÖRAK – Erste Anwaltliche Auskunft
- Steuerberatervergütungsverordnung § 21 (first consultation)
- GNotKG § 125 (ban on fee agreements)
- Preisangabenverordnung § 3 (total price)
