How long does website discovery take for a law firm?
Usually three to six months, mostly interviews, audits and workshops inside the firm, with a smaller share of competitor benchmarking.
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Most law firm websites get rebuilt because nobody could write the brief
Because an agency briefed with "we need a new website" prices what it can see and builds the rest as change orders. Discovery answers the questions the agency would otherwise ask in week two: who the site is for, what they are trying to do, what the firm wants them to do, what gets measured, how content is structured, which platform and what budget. It takes three to six months and produces a document of fifteen to forty pages that the agency builds to, at a fraction of the cost of doing it during the build.
What goes wrong when a firm skips discovery?
The project overruns and disappoints. The agency, the marketing lead and the partners all want to start the rebuild, and six months later it is over budget, three months late and not doing what the partners expected. I have been brought in to more than one of those projects after they went sideways, and the pattern is the same: the agency priced what it could see, and the parts it could not see, personas, user journeys, the content matrix, the CMS evaluation and the measurement framework, were built during the project as billable change orders.
What is discovery, exactly?
The document on the agency's desk on day one. It is not a kick-off meeting, a workshop or a deck of moodboards. It answers who the site is for, what they are trying to do, what the firm wants them to do, what is measured, how the content is structured, what platform it is built on and what the budget is. With those answers down on paper, agency responses become comparable; without them, you get four very different proposals, three of them guessing at what you did not specify.
What does discovery usually find at a law firm?
The same gaps almost every time. The personas are five years old, written by an agency for another project, and nobody knows where the file is; ask the BD team and senior partners what their clients look like and you get a different answer. The user journeys describe what partners wish people did, when real journeys start with a Google search for a named lawyer and end on a profile page. The measurement framework is a slide from the agency's quarterly report. The CMS is whatever the current agency builds on, because nobody pushed back. And the site structure follows the organisation chart, because every practice area lobbied for a top-level page.
What does a proper discovery produce?
A brief the agency can build to, after three to six months that are mostly interviews, audits and workshops inside the firm, with a smaller share of competitor benchmarking. The document runs to fifteen to forty pages: five named personas with priorities, three user journeys for each, a content matrix of every existing page tagged for reuse or retirement, a site structure based on the journeys, a CMS recommendation with reasons, a measurement framework with meaningful KPIs, and an RFP that asks the right questions. Change orders stay small and the budget holds.
Why does discovery so often get skipped?
Because nobody at the firm has the time, nobody on the agency side benefits from doing it first, and doing it properly needs somebody in the room who is not selling anything. The test is simple: read the agency's working brief cold. If it cannot tell you who the site is for, in priority order, with specific examples, you do not have a brief yet.
Related evidence: Six months. One defendable brief. A website worth pricing properly.. Next in this journey: Why your CMS choice matters less than your agency choice.
Questions people ask
How can a marketing lead tell whether the agency has a real brief?
Read the agency's working brief cold. If it does not say who the site is for, in priority order, with specific examples, it is the starting point for a brief rather than a brief.
Not sure where to start?
Most clients begin with a conversation. No pitch, no hard sell.
Just a straightforward discussion about where you are and whether I can help.
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