PRIVY Direction Board

01 · The read

What PRIVY actually sells

A law firm built to be the one party responsible for a successful person's whole position. Six disciplines under one roof, so the entire conversation stays inside attorney-client privilege, and the same firm that builds a structure can defend it in court. A family office coordinates and holds neither. That is the whole argument, and it has one consequence for the site: the edge is structural, so the site never has to claim anything.

The open item, answered with data

Build San Diego County from Carlsbad. Treat Los Angeles as an address, not a market.

Eric asked us to hold local search until he and Nicole choose. Here is what the numbers say when he does. Los Angeles carries roughly twenty times the search volume of Carlsbad, and it is the most contested legal market in the state, entered from a Broadway mailbox suite against firms with real offices and twenty-year link profiles. Carlsbad alone is too thin to build a business on at 1,300 searches a month. San Diego County is the answer that is actually available: 10,360 searches a month, a real Carlsbad Village office to anchor it, and North County towns nobody has properly claimed. Rank Carlsbad first because it is winnable, then push into San Diego on the strength of it. Temecula stays a satellite page, which is exactly what Eric already called it.

02 · The demand

Where the front-door searches are

Estate planning and entity formation, pulled from Google Ads volume across all four candidate markets. Cost per click is the honest measure of how hard each term is bought; a dash means nobody is bidding, which is where the cheap wins live.

Los Angeles

25,370searches / month

129 front-door keywords carry measurable volume here.

Local term	Vol	CPC
business attorney los angeles	1,300	$18.24
real estate attorney los angeles	590	$20.04
tax attorney los angeles	480	$68.63
estate planning attorney los angeles	260	$5.45
probate attorney los angeles	260	$26.45
trust attorney los angeles	110	$11.96

San Diego

10,360searches / month

83 front-door keywords carry measurable volume here.

Local term	Vol	CPC
real estate attorney san diego	390	$14.37
probate attorney san diego	320	$18.25
tax attorney san diego	320	$47.70
estate planning attorney san diego	260	$5.18
trust attorney san diego	170	$13.62
trust lawyer san diego	170	$13.62

Carlsbad / North County

1,300searches / month

79 front-door keywords carry measurable volume here.

Local term	Vol	CPC
real estate attorney carlsbad	70	$4.39
business attorney carlsbad	50	—
estate planning attorney carlsbad	30	$2.51
estate planning lawyer carlsbad	30	$2.51
estate planning attorney encinitas	10	—
estate planning attorney north county san diego	10	—

Temecula / Murrieta

1,240searches / month

70 front-door keywords carry measurable volume here.

Local term	Vol	CPC
estate planning attorney temecula	30	—
trust attorney temecula	30	$3.00
real estate attorney temecula	30	$9.17
probate attorney temecula	20	$12.24
probate lawyer temecula	20	$12.24
estate planning attorney murrieta	10	$1.32

The questions people actually type

Statewide volume. These are the pages that answer a question rather than announce a firm, and they are the ones a language model can quote.

Query	Vol	CPC
estate planning attorney near me	3,600	$6.92
trust attorney near me	3,600	$12.85
cost of estate planning attorney	590	$8.20
how much does a living trust cost	480	$4.26
llc attorney near me	170	$19.50
do i need a trust or a will	110	$5.12
estate planning for business owners	70	—
fractional general counsel	50	$17.28
outside general counsel	50	$9.35
should i put my rental property in an llc	30	—

03 · The field

The fifteen firms already ranking

Pulled from eighteen live search results across the four markets and scored by weighted position. Every homepage and its about, team, services and contact pages were captured; the full set is on disk. The number on each card is that weighted presence. Click any card to enlarge.

Opelon LLP homepage — Opelon LLP
110

opelon.com · Carlsbad

Navy and gold, cutout attorney on a wave, hero form, 'attorneys you can trust'. The most aggressive front door in North County, and the one to out-build page for page.

Law Office of Christine Padilla homepage — Law Office of Christine Padilla
74

christinepadillalaw.com · San Diego

Thin site, strong rankings. Winning on entity age and reviews rather than on pages.

Preston Estate Planning homepage — Preston Estate Planning
65

prestonestateplanning.com · San Diego

Webinar funnel, trademarked slogans, 'Life Plan' membership. Productized in exactly the way Eric wants the front door productized, wrapped in exactly the tone he refuses.

Brierton, Jones & Jones homepage — Brierton, Jones & Jones
64

briertonjones.com · San Diego

'Protecting you, your family, and your future.' Live chat popup, stock family photography. The category default, executed competently.

San Diego Trust Lawyer homepage — San Diego Trust Lawyer
62

sandiegotrustlawyer.com · San Diego

Leads with flat fees in the title tag. The one competitor already competing on transparent pricing.

