WordPress is the default substrate of the legal web. That much is not in dispute. What is rarely measured is the cost of the choices stacked on top of it: the theme, the page builder, and the plugins that accumulate over years of edits. Each layer adds files the browser must fetch and execute before a prospective client sees a phone number. We wanted that cost expressed in numbers rather than impressions.
Using the same 303-site dataset that underpins our ongoing law firm web technology research, we read the source of every homepage and measured what it loads. What follows is a portrait of the WordPress ecosystem as it actually exists across the legal industry, and a head-to-head comparison of asset overhead between WordPress and non-WordPress firm sites.
Methodology
We analyzed the HTML source code of 303 law firm homepages collected from organic Google search results across 25 high-growth, mid-size U.S. markets (two practice areas per market). All data was collected in March 2024 from live homepage source. For each site we performed the following detection steps:
- WordPress detection: we checked for the presence of
wp-contentorwp-includespaths in the page source. Sites carrying these paths were classified as WordPress. - Theme identification: we extracted the active theme slug from
wp-content/themes/[theme-name]/paths in stylesheet and script references. - Page builder detection: we scanned for known page builder signatures in CSS and JS paths and inline markup, including Elementor, Divi, WPBakery, Beaver Builder, Avada, Astra, GeneratePress, and Kadence.
- Plugin detection: we extracted plugin slugs from
wp-content/plugins/[plugin-name]/paths. Only plugins that load front-end assets are detectable through this method. - Asset counting: we counted all external CSS stylesheet references (
<link rel="stylesheet">) and JavaScript file references (<script src>) in the page source, then counted those served fromwp-contentorwp-includespaths separately. - Non-WordPress platform detection: for non-WordPress sites, we checked for platform-specific signatures from Wix, Squarespace, Duda, and GoDaddy Website Builder.
Plugin counts represent only those plugins that expose identifiable file paths in the rendered HTML. The true number of installed plugins is almost certainly higher.
The numbers at a glance
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| WordPress sites | 63% |
| Average CSS files (WordPress) | 10.7 |
| Average JS files (WordPress) | 14.7 |
| Average detectable plugins (WordPress) | 4.2 |
Platform distribution
WordPress dominates the law firm website landscape, but what fills the remaining 37 percent is more telling. The large majority of non-WordPress law firm sites are custom-built. The website builders that command share in other industries barely register in legal.
| Platform | Sites | Share |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 191 | 63.0% |
| Custom / other | 101 | 33.3% |
| Duda | 5 | 1.7% |
| Wix | 3 | 1.0% |
| Squarespace | 2 | 0.7% |
| GoDaddy | 1 | 0.3% |
The 101 custom-built sites include hand-coded HTML, proprietary content systems, and agency-built solutions that use no detectable off-the-shelf platform. Duda, which markets itself to agencies as a white-label builder, captured just five sites. Wix and Squarespace, despite enormous consumer market share, are nearly absent from top-ranking law firm results.
The WordPress theme landscape
The theme market for law firms is remarkably fragmented. Across 191 WordPress sites we identified more than 130 distinct theme slugs. The top ten themes account for just 33.5 percent of all WordPress sites; the remaining two-thirds use one-off or agency-custom themes.
| Theme | Sites | Share (of WP) |
|---|---|---|
| Hello Elementor | 18 | 9.4% |
| Divi | 10 | 5.2% |
| Astra | 9 | 4.7% |
| Avada | 4 | 2.1% |
| Salient | 3 | 1.6% |
| CWS Theme Work Mix | 3 | 1.6% |
| LawFirmSites | 3 | 1.6% |
| JEM | 2 | 1.0% |
| Lawyers Attorneys | 2 | 1.0% |
| iLawyer | 2 | 1.0% |
The top three are all page builder starter themes. Hello Elementor is a deliberately minimal theme designed as a blank canvas for the Elementor page builder. Divi is theme and page builder in one. Astra is a lightweight theme commonly paired with Elementor or the Gutenberg block editor. None of these themes does much on its own; each serves as scaffolding for the builder that runs on top.
Below the top ten, the long tail belongs to agency-custom themes. Slugs such as "lawrank-template-16," "bellamy-law," "carlsonlawfirm," and "demayo-law" make plain that most legal WordPress sites are built by agencies on bespoke themes, often with a page builder framework underneath.
Page builder dominance
Page builders have become the default way to construct a WordPress law firm site. Our detection found that 92.7 percent of WordPress firm sites show signs of at least one page builder or theme framework.
| Page builder | Sites | Share (of WP) |
|---|---|---|
| Astra (framework) | 177 | 92.7% |
| Elementor | 52 | 27.2% |
| Divi Builder | 51 | 26.7% |
| WPBakery | 14 | 7.3% |
| Beaver Builder | 4 | 2.1% |
| Avada (Fusion Builder) | 4 | 2.1% |
| GeneratePress | 2 | 1.0% |
| Kadence | 1 | 0.5% |
Astra's 92.7 percent figure reflects that the Astra framework, including its Starter Sites plugin and related assets, is loaded as an underlying layer on the vast majority of WordPress firm sites, even where a different visual builder such as Elementor or Divi handles the layout.
