The Research
We didn’t cherry-pick. We studied everyone.
The good, the bad, and the ugly across 7,600 law firm websites, every one scored on the same ten dimensions, by the same standard, whether it flattered the industry or not.
7,600
websites scored
10
dimensions · 0–100 composite
36
Trust-Optimized
The Field
36 out of 7,600. Watch for the ones that passed.
Every dot is a law firm website we scored. Only thirty-six earned Trust-Optimized, spin the field and find the gold.
The Distribution
Most of the industry lives in the first two bands. Almost nobody escapes them.
“Fewer than one in 200 were designed to work with the brain state of the people they claim to serve.”
What Actually Predicts Trust
Three signals carried the weight. None of them are traffic.
~39%
Empathy language
The single heaviest predictor, more than every credential and badge combined. Does the page speak to the person, or at them?
~22%
Pricing transparency
Not a number, an acknowledgment. Sites that name how cost works outperform sites that hide it.
~18%
Process transparency
What happens next, in plain steps. The brain in crisis buys certainty before it buys anything else.
r ≈ 0 · Traffic and trust are uncorrelated.
Some of the most-visited websites in the study scored in the hostile band, which means most firms are paying to send frightened people to a page that repels them.
How It Was Run
The method, in plain language.
- Every site was scored on ten dimensions, each on defined sub-criteria, rolling up to a 0–100 composite, the same rubric the free score uses today.
- The scoring was blind to brand and budget. A solo firm and a 200-lawyer firm faced identical criteria. No site was excluded for making the industry look bad.
- The model was validated, not eyeballed. Composite scores were tested against holdout data, and the predictive weights above are what survived, not what marketing intuition expected.
Empathy Language · Pricing Transparency · Process Transparency · Response Time · Intake Friction · Privacy & Security · Availability · Outcome Realism · Attorney Accessibility · Social Proof
The Companion Paper
The full findings, in writing.
Methodology, dimension weights, and the anatomy of the thirty-six, available on request. One email. No drip campaign.
Confidential. Reviewed by a person, not a queue.
The study scored 7,600 strangers. The score rates your firm, same dimensions, same standard, in writing.
7,600 sites took this scoring. Yours hasn’t.
The free TrustFrame Score runs your website through the study’s ten dimensions, and shows you which band you’re standing in.
Want the findings first? Request the companion paper above.