Chambers are found in two quite different ways. Solicitors and other professional clients look for a named barrister or a specific expertise, often already knowing the set. Members of the public, since public access became more widely used, search in plain language for help with a problem — and land on websites written for lawyers.
Two audiences, one website
The professional client wants the practice area, the seniority, the reported cases, the availability and the clerk's contact details, in that order. The public access client wants to know whether a barrister can help them directly, what it will cost in broad terms, what happens at each stage, and whether they need a solicitor as well. Both belong on the site; they should not share a page.
- Practice-area pages written for instructing solicitors, with the language the field actually uses.
- Member profiles that carry year of call, practice areas, notable work and appointments. These are usually the strongest pages on a chambers site and the most often neglected.
- Public access pages in plain English, explaining what direct instruction is, when it is suitable, and how the first step works.
- Clerking and contact routes that are obvious from any page, because most enquiries start with the clerks.
Working within the conduct rules
Marketing for the Bar sits under the BSB Handbook, which requires that anything published is accurate and not misleading. In practice that rules out the tactics that pad out other sectors' websites: no implied guarantees of outcome, no comparative claims about other sets, nothing that overstates a member's involvement in a case. It is a constraint worth welcoming, because it pushes the content towards the things that genuinely persuade instructing solicitors — real work, clear expertise, straightforward contact. Check anything you are unsure of against the current Handbook or with your own compliance lead; this page is not regulatory advice.
Where chambers websites usually lose ground
Three patterns recur. Member profiles held in a system that search engines cannot read properly, so the strongest content on the site is invisible. Practice-area pages that read as a list of terms rather than an explanation of the work. And public access information buried three clicks down, when it is the one thing a member of the public is searching for. Fixing those three usually matters more than anything else on the site.
For firms of solicitors rather than chambers, the SEO for solicitors and SEO for law firms pages cover the equivalent ground.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. The rules require that published material is accurate and not misleading; they do not prevent explaining expertise clearly, publishing member profiles or making public access information easy to find. What they rule out is implied guarantees and comparative claims, which are poor practice anyway.
Member profiles, almost always. They attract searches for named barristers and for specific expertise, and they are what an instructing solicitor reads before making contact. They are also the pages most often locked inside a system search engines struggle to read.
It adds a second audience who do not use legal terminology. They need plain-language pages explaining direct instruction, when it is suitable and what the first step is, kept separate from the pages written for professional clients.
By enquiry quality and by visibility for the practice areas that matter, not by raw traffic. Clerk enquiries, named-barrister searches and public access contacts each tell you something different about whether the site is working.
Members and clerks know the work; the structure, search intent and technical side are where I help. The practical arrangement is usually that I set out what each page needs to cover and draft it, then it goes through chambers for accuracy and compliance before publication.
