An audit finds compliance gaps. A redesign fixes what's causing them.
Most South African law firm websites accumulate risk the same way: a site was built once, five to ten years ago, by whoever was available at the time, and has been patched rather than rebuilt ever since. A gap audit tells you what's non-compliant. It also tends to surface a second, related finding - that the underlying site is old enough that patching individual issues costs more, over time, than replacing the platform.
Six signals a firm's website needs more than a fix
1. The CMS is past end-of-life or unidentifiable
Sites built on discontinued page builders or unmaintained WordPress themes cannot receive security patches. Every unpatched CMS is an open door, and POPIA's "appropriate and reasonable" security standard does not distinguish between a deliberate gap and simple neglect.
2. No one internally can make a content change
If updating an attorney's bio or adding a PAIA manual requires calling a developer who built the site a decade ago, the firm doesn't control its own compliance posture - it's dependent on someone else's availability.
3. Mobile rendering is broken or absent
A meaningful share of prospective clients now research an attorney on a phone before ever opening a laptop. A site that wasn't built mobile-first often fails basic usability, and Google's indexing is mobile-first too - a broken mobile layout suppresses search visibility directly.
4. There's no structured content for AI search
Practice area pages written as unstructured paragraphs, with no FAQ schema, no clear service definitions, and no attorney-level expertise signals, are invisible to AI-generated answers even when they rank in traditional search. This is a redesign-level problem, not a copy edit.
5. Contact and intake forms don't match consent requirements
Older forms often submit directly to an inbox with no privacy notice, no lawful basis statement, and no record of consent. Retrofitting consent onto an existing form is possible; but it's usually cheaper and more durable to rebuild the intake flow properly.
6. The firm has grown, merged, or rebranded since the site was built
Name changes, new practice areas, added partners - when the site no longer reflects who the firm actually is, publicity-rule compliance under the LPC Code of Conduct becomes a maintenance burden layered on top of an already outdated foundation.
Audit first, then decide
Not every finding requires a rebuild. A missing PAIA manual link or an unregistered Information Officer is a same-day fix regardless of platform. The audit's job is to separate the two categories clearly: what can be fixed on the current site today, and what the current site structurally cannot support - so a firm isn't guessing at which one it's dealing with.