Module 4 · Build your site
Real photos, real reviews, real you
Your site exists. Now it has to be true. For most businesses, choosing between a real photograph and a generated one is a matter of taste. For a firm it is a matter of not misrepresenting who and what you are — which is why this lesson has a hard line in it, and only one.
You are the product
Most people arrive at your site already half-decided. Someone gave them your name, or they searched it. They are not shopping; they are checking that you exist, that you look like someone they could tell the worst thing that has happened to them, and that you are still practicing. The single highest-return image on the whole site is a good photograph of you.
Stock photography cannot do that job. It is not that stock looks bad — it is that your visitor has seen those exact images on nine other firms’ websites this week, and they have stopped registering entirely.
- Wardrobe: a tailored jacket in navy, charcoal or gray; a crisp white or pale blue shirt. Nothing loud, nothing that will date.
- Background: a clean neutral wall, or your actual office — tidy and well lit. Neutral travels better, because the same photo then works on your website, your bar profile and every directory.
- Expression: not a wide smile. A settled, open expression that reads as listening, capable and unhurried. A slight smile is the safe middle.
- Eyes lit so they read clearly. This is the one detail that separates a professional headshot from a snapshot.
- Consistency: if there is more than one lawyer, every headshot uses the same background, crop and lighting. Mismatched headshots are the most visible sign of a do-it-yourself site.
- A modern phone in soft window light is genuinely fine if a photographer is not in the budget this month. Face the window, not the lamp. Take forty and keep one.
Arms crossed, in front of a bookshelf. It is a defensive posture, it is dated, and it is indistinguishable from every other one. Turn the shoulders slightly, drop the arms, and look at the lens.
The line you do not cross
AI can now produce a photograph of a person who does not exist, and you will not be able to tell. Do not put one on your website.
The test is simple and you can apply it in a second, to any image, forever:
Would a reasonable person looking for a lawyer believe this image is a photograph of a real person, place or event connected to this firm? If yes, it has to be real. Everything you publish about your practice is a statement about your practice, and a picture is a statement.
Never generated
- A person presented as you, a colleague, an associate or your assistant.
- A team photo of a team that does not exist.
- Your office, your building, your conference room, your courthouse.
- A face beside a testimonial — or a testimonial nobody said.
- A badge, seal, award, bar mark or certification graphic.
Generally fine
- Abstract backgrounds, gradients, patterns and textures.
- Icons and simple spot illustrations on practice-area cards.
- Non-representational hero art that does not claim to depict anything.
- Decorative shapes and dividers no visitor would read as a factual claim.
Publishing a generated photograph of a person or a place as if it were your firm is exactly the kind of claim your state’s attorney-advertising rules exist to police, and it is the kind that is trivially easy for anyone to spot later. Module 6 runs the formal check across your whole site and covers what the rules actually require of you. Your job in this lesson is simply to never create the problem.
An image produced by AI with no meaningful human authorship may not be protectable by copyright at all — the U.S. Copyright Office requires human authorship. Practical translation: nothing stops the firm across town from reusing your generated hero image. Your own photograph is yours.
Getting your photos onto the site
Make a folder called images inside your project folder and put your files in it. Then describe where they go, in plain English.
Add my real photos
I've put photographs in a folder called images inside my project. - Use [FILENAME] as my headshot on the About page and beside my name on the home page. - Use [FILENAME] on the [PAGE] page. - Remove every placeholder image you can't fill with one of my real files, and leave the space empty rather than substituting anything. Compress them so the pages still load fast on a phone, give each one a plain descriptive alt text for screen readers, and set explicit width and height so the page doesn't jump around while it loads.
Showing proof honestly
People do read reviews before they call, and the expectations are higher than most lawyers assume. BrightLocal’s consumer survey of U.S. adults found that 47% will not consider a business with fewer than about twenty reviews, 68% want to see at least four stars, and 74% want reviews from the last three months. A wall of glowing reviews from 2021 reads as a firm that stopped getting clients.
There is a counter-intuitive finding worth knowing before you chase a perfect score. Northwestern’s Spiegel Research Center found purchase likelihood peaks around 4.0 to 4.7 stars, not at 5.0 — a spotless average reads as fake. That study is retail data, not legal, so treat it as a direction rather than a law: thirty-four reviews at 4.6 is a stronger position than six at 5.0. Chase volume and recency, not perfection.
How that turns into build instructions:
One review, not a carousel
A single named review directly under the main button in your hero — first name, last initial, the stars, and where it came from. Rotating testimonial sliders get scrolled past.
A checkable line
One aggregate line near the top, linked to your live profile so a skeptical visitor can go and verify it themselves. Checkable beats impressive.
Matched to the page
A divorce client's words on the divorce page. A generic review on a specific page gets skipped.
Tell Claude, in these words: “Do not add aggregateRating or review markup anywhere on my site.” That is the hidden code that asks Google to print star ratings in search results. Google does not show stars for reviews a business controls about itself, so it achieves nothing — and marking up your own reviews is the pattern its policies treat as a violation. The kit already builds your site’s markup the safe way; this is belt and braces.
Plenty of firms are in that position, and the answer is not an empty section. Replace it with four factual proof rows: years in practice, the courts and states you are admitted in, roughly how many matters of this type you have handled, and how quickly you answer. Every one of those is checkable, none of them needs a client’s permission, and for a frightened visitor they do the same job.
Where the trust signals go
Every badge is a claim, and a page covered in claims reads as a page that is trying hard. The pattern that works on the firm sites worth copying:
| Signal | Where it earns its place | Where it clutters |
|---|---|---|
| Bar admissions and jurisdictions | The footer, and every attorney biography. A visitor genuinely needs this | As decorative graphics in the hero |
| Board certification | Beside your name on your bio, and in the hero if it is genuinely rare where you practice | Repeated as a badge on every page |
| Association memberships | One quiet greyscale row, mid-page or above the footer | A wall of colored badges above the fold |
| Awards and ratings | One grouped block, with the year on each one | Scattered individually down the page |
| Reviews | One live element near your main button | Three review widgets from three platforms |
| Case results | Their own page, with the required wording — plus at most one number in the hero | Twenty numbers competing on the home page |
| Press coverage | One greyscale row, only if the coverage is real | Implied coverage — this is the dangerous one |
Specialist. Expert. Certified. These are regulated words in most states — you may generally describe what you focus on, but claiming to be certified in something is a different statement, and it is one your state has an opinion about. Same for superlatives (“best,” “#1,” “top-rated”) and anything that sounds like a promise about how a matter will turn out. Module 6 covers precisely when you may use each one. Until then, if AI writes one into your copy, take it out.
Every image on your site is either a real photograph you own or clearly decorative. There is not one generated human face, office, badge or testimonial anywhere. Your proof section is honest and checkable — either real attributed reviews or factual proof rows. And you have deleted every superlative that crept into the copy while nobody was looking.
A photo is sideways or stretched? Say “this image is the wrong orientation/crop — here’s a screenshot. Please fix it without cropping my face.”
The page got slow after you added photos? Say “my images are making the pages slow — please compress them and convert them to a modern format.” Oversized photographs are almost always the whole problem on a self-built site.
You have no usable photograph of yourself today? Ship the site without one and put a real headshot on the list for this month. Do not fill the gap with a stranger, generated or stock. An empty, well-designed space is honest; a fake face is not.
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