If your blog still advertises free consultations but you now charge for the first meeting, a prospective client may arrive with the wrong expectations. Check claims like that before you polish a headline or replace a photo. For a small law practice, an outdated post can cause confusion about services, costs, office arrangements, or the law.
Refreshing a post means making a useful page accurate again. It does not mean changing the publication date and passing old guidance off as new. As you review each page, decide whether to update it, combine it with another post, leave it alone, or retire it.
1. Choose posts by risk and usefulness
Make a simple inventory with each post’s title, URL, original publication date, latest review date, subject, and reviewer. Note whether it still describes a service you offer. You can start with a short list of priority pages rather than audit the whole archive at once.
- Review first: Posts about legal rules, deadlines, tax treatment, client fees, or how to engage your firm. Mistakes here could affect a reader’s decisions.
- Review next: Posts that regularly bring in visits or inquiries but contain stale examples, unanswered questions, or broken formatting.
- Review when relevant: Posts about a service you have changed, narrowed, or stopped offering.
- Leave alone for now: Accurate evergreen posts that still answer the intended question and reflect your current practice.
Traffic should not decide the order on its own. A little-read post about a filing deadline may need attention sooner than a popular piece about home offices. And if you have moved from general business matters to employment advice, check whether older pages suggest you still accept work outside that focus.
2. Decide what the page should do now
Before editing, ask what the post was meant to explain and who needs that answer today. An article comparing virtual and leased offices may still help lawyers starting out. A post giving your office address from three years ago calls for a different decision.
Choose one of four approaches:
- Refresh: Keep the topic and URL if the post is useful but needs corrections, better examples, or current details about your practice.
- Combine: Bring substantially overlapping posts into one resource. Keep any distinct information that matters, and plan how readers reaching the old page will find the surviving one.
- Retain: Leave the substance alone if you have checked it and it still holds up. Record the review date internally.
- Retire: Remove or clearly archive a post that no longer helps readers and cannot be responsibly updated. Check internal references to it first.
Do not bend an old topic around your newest service. Someone who opened a post about shared-office costs did not come for a pitch about litigation. Answer the original question well, or retire the page if that question no longer belongs on your site.
3. Check facts against current sources
Read the post once without editing. Mark claims that depend on time or location: statutes, regulations, filing processes, fee rules, professional conduct requirements, tax references, product names, prices, and statistics. Check them against current primary materials or another suitably authoritative source for the relevant jurisdiction. Record what you checked and when, even if readers will not see a citation beside every sentence.
Small phrases can quietly become inaccurate: “this year,” “recently,” “new rules,” or “most firms now.” Keep a dated example if its date helps explain the point. Otherwise, replace it with a current, supportable example or cut it. Age alone does not prove a law has changed; a familiar-sounding principle does not prove it has stayed the same.
Blog information about law or tax does not replace advice from a qualified professional on an individual situation. Check applicable current legislation and professional rules before publishing, particularly where requirements differ by jurisdiction. If a section needs specialist review and you cannot get it, hold the update or narrow the claim rather than guess.
4. Bring practice details into line with reality
A legally accurate article can still misrepresent your firm. Check whom you serve, which matters you accept, where you meet clients, and what happens after an initial inquiry. If you once rented a dedicated office but now book a shared meeting room, an old invitation to walk in at your former address needs fixing.
Give billing language a close look. If a post mentions a flat fee, confirm that the service, scope, exclusions, and fee discussion match your current process. Instead of promising “no surprises,” explain factually how you discuss costs and document the engagement. Do not present one rate as applicable to every matter when the work and relevant rules require an individual assessment.
Check calls to action, too. A post about choosing a legal specialization might reasonably invite readers to learn about your practice, but it should not claim expertise you do not have or guarantee an outcome. An educational post may not need a promotional ending at all.
5. Rewrite for the reader’s question
Once you know what needs correcting, read the title and opening paragraphs again. Would someone facing that particular decision know what to do next? Older posts often offer broad encouragement when the reader needs a comparison or a sequence of steps.
Consider a post that calls a virtual office “flexible.” That tells a solo lawyer little about the choice. A useful update would separate a mailing address from private meeting space, call handling, confidentiality needs, and recurring costs. A home office, shared workspace, and dedicated lease solve different problems; explain the trade-offs without pretending one option suits every practice.
Edit around the task:
- Put the direct answer or main distinction near the beginning.
- Define terms a new practice owner may not know.
- Use concrete, qualified examples instead of broad claims.
- Cut repeated paragraphs that add no decision point.
- Write headings that say what each section answers.
Keep the parts that still earn their place. A refresh does not need to make a clear post longer. An accurate example from a practicing lawyer that shows a genuine trade-off may be more helpful than a new, generic paragraph.
6. Inspect links, images, and page details
Open every link, including those to your service and contact pages. Does the destination still support the sentence around it? A link can work perfectly and still mislead if the destination has changed. If two posts now contradict each other, fix both.
Check images for relevance, permission to use them, and descriptive alt text. A conference-room photo may work in a general discussion of office options. Beside a claim about your own client meeting space, it could mislead readers if the room is not yours. Check captions for outdated dates, names, and practice claims as well.
Then view the page on a phone. Look for broken tables, walls of text, stale author bios, and headings that no longer fit. Keep the URL if it still describes the topic accurately; changing it creates extra work for existing links and readers who saved the page.
7. Publish with a record of what changed
Have someone with appropriate knowledge give legal or tax sections a final review. Proofread separately for dates, names, office details, and fees. If the guidance has materially changed, add a visible “last reviewed” or “updated” date if your publishing system allows it. A fresh date should never suggest that unchecked material has been reviewed.
Keep a brief internal log of the post, review date, sources checked, substantive edits, and next review trigger. A change in local rules, your billing process, office setup, or the clients you accept can be a better prompt than an arbitrary annual reminder. Put those checks alongside new writing in a [content calendar for a small law practice](/website-content-calendar-that-stays-useful/) that names the person responsible for each task.
Before you mark the update complete, follow the contact path from the post yourself. If it invites prospective clients to request an appointment, submit the form and read the confirmation. A corrected article still leaves readers confused if that message sends them to your former office.
