The firm's team page: what belongs in each profile and which titles you may use

Why the team page is read so often

Legal advice, tax advice, audits and notarisations are services built on trust. Before the first call, clients want to see who is at the other end: what impression does the person make, what experience do they have, do they speak my language? Many read the team page after finding the firm through a recommendation, and then only compare faces.

The team page is also valuable for Google and AI assistants: it links names, professional titles and fields of activity to the firm. Anyone searching for “Steuerberaterin Arbeitnehmerveranlagung Graz” (female tax adviser, employee tax return, Graz) or for a lawyer's name ideally lands directly on her profile.

What belongs in each profile

Two or three personal sentences have more impact than the list: why someone works in family law, what a bookkeeper enjoys about annual accounts, how a mediator starts a conversation. Keep it factual and concrete. Hobbies are allowed but not a must.

Using professional titles and degrees correctly

The professional titles of the chamber professions are protected by law, and anyone who uses them wrongly or too generously breaches professional law and often unfair competition law as well. The team page must use the same titles as the legal notice, the chamber register and the letterhead.

• Fachanwalt: In Germany, the bar association awards this title under the Fachanwaltsordnung, for no more than three fields (§ 43c BRAO). Austria has no Fachanwalt titles; there you write “focus: employment law” if it is true. Details in the article Advertising for lawyers in Germany.
• Mag. and Dr.: Use academic degrees as they were awarded. In Austria, “Mag.” and “Dr.” precede the name, and female forms such as “Mag.a” or “Dr.in” are permitted. An honorary doctorate is “Dr. h.c.”, not “Dr.”. Foreign degrees are used in the form in which they were awarded.
• Prof.: only with a professorship or a conferred professional title, not for a teaching assignment.
• Fachberater and certificates: In Germany, tax advisers may not add DStV Fachberater titles directly to their professional title, but they may mention them elsewhere on the team page (see Mandatory information for tax advisers in Germany).
• Employees without admission: Clearly label trainee lawyers, legal trainees, trainee tax advisers and assistants as such. “Associate” or “lawyer by training” must not suggest that the person is admitted.

“Partner” only for a real partnership

“Partner” sounds like a career step and is readily handed out as a title. To clients, however, it means: this person is a shareholder of the firm and stands behind it. In Germany, only partnership companies may use the addition “und Partner” in their name (§ 11 PartGG). Anyone who presents employed professionals as “partners” on the team page or letterhead risks liability as an ostensible partner (Scheinsozius) under the principles of apparent authority. In Austria, the OGH (Supreme Court) has ruled that firms presenting themselves with “+Partner” without an actual company were misleading.

Consent of employees

Admitted professionals are listed in public registers anyway, and their professional title often belongs in the legal notice. That does not apply to their photo, career, languages or hobbies. For employees, assistants and reception staff, obtain written consent for anything beyond name and role. For photos it is required in any case: in Germany under § 22 KUG, in Austria in view of § 78 UrhG, and in both countries under the GDPR.

For notaries: a team page with photos, names and roles is factual information. Labels such as “our expert for everything to do with inheritance” are not. Stick to roles and tasks, as the article Advertising for notaries in Austria shows.

The firm's story without superlatives

Many team pages begin with a paragraph about the firm. That is good if it tells something: since when the firm has existed, how it came about, whom it works for and what it does differently. It becomes weak when it only strings together marketing phrases, and problematic under professional law when it claims leading positions that cannot be proven. How a business law firm can still show experience and rankings credibly is explained in the post Website of a boutique business law firm without client names.

The team page as a recruiting page

Firms are desperately looking for trainee lawyers, tax assistants, trainee tax advisers and assistants. Applicants look at the team page above all: how old is the team, what are the people like, is part-time possible, who would train me? A team page that shows real people and their paths saves you many an expensive job ad.

• Show assistants, the secretariat and accounting too, not just the professionals.
• Name career paths: “Started in 2019 as a trainee, a tax adviser since 2024.”
• Link from the team page to open positions or a careers page. Draft the ad itself, in Austria with the mandatory salary information, with the job ad generator.
• A short quote from an employee about everyday work says more than a paragraph about “flat hierarchies”.

Keeping the page up to date

You also need consistent titles in your email signature; with the signature generator you set name, degree and professional title the same way for everyone. Which other pages make up a complete firm website is shown in the article Content of a firm website.