With the Squiz Digital Experience Platform, Thomsons launched two distinct-brand websites on one platform, gaining full content control and stronger search discoverability.
Thomsons is a major independent Australian law firm trusted on legal assignments where complexity, consequence and scrutiny converge. The firm advises companies, governments and other institutions on matters that demand clear judgement and disciplined execution under pressure.
Thomsons (previously Thomson Geer) had outgrown its digital presence. The firm was already competing at the top tier, winning complex, high-value work against Australia's leading independents, but its digital presence hadn't caught up with where it actually stood.
At the same time, its spinout firm (now Faculti Lawyers) needed its own distinct brand identity and website. And underpinning the spinout firm's offer was a proprietary in-house AI technology platform that deserved to be front and centre.
Both existing websites ran on a legacy CMS, and the team experienced various challenges:
Website users were also experiencing friction:
"At the heart of it, we just wanted two new, clean modern websites that just really reflected where both of those firms were at. We wanted the ability to be able to update and refresh our content a lot more easily."
Going into the project, the firm had three clear objectives:
Thomsons selected the Squiz Digital Experience Platform (DXP) to do just that.
Rather than migrating all existing content from its previous CMS instance to the Squiz DXP, Thomsons used the migration as a chance to start fresh – refreshing copy, restructuring pages, and ensuring content was optimised for how people search and discover information today, including AI-driven search.
Folk design agency kicked things off in January 2026, developing the brand strategy, naming and wireframes for both sites. With Folk’s wireframes in hand, Squiz began the build in March.
The foundation was a single shared design system and component library, built once and themed separately for each brand. This gave Thomsons and Faculti Lawyers two distinct visual identities from a single codebase, meaning consistent design and a faster, lower-cost path to any future sites or products built on the platform.
Thomsons chose 20 components from the pre-built Squiz library, with five custom components built specifically for this project.
For example, the custom people component automatically shows the right team members depending on where you are on the site – the firm's key people on the homepage, and the relevant specialists when you're browsing a specific area of law. The same idea applies to news and insights: the homepage shows the latest articles, while an expertise page shows only the articles relevant to that practice area. The content is the same; it's just displayed in the right context, automatically.
With hundreds of profile pages, expertise areas, and insight articles across both sites, reliable search wasn't optional – and Funnelback, Squiz DXP's built-in enterprise search, was the natural fit. Funnelback indexes all content so visitors can find the right people, articles, or expertise areas quickly and reliably. Built-in analytics give the team visibility over what users are actually searching for – a feedback loop that helps them identify content gaps and keep the sites performing.
"The search factor was really a critical factor for us. Our websites are very content-heavy – hundreds of profile pages, hundreds of articles, 60-plus expertise pages. Having that search ability for users was really important. And we've got AI picking us up properly now. Not just SEO, but GEO, having us come up in AI search results for users."
Two third-party integrations also went live alongside the build:
UAT ran in mid-May, with Samantha having direct weekly sessions with the Squiz team. Both sites went live on 25 May 2026.
Thomsons and Faculti Lawyers launched together – two distinct brands, two sites, one DXP instance. The clearer differentiation between the two brands has been particularly well received, with clients responding positively to each firm having its own distinct identity.
Before the project, search and AI visibility had been a challenge – the firm wasn't surfacing in the right places online, and structured content for GEO was largely absent. That has changed.
"We've had one partner who emailed us and said: 'I just got a referral for a client. They actually put into AI who's the best firm to use for this area of law – and we came up."
The platform was built around the principle that marketing teams should be able to move without waiting on developers. Page layouts can be updated, content created, and changes published directly, and with built-in preview, the team can see exactly how a page will look before anything goes live.
Samantha and her team describe two "really nice, clean, modern websites that really reflect where the firms are positioned now" – with a platform that is "much easier to manage" and a user experience that is "a lot more polished." The team can now update, publish and restructure content across both sites without raising a ticket.
What's already clear:
The public websites are the visible piece. The bigger story is what a unified DXP means for a firm running multiple websites, an intranet, a knowledge function, and an AI agenda.
The next major phase is replacing Thomsons' outdated intranet. Because the component library is already built and designed for the public sites, reusing those components for an internal intranet is a natural next step – faster to build, lower cost, and visually consistent with the brand.
Personalisation is live in the platform and Thomsons is planning to use this for international visitors – tailoring homepage content and key expertise pages for audiences whose needs differ from Australian-based clients.
Funnelback is live and delivering reliable on-site search and analytics. Conversational Search is next on the roadmap – something the team is planning to explore in the coming months.
Give users the conversation-based experience they expect, backed by content you control, answers you can trust, and governance built in.