Elementor and Divi are in a near dead heat for visual builder share. Combined, they appear on more than half of all WordPress firm sites. Both generate their own CSS and JavaScript at runtime, which stacks atop the theme's existing assets. WPBakery, an older builder that peaked around 2018, still appears on 7.3 percent of sites, a sign that many law firm websites have not been rebuilt in years.
The asset overhead problem
This is the core finding. WordPress law firm websites carry dramatically more CSS and JavaScript than their non-WordPress counterparts, and the gap is not small.
| Asset type | WordPress | Non-WordPress |
|---|---|---|
| CSS files | 10.7 | 0.9 |
| JavaScript files | 14.7 | 4.5 |
WordPress sites average 10.7 CSS files per homepage against just 0.9 for non-WordPress sites, roughly twelve times the stylesheet requests. On the JavaScript side, WordPress sites average 14.7 JS files against 4.5, a 3.3-fold difference.
Where do all these files come from? The stack is layered:
- WordPress core loads its own scripts from
wp-includes, including jQuery on 67 percent of sites. - The theme adds its own stylesheets and scripts, often three to five files.
- The page builder (Elementor, Divi, and the like) adds its runtime CSS and JS, typically four to eight more files.
- Each plugin with front-end output adds its own CSS or JS, one to three files per plugin.
The result is a cascade of HTTP requests that accumulate with every layer of the stack. A typical WordPress law firm homepage loads assets from the core, the theme, a page builder, a form plugin, an analytics plugin, a caching plugin's JavaScript, and more. Each file is a separate request the browser must download, parse, and execute before the page becomes interactive.
Non-WordPress sites, by contrast, tend to bundle their CSS into a single file or inline it entirely, and load only the JavaScript they actually need. The 0.9 average CSS figure means many custom-built law firm sites carry zero external stylesheets, inlining all styles directly in the HTML. That is precisely the architecture a Nitrosite uses: static-first delivery with per-page inlined CSS, which is why every page returns a Lighthouse 100 against an average law firm score near 34.
jQuery: the legacy tax
67 percent of WordPress law firm sites still load jQuery. The library was essential in 2010, when browsers lacked standardized APIs for DOM manipulation and AJAX. By 2024 every major browser natively supports the features it provides. Loading jQuery adds approximately 30KB (compressed) of JavaScript to every page. WordPress sites carry it because many themes and plugins still depend on it, even when the site's actual interactive features do not.
Plugin landscape
The average WordPress law firm site loads front-end assets from 4.2 detectable plugins. Form plugins dominate, followed by performance and analytics tools.
| Plugin | Sites | Share (of WP) |
|---|---|---|
| Gravity Forms | 75 | 39.3% |
| WP Rocket | 41 | 21.5% |
| Contact Form 7 | 39 | 20.4% |
| Elementor | 34 | 17.8% |
| Elementor Pro | 27 | 14.1% |
| Gravity Forms reCAPTCHA | 20 | 10.5% |
| Akismet | 17 | 8.9% |
| CleanTalk Anti-Spam | 14 | 7.3% |
| Business Reviews Bundle | 12 | 6.3% |
| SVG Support | 11 | 5.8% |
| WPForms | 11 | 5.8% |
| Slider Revolution | 10 | 5.2% |
| MonsterInsights (GA) | 10 | 5.2% |
| Honeypot Anti-Spam | 9 | 4.7% |
| GTranslate | 9 | 4.7% |
Gravity Forms is the clear leader for law firm contact forms, present on nearly four in ten WordPress sites. Contact Form 7, its free competitor, runs on another 20.4 percent. Together, form plugins account for a large portion of the detected ecosystem, and Gravity Forms loads its own CSS and JavaScript on every page, whether or not a form appears on that page.
WP Rocket (21.5 percent) is the most popular caching and optimization plugin. It is worth noting that WP Rocket itself adds a small JavaScript file to handle lazy loading and other front-end optimizations: a performance plugin that adds to the asset count. Slider Revolution, at 5.2 percent, is a heavy plugin originally built for image sliders and now used for animated hero sections; it loads substantial CSS and JS, often for a single visual element above the fold.
What this means for law firms
The data describes a structural condition, not a configuration error. A firm cannot plugin its way out of overhead that is generated by the platform's own layering. Each tool added to address a single need (a form, a slider, a cache) levies a fresh tax of requests on every visitor, and the taxes compound. The fastest sites in the dataset were not the best-optimized WordPress installations; they were the sites that never carried the layers in the first place.
This is why the architecture decision precedes the optimization decision, and why our own approach begins upstream of design. Before we build, NitroCMS unifies five data sources (Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Ads, independent SEO and competitor intelligence, and the Constellate Analytics Engine, our first-party analytics) and hands them to Claude Opus, which returns a ranked set of recommendations. Evidence over guesswork, applied to the same homepages this study measured: the firm and its competitors alike, audited before a single page is drawn.