How often should a law firm update its website content?

A law firm should update a page as soon as something on it stops being true, and review every page on a set schedule so nothing goes stale unnoticed. That means event-driven updates when a statute, a fee, an attorney, or an office changes, plus a calendar review owned by a named person, with practice pages checked more often than older blog posts. The date on a page should change only when the content has.

Many firm sites are built in a burst and then left alone. Years later, a practice page still names an associate who left, a blog post explains a statute as it read before an amendment, and the office hours are from before the move. None of it was wrong when it was written.

This page is about maintaining a firm's website, not legal advice. Whether a particular change in the law affects a page is a judgment for the firm's attorneys, and only they should make it.

Updates start from triggers, not a calendar

ABA Model Rule 7.1 says a communication about a lawyer's services is false or misleading if it "contains a material misrepresentation of fact or law." The state version is what applies, but the idea is plain enough: a page that describes the law as it used to be is still a communication from the firm today. For that reason, the first update system is a list of events that send someone to the website.

The common triggers are a change in a statute or court rule the firm writes about, a change in the firm's fee terms or consultation policy, an attorney joining or leaving, an office opening, moving, or closing, and a change in a government agency's published figures or forms. One question exposes the gaps quickly: "Which of our pages would be wrong tomorrow if the legislature changed one statute we rely on, and who would notice?" If nobody can answer, the firm needs a map from each cited law to the pages that cite it.

Make the date mean something

Google's helpful content guidance includes a pointed self-check: "Are you changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed?" A changed date is not a changed page. Readers notice when a post dated this month describes last year's rule, and the mismatch undermines everything else on the page.

Google's documentation on byline dates says to "Add a user-visible date to the page and feature it prominently," to label dates with text such as "Last updated," and to use the datePublished and dateModified fields in structured data. Its sitemap guidance says Google uses the lastmod value "if it's consistently and verifiably" accurate, and that the value should reflect the last meaningful update to the page, with changes to the main content, structured data, or links counting and a new copyright year not counting. It also says Google ignores the priority and changefreq values. The practical rule for a firm: change the visible date and the lastmod only when the substance changes, and say what changed when it matters to the reader.

Set a review rhythm by page type

Event triggers catch the changes someone notices. A scheduled review catches the ones nobody did. The schedule below is a planning example, not a rule; the firm sets its own based on how fast its practice areas change.

Google's guidance also asks whether content is "written or reviewed by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well." Showing the reviewing attorney and the review date on legal pages answers that question for the reader, and it makes the next review easy to schedule.

Decide whether to update, merge, or retire

Not every stale page deserves a rewrite. An older post about a superseded rule can be updated with a clear note about what changed, merged into a current page that covers the topic better, or retired and redirected. Our article on deciding between updating pages and publishing new content walks through that choice.

Assign the legal judgment before the writing starts. The writer should not have to research whether the law changed; the reviewing attorney flags it, explains the change in a short note, and the writer revises from that note. That division keeps legal judgment with the lawyers and keeps the review moving. If several posts cover the same ground, merging them often leaves one stronger page instead of three weaker ones.

A fictional quarterly review

Consider a fictional three-attorney employment law firm in Illinois running its first quarterly review. This is an invented example of the method, not any real firm's record.

The firm's list of triggers caught two changes during the quarter: a new associate and an updated consultation fee. The scheduled review found a third that nobody had flagged, a blog post citing a state rule the attorneys said had since been amended. The firm updated the fee and intake pages the same week, added the associate to the bios and the relevant practice pages, and gave the blog post a correction note and a new "Last updated" date. It did not touch the dates on the eleven pages that had not changed.

If the firm is starting from an older site, the page on which pages a small law firm should build first suggests where to begin, and what a practice area page should answer sets the standard each reviewed page is checked against.

Hudson South's process fits this rhythm. Authority Asset gathers the firm's approved knowledge and evidence, the material a reviewer rechecks against. Hudson Twenty-One records how the firm communicates across 21 dimensions, so revised passages match the original voice. Market Intelligence researches which questions have shifted in the firm's market. AEO Creation turns those inputs into answer-first updates, and the attorneys decide what publishes. The rest of this question set is in our law firm content guide.

Find the pages that have gone stale

On a free 30-minute call, Hudson South walks through how current your pages are next to the firms prospective clients compare you with.

Sources

1. Rule 7.1: Communications Concerning a Lawyer's Services. American Bar Association. Read 2026-10-16.
2. Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content. Google Search Central. Read 2026-10-16.
3. Influence your byline dates in Google Search. Google Search Central. Read 2026-10-16.
4. Build and submit a sitemap. Google Search Central. Read 2026-10-16.