A prospective client clicks “Book a consultation” on your practice-area page and gets a missing-page message. They were ready to take the next step, but the link stopped them. Check contact forms, appointment pages, phone links, and office directions before tackling old references in blog posts.
For a solo lawyer or small firm, this need not become a major technical project. What helps is a repeatable process: find the problem, decide where the link should lead, make the change, and test it as a visitor would.
Know which kind of link has failed
A broken link points somewhere that no longer works as intended. Its destination might show “page not found,” fail to load, or redirect to a page that does not answer the visitor’s question. Some links work technically but are still wrong: a “Fees” button that opens a general homepage is little help just because the page loads.
Sort what you find before making changes:
- Internal links lead to another page on your website. You can usually edit the source page, restore the destination, or set up a redirect.
- External links lead to resources you do not control, such as a court, government agency, or professional organization. You can change or remove the link, but you cannot repair its destination.
- Incoming links start on another website and point to yours. You may not control the source, but you can often fix what happens when someone reaches the old address on your site.
- Functional links open an email address, start a phone call, download a document, or jump to a section of the same page. Test these by hand; a basic crawler may not show whether the action actually helps a visitor.
Before marking a page as gone, open its address in a browser. A server error, access restriction, or brief outage can make a working destination appear broken during a scan.
Make a small, repeatable inventory
Start where a prospective client is likely to go: your homepage, practice-area pages, attorney profiles, contact page, consultation instructions, and pages about fees or office location. Then move to frequently visited blog posts and older resources. If you have separate pages for a rented office and a virtual office, check that each address and directions link reflects the arrangement you currently offer.
Click through those pages yourself, run a site crawler or your website platform’s broken-link report, and review missing-page reports in your analytics or site-management tools. Each method catches something different. A crawler checks ordinary links quickly; manual review catches misleading labels and forms that load but will not submit.
Keep a spreadsheet so you do not have to rely on memory. These columns are enough:
- Page containing the link
- Visible link text or button label
- Current destination
- Observed problem and date checked
- Proposed replacement or other action
- Person responsible and date retested
Record the source page, not just the failed destination. An old address might appear in your navigation, several articles, and an email template. Fixing one instance will not necessarily fix the others.
Prioritize by consequence, not just count
Deal with broken contact and booking paths first. Then check links explaining services, fees, and location, followed by links on high-traffic pages and those pointing to time-sensitive legal information. A reference in a lightly read article can wait for scheduled maintenance unless it leaves readers with a misleading claim.
If you use analytics, check which pages visitors reach before setting priorities. The blog’s guide to website analytics for solo lawyers explains how to focus on paths that lead to inquiries, rather than treating every page view as equally useful.
Choose the right fix for an internal link
First, check for a typo, a renamed page, or a missing character. If an attorney biography moved, update links in the navigation and page copy to its new address. Otherwise, point the link to a relevant existing page or restore content that should still be available.
A redirect helps when people may still use the old address through bookmarks, search results, printed materials, or incoming links. Set one up when a page has moved or been replaced with closely matching content. Do not quietly send a practice-area page to an unrelated service just to avoid an error.
When there is no equivalent page, consider what the visitor needs to know. You might publish a short replacement explaining that a service has been discontinued and describing the firm’s current scope. Or leave a clear missing-page message with routes back to active services. Sending every deleted address to the homepage can make it hard to tell whether the expected information still exists.
Check where the link is controlled in your content-management system. It may live in page text, a shared menu, a reusable button, or a template. Changing a shared menu can fix several pages at once; changing page text will not fix a separate button controlled by a template.
Check the link’s wording too
The label should match the destination. If “Schedule an in-person meeting” now leads only to video-call options, update the wording as well as the link. An office change calls for a wider check: a lawyer moving from a rented office to a shared meeting space should review maps, parking information, accessibility details, and appointment instructions together.
Give visitors enough information to decide whether to click. “Our consultation process” is more useful than “learn more.” Read the whole sentence when you update a link, not just the address.
Handle external resources with extra care
External links often fail after an organization redesigns its site or retires a document. Search the organization’s own site for the current version of the specific resource. Before substituting it, check the title, date, issuing body, and subject. A newer page may apply to a different jurisdiction or audience.
If there is no suitable replacement, remove the link, rewrite the surrounding sentence, or explain that the resource is no longer available. Do not leave a confident statement resting on a dead reference. A moved statute, court form, or agency guidance may also mean the text around the link needs review.
Suppose an older post about forming a business links to a withdrawn filing form. Linking to a current forms index may help readers, but it does not establish that your post’s filing instructions are still accurate. Ask the lawyer responsible for that subject area to review the passage before republishing it. Legal and tax information on a website is general information, not a substitute for advice from a qualified professional. Check current law and applicable rules in the relevant jurisdiction when updating it.
Sometimes the best edit is to remove a sentence. If an old report was only background and the point no longer helps clients, there is little value in finding a loosely related substitute.
Test the repair from the visitor’s side
After saving an edit, open the source page as an ordinary visitor and click. Does the destination load, match the link text, and let the visitor continue? If you added a redirect, enter the old address directly as well as testing the new one. A chain of repeated redirects or a landing page on the wrong topic still needs fixing.
Test important actions on a phone, too. A telephone link may behave differently on mobile, and an appointment button may be hard to tap even if its destination is correct. For a wider check, the guide to making a law practice website easier to use on a phone covers mobile readability and usability.
For forms and downloads, go beyond opening the page. Submit a clearly labeled test inquiry and confirm that it reaches the intended inbox without exposing client information. Open a downloaded file to make sure it is the expected, current document. Follow your firm’s privacy and record-handling procedures when clearing test data.
Prevent recurring errors without constant monitoring
Links tend to break during ordinary changes: renaming a page, switching booking systems, changing office arrangements, or retiring a practice-area description. Build link checks into those tasks. Before publishing a new address, note where the old one appears. Afterward, test the main route a client would take to reach it.
For a small site, a monthly check of navigation and contact paths, plus a broader quarterly scan, may be manageable. Adjust the schedule to how often you publish or change services. If several people edit the site, assign one person to log problems and confirm repairs, even when someone else makes the technical change. Otherwise, an error can be noticed repeatedly without anyone checking that it was fixed.
Agree on how to retire pages: replace the content, redirect to a closely relevant destination, or show a clear missing-page response. Keep a short redirect record so a future redesign does not remove those routes by accident. If a vendor manages your site, send the source page, failed destination, expected behavior, and priority instead of asking vaguely for the links to be fixed.
For your next check, open the contact page on your phone. Tap the appointment button and follow it through to the confirmation screen, then record the date and result. That tells you more about a critical client path than a report showing only that the button’s destination loads.
