How much is that website?
Chart Illustration by Stephen Ravenscraft
Median market cost: $5,096 | 72 days for site construction
With more people using the internet to find legal service providers and more law firms putting their brands on the web having a website has become a necessity for lawyers and firms of all sizes. But thoughts about high costs for creating a site can be daunting.
Conrad Saam, vice chair of the ABA Law Practice Division’s Social Media, Legal Blogs and Websites Committee, remembers “back in 1998, we built hand-coded sites starting at $250,000, which took teams of nerds six to nine months to complete.”
Things are not nearly so expensive or extensive today. Saam says the committee’s study of 83 projects done by law-firm-specific website developers and using the WordPress platform found the average market cost (hourly charges times number of hours worked) was $6,183, which was skewed by outlying expensive projects. That does not include monthly fees, which should not run much more than $29 a month.
• Download a graphic of the Law Firm Website Costs Benchmarking Study results at the Mockingbird Marketing website.
See more practice stats at abajournal.com/lawbythenumbers.