Geiger Law Office homepage — Geiger Law Office
59

geigerlawoffice.com · Carlsbad

The incumbent Carlsbad estate planning brand. Deep content library, dated presentation.

Law Offices of Arthur S. Brown homepage — Law Offices of Arthur S. Brown
56

whyprobate.com · Carlsbad

Ranks #1 on an exact-match domain. Uses 'Premier' in the H1, which is rule two on Eric's list.

Singh Law Firm homepage — Singh Law Firm
54

singhlawfirm.com · Statewide

Statewide play rather than local. Ranks on volume of pages.

San Diego Legacy Law homepage — San Diego Legacy Law
51

sdlegacylaw.com · San Diego

'An attorney you can trust' in the H1. Education-led positioning, generic execution.

Andrew Fesler Law homepage — Andrew Fesler Law
50

carlsbadestateplanning.com · Carlsbad

Exact-match domain, 'Peace of Mind Begins with Us.' Solo practice, thin but well-targeted.

North County Legal, APC homepage — North County Legal, APC
48

northcountylegal.com · Carlsbad

Estate planning bundled with immigration. Split focus is the weakness to exploit.

Albertson & Davidson homepage — Albertson & Davidson
47

aldavlaw.com · Los Angeles

Trust and will litigation. The closest thing in the set to PRIVY's litigation edge, and it markets that edge loudly.

Davis & Wojcik homepage — Davis & Wojcik
42

dw.law · Temecula

The Temecula incumbent. Lineup photo, red buttons, 'Experienced and Driven'. Generalist firm, beatable on specificity.

DMAB Law homepage — DMAB Law
41

dmablaw.com · Carlsbad

Carlsbad business and real estate law. The nearest competitor on the entity-formation half of the front door.

Laila J. Kepler homepage — Laila J. Kepler
39

keplerlaw.com · Temecula

WealthCounsel template, stock photography, faux columns. The clearest picture of what the category looks like when nobody has designed it.

Greenberg Traurig homepage — Greenberg Traurig
ref

gtlaw.com

Register reference, not a peer. Global firm; useful only as a study in how restraint scales.

Weissler Law Group homepage — Weissler Law Group
ref

wealthpreservationattorneys.com

Ranks on 'wealth preservation' language. Closest keyword neighbour to PRIVY's advisory positioning.

What the field tells us

Every one of them opens with a face, and every one of them buys the same template.

Navy and gold. A cutout attorney against a wave. Smiling seniors holding hands on a beach at sunset. "Protecting you, your family, and your future." A chat bubble that opens itself. "An attorney you can trust," "Premier," "Experienced and Driven." Not one of these firms has designed a page. That is the opportunity, and it sets the single hardest rule for our build: no faces. A firm whose entire promise is discretion cannot open with a portrait, and the moment we put one there we join the pile. San Diego Trust Lawyer is the most modern of them and Andrew Fesler the cleanest, and both are still template sites underneath. They are the floor to clear, not the target.

04 · The lock

What the homepage is actually for

Before any of this gets built, one thing has to be settled: what a stranger sees in the first two seconds. The letter says the front door is estate planning and entity formation. The keyword data says those two are not remotely equal, so they cannot share a hero. Estate planning wins by roughly sixty to one, and everything else becomes a page you reach from it.

Tier one

Estate planning and living trusts

1,900 searches a month for ‘estate planning attorney’ inside San Diego, plus 3,600 statewide for ‘trust attorney near me’. This is the H1, the hero, and the spine every other page hangs off.

The offer

The plan review, $750 flat

Nobody in the local field offers to read the plan you already have. An unfunded trust, a stale beneficiary form and a deed in a personal name are exactly what all eleven referral sources keep seeing, so this converts strangers and gives advisors something concrete to hand over.

Tier two

Business and entity formation

Small volume, high value, and directly on-brand for the founder and owner clients. Reached from the estate-planning spine rather than competing with it for the homepage.

Tier two

Probate and trust administration

320 a month in San Diego. Real demand, different client, different emotional state. Own pages, never the hero.

Tier two

Real estate, titling, and tax posture

390 and 320 a month respectively in San Diego, and tax carries the highest cost per click on the board at $47.70. Supporting pages that catch high-value searches.

Never advertised

Private counsel, the advisory seat

Present on the site as confirmation, not conversion, exactly as Eric asked. It arrives by referral and cannot be searched into.

The one idea worth arguing for

Lead the call to action with the plan review, not with a free consultation.

