Which CMS platforms have the most developers available?
WordPress and Drupal. Proprietary platforms can be excellent, but the talent pool is narrower and switching costs more when the agency relationship ends.
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Why your CMS choice matters less than your agency choice
Rarely. Every CMS likely to be shortlisted for a mid-size law firm site, from WordPress and Drupal to Sitecore, Optimizely or Kentico, can render the page types that carry the traffic, handle search basics and integrate with the usual marketing tools. The differences that matter are in the implementation: how well the agency knows the platform, how dependent the build is on that agency, how easily it could be replaced, and what editing is like for the marketing team. Choose the agency, then let it defend the platform.
Why do law firm CMS evaluations go wrong?
Because they argue about the platform instead of the implementation. Every time I run a CMS evaluation for a law firm, the IT team, the agency and the marketing team each have a preference, and the partners have been told the new one will be more flexible. A good agency can build a great website on WordPress, Statamic, Umbraco, Drupal, Sitecore, Optimizely or Kentico, and a bad agency can deliver a mediocre site on any of them. Most evaluations score features, scalability, marketplace ecosystems, multilingual support and headless capability, which are table stakes: every credible platform can do SEO-friendly URLs, schema, breadcrumbs and sitemaps, integrate with MailChimp or MS Dynamics, and perform well on Core Web Vitals if the agency knows what it is doing.
What should a CMS evaluation actually look at?
The agency and the life of the site after launch. How well the agency knows the platform it recommends: three sites delivered is very different from fifty. How dependent the build is on that agency, since custom templates and bespoke integrations nobody else can pick up need handling in the RFP's IP clause. What maintenance looks like when the relationship ends, which it will, so a broad talent pool matters: WordPress and Drupal have the largest, and proprietary platforms narrower ones with higher switching costs. What editing is like for a marketing executive at 4pm on a Thursday with a partner asking for a change, seen in a demo with real content. Security matters most if the site sits behind a client portal. And long-term cost depends more on how well the site was built than on what it was built on.
How should the CMS decision fit into agency selection?
At the end of it. When I scope a CMS for a law firm, I shortlist three or four platforms that fit the brief, score them against a small set of criteria and present a default rather than a mandate. The RFP asks each agency to recommend a CMS and defend the choice. Agencies that agree with the default get a quick conversation, and those that push back constructively get a longer one; both are useful signals. Evaluating a CMS for three months without evaluating the agency solves the easy half of the problem, so pick the agency you trust and build the contract so you can leave both.
Related evidence: Six months. One defendable brief. A website worth pricing properly.. Earlier in this journey: Most law firm websites get rebuilt because nobody could write the brief.
Questions people ask
When does CMS security matter more for a law firm?
When the website sits behind a client portal. For a site that does not capture sensitive data, most platforms fall into a good-enough band.
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