Attorney Website Security: A Practical Checklist

Why Law Firm Sites Are Targeted

Attackers know law firm sites hold valuable data and that firms are motivated to pay to make a problem disappear quickly. Many firm sites also run on WordPress with outdated plugins and no one assigned to maintain them, which makes them easy targets. The combination of sensitive data and light maintenance is exactly what attackers look for.

The Attorney Website Security Checklist

Work through these in order. None of them require a large budget, only consistent attention:

• HTTPS everywhere. A valid SSL certificate on every page, with insecure requests upgraded.
• Updates on a schedule. Core, themes, and plugins patched weekly and tested before they go live.
• Two-factor authentication on every admin and editor account.
• Strong roles and passwords. No shared logins, least privilege, and no leftover accounts from former staff or vendors.
• A web application firewall to block automated attacks before they reach the site.
• Daily off-site backups you can actually restore quickly.
• Secure intake forms that do not email raw client data in plain text.
• Minimal data retention. Do not store more client information on the site than you need.
• Monitoring and alerts for downtime, file changes, and malware.
• An incident plan so everyone knows who to call if something goes wrong.

Confidentiality and Client Intake Forms

Intake forms are the highest-risk part of most firm sites. Submissions should be encrypted in transit, stored securely or routed into a protected system, and never sent as plain-text email. Limit who can read submissions, and purge old entries on a schedule. A leaked intake form can expose privileged information before a client ever signs an engagement letter.

Compliance and Accessibility

Beyond security, firm sites increasingly need to meet accessibility standards (ADA and WCAG), which also reduces legal exposure of a different kind. Keeping the site fast, accessible, and properly maintained protects both your clients and the firm.

When to Bring In a Managed Partner

Most firms do not have someone in-house to handle this every week, and that is exactly when sites fall behind and get breached. A managed partner runs the checklist for you, responds fast when something breaks, and keeps records of what was done. See our WordPress management for law firms for how we handle confidentiality, uptime, and compliance, in English or Spanish.

Confidential Intake Forms: What to Require

Most law firm sites lose privileged information at the intake form, not through some advanced exploit. The form looks like a simple contact widget but it routinely collects sensitive client detail. Before you publish another form, make sure each of the following is true:

• Submissions are encrypted in transit. The site is served fully over HTTPS, the form endpoint is HTTPS, and there is no insecure asset (image, script) on the page that would let a browser flag it as not-secure.
• Submissions are not emailed in plain text. If client intake arrives as a regular email to a shared inbox, it is visible to whoever can read that inbox, its backups, and any device that has cached it. Route submissions into a protected case-management system or an encrypted CRM instead.
• Access is limited. Avoid shared accounts. Every attorney, paralegal, and admin should have their own login with the minimum role they need. Audit who has access at least quarterly, and remove old accounts the same day someone leaves.
• Retention is short. Purge old submissions from the site on a schedule. The fewer client details sitting on the WordPress database, the less you can lose if anything goes wrong.
• The form does not collect more than it needs. A description of the legal matter is enough at intake; full case detail, ID numbers, and sensitive documents belong in a secure portal, not a public form.

Locking down the intake form is one of the highest-leverage things any firm can do for its website security, and it costs nothing beyond a careful review.

Common WordPress Vulnerabilities in Law Firm Sites

Across the firm sites we have worked with, the same handful of weak spots come up again and again. None of them require advanced security skill to close, only consistent attention:

• Outdated form plugins that were popular a few years ago and have not been updated. Form plugins handle user input, which makes them a top target. We see the same three or four plugin names again and again on compromised firm sites. Our guide on signs a site is hacked covers what to look for.
• Weak admin roles. Every user marked Administrator is a potential breach point. Most staff need Editor or Author at most. Marketing vendors should never be granted Administrator long-term.
• No two-factor authentication on attorney or admin accounts. With 2FA, a stolen password from another breach is no longer enough to enter the site.
• Shared logins created for a transition or for a vendor and never removed. Old accounts are the quiet entry points; they belong to nobody and nobody notices when they are used.
• Unencrypted or co-located backups. If the only backup of your site lives on the same server, a successful attacker takes the live site and every backup at once. Off-site, encrypted backups are basic hygiene.
• No monitoring. An infection on a small firm site often runs for weeks before anyone notices, surfacing only when a client complains or Google flags the site. Monitoring catches it in hours.

Closing these is mostly process, not advanced security. A regular maintenance routine, like the one we run on our WordPress Care Plans, addresses every item above without you having to think about it.

Ethics and Compliance Considerations

Website security is no longer just an IT topic for law firms. It increasingly touches your professional duties, and several state bars and the ABA have weighed in on what reasonable safeguards look like.

The ABA Model Rules expect a level of technological competence under Rule 1.1 and reasonable safeguards against unauthorized disclosure under Rule 1.6. Many state bar ethics opinions have applied these to websites, intake portals, email, and cloud services. The bar generally does not require that you never be breached; it requires that you take reasonable steps appropriate to the sensitivity of the information you hold.

In practical terms, that means a documented maintenance routine, off-site backups, access control, and an incident plan are no longer optional. They are part of how a firm shows it took reasonable steps if something does go wrong. None of this is legal advice for your specific jurisdiction; treat it as a baseline that any modern firm should already be meeting.

If you want a partner that handles the technical side under your supervision, see our WordPress management for law firms.