Redrafting the digital brief for Leeds Law Society

Leeds Law Society is the voice for the city’s legal community since 1827, providing networking, training, a job board and a public-facing hub for people looking for legal support.

Their previous website had been in place for a number of years. Content had grown organically, and the result was a complex sitemap with many low-traffic pages, duplicated information and a navigation that had become hard to follow.

Our competitor and analytics review highlighted a few key problems:

• After the homepage, Events and Members were the most visited areas, yet they were buried among less useful content.
• Many pages were attracting less than 2% of overall traffic and the bounce rate was close to 75%, with users typically viewing only one or two pages per visit.
• Careers content caused frustration, as users could click into empty categories with no live vacancies.
  
  

At the same time, other leading national and regional law societies were putting “find a solicitor” tools, member benefits and public information front and centre.

Leeds Law Society needed a modern, easy-to-manage website that reflected their position at the heart of the region’s legal community and guided three core audiences smoothly through the site:

• Existing members
• Prospective members and sponsors
• Members of the public looking for help or representation

Insight first

We started with a full competitor, sitemap and user behaviour audit, combining Google Analytics, Hotjar recordings and heatmaps with a page-by-page content review.

This showed us where visitors were heading, where they were dropping off and which journeys mattered most. Events, membership information and court updates clearly needed to be easier to reach, and we needed to better serve people who were simply trying to find a solicitor.

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A clearer structure

Using those insights, we designed a new information architecture and sitemap that reduced duplication and grouped content into logical, user-focused sections.

Key changes included:

• Consolidating scattered content into core sections such as About us, Events & training, Member benefits and sponsorship packages
• Creating a dedicated Public section with guidance pages and a much more prominent “Find a solicitor” journey
• Streamlining membership pages so information about joining, renewing, exclusive benefits and library facilities all sit together
• Tidying the careers area, with the job board focused on live vacancies and space for career advice content
  
  

On the new site, the main navigation now clearly separates Members, Committees, Events & Training, News & Resources, About Us, Public and Contact, with quick links to join, view exclusive member benefits and explore upcoming events directly from the homepage.

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WordPress design and build

With the structure agreed, we designed a clean, mobile-friendly interface that reflects the Leeds Law Society brand and makes the site feel approachable for both professionals and the public.

We rebuilt the site on WordPress, giving the team a familiar, flexible content management system that makes it simple to:

• Add and update events and training
• Publish court information board updates and news
• Manage sponsors, partner logos and supporter content
• Maintain job listings and member-only resources
  
  

To support engagement, we:

• Integrated the events and training area with clear calls to action for bookings
• Introduced a refreshed “Find a solicitor” experience from both the News & Resources and Public sections
• Added social media feeds and a Google Map so visitors can quickly see activity and key partner locations
• Improved footer quick links so priority journeys like “Become a member”, “Exclusive member benefits” and “Court notice board” are always close at hand.

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We also handled hosting and launch tasks, including staging and live server setup, SSL, DNS and ongoing performance monitoring.

Leeds Law Society now has a WordPress website that works hard for members, partners and the public.

• Visitors can instantly see what the Society stands for and are guided to join, view membership offers, read the latest court information or book onto upcoming events directly from the homepage.
  
  
• Members benefit from clearer signposting to exclusive benefits, library facilities, committees and the job board, reinforcing the value of staying part of the Society.
  
  
• People looking for legal help have a dedicated Public area with access to the solicitor search, complaint guidance and information on free legal advice and legal aid.
  
  

Behind the scenes, the Leeds Law Society team has a much simpler site to manage. The streamlined sitemap and flexible WordPress templates keep content consistent, reduce admin time and make it easy to react to news, legislation changes and member updates.

Since launch, we have continued to work with Leeds Law Society as a long-term digital partner, hosting the site, keeping WordPress and plugins up to date and supporting new content, sections and campaigns as their needs evolve.