Every firm on the board offers a free consultation, which costs a stranger a commitment they are not ready to make and tells them nothing. The plan review does the opposite: a small flat fee, a real deliverable in a week, and no obligation. It converts the searcher who already has a plan and suspects it is wrong. It gives every one of Eric's eleven referral sources a concrete, non-awkward thing to hand a client. And it is the cheapest possible first step toward the private door, because the review is exactly how you find the person whose whole position needs holding.

05 · Built

Eight working sites

Not pictures. Eight real, clickable sites, each carrying the identical positioning and copy above so the design is the only variable. Every one has a working Home, Estate Planning and The Firm page, and each argues the case with its own structure, navigation, type and spatial idea rather than a swapped hero. Photography and Eric's portraits are generated for the mock; the prices, phone number and street address are placeholders until he gives us his real ones.

01

Atelier

Boutique-hotel register. Warm bone ground, one enormous soft-cornered hero, price cards that lift on hover, a gallery you drag through sideways, and a CTA pill that slides up once you scroll past the fold.

Home Estate planning The firm

02

Column

A fixed column of type sits still on the left while full-bleed photography scrolls past on the right. The nav floats over the opening image and turns glassy when you leave it. The quietest and most expensive-feeling of the eight.

Home Estate planning The firm

03

Panel

The only dark direction. Warm near-black, a floating glass nav pill, rounded photo panels that lift on hover, and big tabular numerals for the fees.

Home Estate planning The firm

04

Chapters

Full-viewport scroll-snap panels with a dot rail down the edge. One image and one sentence at a time, with light panels breaking up the dark ones.

Home Estate planning The firm

05

Carlsbad

Place first. A permanent shopfront rail carrying the address, hours and phone, a map-like aerial with a pinned card, a town index, services listed like a menu board, and a page about parking and walking to the door.

Home Estate planning Carlsbad For advisors

06

Inline

Photographs set inside the headline itself, then sections that stack as sticky cards riding over one another. The most design-forward of the eight.

Home Estate planning The firm

07

Crossfade

One full-height image pinned on the left, crossfading between five photographs as the copy scrolls past on the right. The exact inverse of Column.

Home Estate planning The firm

08

Mosaic

An asymmetric interlocking grid. Copy tiles and photo tiles compose one surface at different spans, so the page never reads as a stack of bands.

Home Estate planning The firm

06 · The recommendation

One system, three templates

Not three homepages to choose between. One design system, with the three page types the business actually needs, each carrying the warmth in a different amount.

If one has to win

02 · Column

A fixed column of type while photography scrolls past it. It is the quietest and the most expensive-feeling of the eight, it reads as considered rather than sold, and it is the closest thing here to the private-banking register Eric named himself.

The safe strong pick

01 · Atelier

Warm, generous and unmistakably current, with the friendliest front door of the eight: a real call to action in the fold and a pill that follows you down the page. Easiest of the set for a stranger in a hurry.

If local search leads

05 · Carlsbad

The address, the hours and the phone never leave the screen, and there is a page about parking and walking to the door. If the geography call comes back Carlsbad, this is the one that converts a local search into a visit.

The photography brief, whichever wins

Two people talking. That is the whole shot list.

Every competitor opens with a portrait, and every one of those portraits is a person alone, facing the camera, arms folded. The way to be personable without joining them is to photograph the relationship instead of the man: two people across a table, two people walking and talking, someone listening rather than posing, hands mid-gesture, a cup of coffee still in frame. Natural window light, open collars, no ties, a little grain, nobody looking down the lens. That is a half-day shoot in the Carlsbad office and along the bluffs, and it is the single highest-leverage thing we can buy for this site. Everything else on the page is typography we control.

Ghost, checked. It indexes cleanly and handles artifact-driven publishing, but running it beside an Astro site means two systems and two templates. Worth a five-minute conversation before we commit.
What Eric still owes us. The geography call with Nicole, the short list of sites they admire, and the sample site he promised.
What we owe Eric. The scope, and a straight answer on the blog.
Held open on purpose. Maps and keyword targeting stay parked until the geography call comes back, exactly as he asked.

07 · The archive

How we got here

Fifty directions were drawn before the eight above were built, in three rounds, each one narrowing the brief. Most recent first, working back to where we started. Nothing is hidden, including what was rejected and why. Click any thumbnail to enlarge, or collapse a round to get it out of the way.

Round three · ten personable directions 10 shown

Professional and upscale were already there; personable was missing. These put people back in, shot the way a magazine shoots a profile rather than the way a law firm shoots a headshot. This round set the photography brief the built sites use.

Editorial Profile

Round two · twenty photographic directions 20 shown

Rebuilt as real homepages with hero photography, real navigation and sections below the fold. The reference set moved off law firms and onto the quiet end of private banking, which is the register Eric named himself.