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This year’s post about best law firm websites is a little different than the past. In 2010 and 2011, I provided links of sites that I found to be the best representation of great website design in order to provide inspiration for firms that were looking to develop or redesign their websites. I based my choices on my own professional design judgement with a few criteria that I explained.
This year, nominations took place here, on Lawyerist.
Selection Criteria
The collection below is different because it represents a selection of the best sites that were nominated here on Lawyerist. So while the sites in the past were researched and sometimes supported with other awards, these sites were often self-nominated. After leaving the post open for a while, Sam and I collected all of the nominees and sorted through to identify the best candidates. My criteria for the best websites included unique and memorable design and great content, with a bonus for interesting navigation strategies. Sam was looking for clear navigation paths and calls to action, together with great design.
Vote for the #1 Law Firm Website
We would like to hear what you think, please vote below! Without further ado, the top 11 candidates for your votes follows, with a few of my comments about what makes these sites great.
To vote, click here. Voting closes at noon on May 31st, 2012.
Law Offices of Kottler & Kottler
Great visuals, color and layout. The navigation is a bit hard to find, and the content areas are the typical boring FindLaw style with too much text and linked keywords.
Prairie Law GroupI love everything about this site – the imagery and layout, non-Flash animation and interior page layout are all spot on.
The Mahon FirmDesign: Nice use of balanced colors and themes – being classic and modern at the same time.
Content: Good font choices and easily read content areas, but overall could use more content (news, blog, etc.).
Stein SperlingDesign: Really interesting use of the grid on the home page with unique images and colors.
Content: Clear and easily navigated.
BDBL AvocatsAnother good use of the large, full-screen background image with a unique image of the firm’s office.
Harvis Marinelli Saleem & Wright
Great use of large background images, although once on the interior pages the images kind of interfere with reading the content.
Harrison PensaDesign: Great use of layout – the way things are heading in website design, shorter with larger images and more mobile-friendly and animation without Flash! Good use of color.
Content: Interior page layout is clean but well organized and contains lots of content, good social media integration.
Wallack LawClean and well designed
Military ExpertsDesign: Great use of color – not the typical patriotic colors associated with the military but still military-related, easy to use navigation and compelling, unique images.
Content: Regularly updated content, specific to their niche target market and a good combination of blog posts and news.
Stanton LawInteresting, good use of imagery and layout, but a bit distracting at the same time.
Fabian IPDesign: Great use of imagery and layout, navigation and content areas could be a little more clear and the images are links but I don’t know where I’m going.
Content: Interior text is a bit hard to read and could use some breathing space.
Vote Now!
Voting closes at noon on May 31st, 2012.
(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cakebreak/6155842863/)
Karin Conroy is a marketing consultant for law firms. Karin has an MBA from the University of California and background in design, creative direction, and marketing management. Follow her @karinconroy.
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Read the comments below or add one of your own.
All of these websites are bad. They all have broken links or glitches. Some are just plain impossible to navigate. Who nominated these? Also, it is very strange to not include a single big law website on your “list.”
They were all self-nominated, which was explained that at the beginning of the article. We would have been happy to include well designed sites from big law if they had been nominated.
I ‘m curious to know how successful each website has been relative to driving business, search engine rankings, etc. I think we can agree that no matter how visually appealing, informative, emotional, etc., a firm believes its website to be, it’s useless if it doesn’t turn eyeballs into dollars somehow.
Oh, I absolutely agree, but I think that would be extremely difficult to quantify, especially from the outside looking in.
Sam, I think John Reed is right.
With just one or two exceptions, the top nominees should be considered online marketing failures.
While most of the nominated sites are striking visually, the majority deliver little to nothing in the way of relevant keyword traffic or clients to their firms. In this regard Law firm websites are just like other online segments – over 90% of all websites are not productive.
It would be useful to attorneys and their website designers alike if keyword performance were made a significant component in future “Bests”.
It is not difficult to measure keyword traffic, and therefore visits by potential clients, reliably. I would be happy to show you how.
Good point John. I haven’t taken a look at many of these, but just looking at the Wallack Law site, for instance, it is essentially one page with the homepage meta title ‘Wallack Law’. I’d be surprised if that generated much useful online business from search.
Nevertheless good to see a collection of law firm websites for discussion as I’m sure each has their own merits and indeed their own purposes.
Nothing to rave about here.
Maybe you should have suggested a law firm website to rave about, then?
I agree with the criticisms of the choice of sites, self-nominations notwithstanding, but also agree with Sam that its to late to complain now.
I’d see it as a good basis for discussion on what makes a great site.
One point I’d make is that given that a large proportion of traffic goes initially to an internal page that each internal page should almost be considered as a stand-alone ‘landing page’ with all the inherent touch points (testimonials, accreditations etc.) and call to actions. Too much attention is given to home page designs and not enough to internal pages, particularly service pages that ought to be SEO optimized for very specific traffic segments.
In re your comment about what makes a good site: my contrarian choice for Best of this nominated group would go to Kottler & Kottler’s website. Contrarian choice because I ignore the “design” criteria that were the selection basis in favor of performance.
For me, the primary function of a law firm website is to attract new clients. http://www.kottlerlaw.com/ is the only site of the group which performs this function. All the others shown here are essentially “off” and produce no meaningful organic keyword traffic – tragic performance really.
Kottlerlaw.com delivers over $12,000 per month of keyword value. Moreover, delivers competitive keyword traffic rather than searches for the firm name as most often happens on law firm sites.
Kudos to the Kottler Law SEOs !
I don’t know… somehow “Serious attorneys for serious injuries” on a not so serious looking website doesn’t sit well with me. But then again, I’m not a client and I certainly don’t know how they feel. The best bet would be to ask visitors directly how they feel about that website.
These websites, while attractive, are useless. It was almost impossible to find content and few of the sites had any. These sites would not motivate me to call one of these lawyers and would not educate me as a consumer. Bleh.
I suppose it depends on the potential client. Some (like you) may want depth; many probably just want a phone number.
(I don’t necessarily mean to defend these websites, though.)
I dislike every one of them.
I can’t believe I said that… must have been really grumpy that day. I blame the Russian in me.
I really wish we could’ve submitted the website we created for Cosgrave Law. It absolutely beats every one of these listed. http://cosgravelaw.com/. See everyone next year!
You think so, huh?
That cosgrove site is hideous. Nice template design with horrendous use of type.
Nice to see some creativity and diversity in law firm websites. You wouldn’t think they’d be that creative and original.
As someone who is building a law site now and we’re in the design phase, I disagree with other commenters – given conservative nature of the legal world, I was pleasantly surprised to find 3 sites in this list of 10 that had good design and some modern features. It may be hard to convince my client to go with something even as creative as those, but we’re going to try to push him in the right direction.
That said, as someone else pointed out, if you think there’s “nothing to see here”, then please point out sites that were not here but should be. I for one am anxious to see more interesting concepts in this field, design/coding that are dynamic, use modern technology such as Ajax, JQuery etc, look good and yet remain in the world legal people can accept.
FYI in case you’re interested, the 3 I passed on to my designer were:
http://www.edulaw.com
http://mahonfirm.com/
http://www.steinsperling.com
Even though nominations have already happened, I’d like to add Lewis Law LLC to the mix. It’s HTML, CSS and JavaScript based as well as being responsive for mobile users.
http://lewislawllc.com/
It’s 2013, dude. Lame.