Scorpion, FindLaw & LawLytics Alternatives: How Law Firms Can Own Their Website Again
If your law firm pays a legal-marketing platform thousands of dollars a month and you’ve discovered you don’t actually own your website — you’re not alone, and you have good options. The short version: a senior developer can build you a custom site you own outright for $3,500–$8,000, with month-to-month maintenance from about $100–$250, and nobody can ever hold your web presence hostage again.
We build websites for law firms in Los Angeles, so we have a perspective — but the comparison below sticks to publicly documented pricing and widely reported terms. Verify everything against your own contract.
What the big platforms cost — and what you get
Scorpion. Published reviews and industry analyses commonly report all-in packages of $3,000–$10,000+ per month, with 12–36-month terms. The recurring complaints in attorney reviews aren’t about effort — Scorpion does real work — but about ownership and portability: sites built on their proprietary platform generally can’t move with you, and independent reviewers report that leaving means rebuilding from scratch. If you’re evaluating them, ask directly what happens to the site, the content, and the ad accounts on the day you cancel.
FindLaw. Commonly reported at $2,000–$10,000+ per month on multi-year contracts. Attorney-facing reviews consistently flag the same issue: the site (and in some configurations, pieces of your web presence) live inside their ecosystem. FindLaw’s directory business also changed hands recently, which is worth factoring into any long commitment.
LawLytics. A different animal: an affordable subscription CMS (roughly $150–$225/month plus setup) aimed at solos and small firms that want to write their own content. It’s honest value at that price — the trade-offs are template design, a DIY content burden, and the same platform dependency: it’s their CMS, not yours.
PaperStreet (and similar quality studios). Flat-fee custom builds, typically $9,500–$25,000 for their mid-and-up tiers. You generally own the work — the barrier is price and multi-month timelines.
The question that sorts every vendor
> “If I stop paying you tomorrow, what exactly do I keep?”
A firm that owns its website keeps: the domain, the design, every page of content, the analytics history, and the ability to hand it to any developer in the country. If the answer you get involves “our platform,” “a rebuild,” or “an export fee,” you now know what you’re really renting.
This matters more for law firms than almost any business: your past results, attorney bios, and practice-area pages are years of accumulated SEO equity. Losing them to a platform exit is like losing your case files in a move.
What the owned alternative looks like
- A custom site on open-source WordPress (or a modern JavaScript stack) — no proprietary CMS. Typical senior-developer cost in LA: $3,500–$8,000 one-time, delivered in weeks.
- Your domain, registered to you. Your Google Business Profile and ad accounts, owned by you.
- Month-to-month care ($99–$250/mo) for updates, security, backups, and small changes — cancellable anytime, because the work should earn the renewal.
- Modern intake: online booking, and increasingly, AI — a chat assistant trained on your practice areas and an AI phone receptionist that answers after-hours calls and books consultations. After-hours intake is precisely what the big platforms charge a premium to solve with call centers; AI now does it for a fraction.
- SEO you keep. Content lives on your domain; if you ever change vendors, the rankings stay with you.
Total first-year cost of the owned route: roughly $5,000–$11,000. First-year cost of a mid-tier platform contract: $36,000–$120,000 — with nothing you keep at the end.
When the big platforms make sense
Honesty cuts both ways. If your firm spends $20,000+ a month on advertising and wants one throat to choke for ads, site, intake, and call tracking, a full-service platform can be rational — the site is a loss leader for the ad management. The firms that get hurt are small and mid-size practices that sign enterprise-style contracts for what is, underneath, a $5,000 website.
Switching without losing your SEO
Done right, a migration preserves your rankings: rebuild the pages on your own domain, keep URL structures or 301-redirect old paths one-to-one, and keep the content you have rights to (check your contract — content ownership varies). We’ve migrated firms off proprietary platforms without traffic loss; the key is mapping every old URL before anything goes live.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have the right to my content when I leave a platform?
It depends on your contract — some platforms assign content rights to the client, others don’t. Pull your agreement and check before giving notice.
Will I lose my Google rankings if I switch?
Not if the migration maps every existing URL to a new equivalent with permanent redirects. Ranking loss comes from sloppy migrations, not from leaving a platform.
What does a custom law-firm site cost in Los Angeles?
Typically $3,500–$8,000 from a senior independent developer, $9,500+ from national legal-design studios. Ongoing care runs $99–$250/month.
Can a small firm really handle its own marketing stack?
Yes — with an owned site, a Google Business Profile you control, and month-to-month help where you need it. That’s most of what the platforms bundle, without the lock-in.
If your firm wants a website it owns — or an honest second opinion on a contract you’re already in — book a free consultation. We’ll tell you if staying put is actually your best move.