Critiquing Some Local Web Sites
By K. William Kyros, Esq.
Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly August 9, 1999
Boston Lawyer K. William Kyros knows a good web site when he sees one.
After all, it's his business.
Kyros runs a company that designs sites specifically geared toward law
firms, and has "helped dozens of Massachusetts lawyers and law firms
establish their offices online."
Recently, Kyros agreed to critique the sites of several law firms of various
sizes for Lawyers Weekly based on style, content, user friendliness, and
download speed.
In viewing the sites, Kyros did not design any of the sites below) notes
that he used a dial-up modem with a connection speed of 28.8 kps.
Ropes & Gray http://www.ropesgray.com
The prestigious Boston firm needs to take a look at its web site. The home page weighs in at an impressive 115K, unfortunately my modem is unimpressed and the download speed is agonizingly slow. The cause of this slowness is a background graphic of Olympian-sized marble columns which are grainy. The columns dwarf the tiny Ropes & Gray logo which seems lost on the page.
The site architecture is straightforward with five areas to choose from: About Ropes & Gray, Legal Departments, Professional Directory, Associate Hiring and Offices. I visit Offices first which gives driving directions to One International Place (good luck) and a nice stylized circular map of downtown Boston. I then hit Associate Hiring to see what's available, but I have no luck as the page features tons of information about the firm but no job listings. I move to the Professional Directory to look up the two people I know at Ropes. The site bats .500 and one of them is there, complete with a bio and decent black and white photo.
The internal site structure is clean and makes use of a web site design element called frames. Frames divide the content on an individual web page into sections. They are frequently used to preserve a navigation bar (with links) on the screen, while allowing other material to appear in the body of the page. The navigation bar situated on the left works but its greenish faded color looks tired. The link headings are in html text rather than created as images which saves on download time but at the cost of aesthetics.
The site exhibits the signs of an established firm that wants to exploit the web but misses the opportunity. The site fails to deliver any substantive information such as articles or casework and its style fails to impress.
Style: B
Content: C+
User friendliness: A-
Download Speed: C
Berman, Devalerio & Pease
http://www.bermanesq.com
Berman, Devalerio & Pease is an expertly designed, fast-loading, and well-structured site. The content is well written, clearly organized and nearly every page has a readable layout. The pink and light blue color palette is unexpected but delivers a crisp, professional feel.
The firm specializes in securities class actions, stockholder derivative suits, and class actions on behalf of consumers. The site serves dual purposes, functioning as an information resource as well as an interactive tool to alert potential class members of pending litigation. Four sections of the site: What's News, Investor Cases, Consumer Cases and Insurance Cases feature recent lawsuits. These sections summarize the alleged misconduct, identify the relevant period for standing, and invite people to contact the firm and join the class. The site also includes a concise and readable Q & A section.
The first phrase in the html title, the title that displays at the top of your browser is, "Class Action." This indicates the designer of the site is familiar the search engine indexing techniques. Through strategic placement of this phrase, the site is more likely to be located in a key word search for search for "class action." The site also includes Meta-Tags, hidden text the search engines use to classify the site. The firms Meta-tags are "class action, class litigation, securities fraud, financial frauds, accounting frauds, overstatements of earnings, lawyers, corporate law, consumer fraud, Boston law firms, 10b(5), cooking the books."
An excellent site with timely and informative content.
Style: A-
Content: A
User Friendliness: A-
Download speed: B+
Donahue & Grolman
http://www.d-and-g.com
This site opens auspiciously with a nice graphic of a 19th century orator and a java enhanced enter button that undulates. Unfortunately, the site goes on to commit a series of serious web design errors.
The main index page consists of four large graphics and no html text. Designing layout and text on the web is very different from designing for print media. A web site must strike a balance between graphics and html text due to bandwidth limitations and the nature of the web. Although the web supports bigger and more complex graphic displays, graphics cannot be efficiently indexed by the search engines. Because it contains no text files, Donahue and Grolman's index page is invisible to the search engines. This problem could be mitigated by inserting Meta-tags (text in the html code), but the page contains none. Additionally, since this page uses huge graphics, it is extremely slow to load using a modem.
Once the main page is loaded it is fairly attractive. The links use a javascript know as a "mouseover" effect. When the user passes the mouse over the link it changes from blue to orange-green.
The seven sections of the site are creatively titled and are intended to target prospective clients. The site invites the user to "Attend Virtual Law School" and take a "HomeBuyers Quiz". The virtual law school page has a rich background that emulates notebook paper. The page contains brief descriptions of basic legal areas, although it refers to these as "basic tenets of civil law."
The Home Buyers quiz consists of about 50 yes or no questions of varying relevance to a real estate transaction. The button at the bottom which looks like a submit button, in fact resets the 50 questions I just spent several minutes filling out (I hit it by mistake). More disappointing the "quiz" turns out to be little more than a fruitless exercise. There are no results or answers only a message that if I answered no to three or more of the questions I should call.
The site architecture requires the user to repeatedly return to a single page and some pages do not provide a link to the home page. Generally, every page on a web site should contemplate that a user may find the page independent of the home page and provide links to the other sections of the site. The pages on this site are effectively dead ends.
Although this site contains some good ideas and exhibits creativity, it's flaws make it very difficult to navigate and use.
Style: B+
Content: A-
User Friendliness: C
Download speed: C-
Cox & Cox
http://www.appealslaw.com
If you are undertaking an appeal this site is a good starting point. Here you can find information about how appeals work, the full text of 30 briefs filed by the firm, and links to federal appellate decisions.
The site is functional and delivers great content. The architecture follows a logical progression beginning with: "How appeals work the basics for nonlawyers," to "How to handle an appeal the basics for attorneys new to appeals," both essays are easy to follow.
The briefs featured on the site look useful, unfortunately they have a teal blue background that distracts the reader and is a real eyesore. The site highlights an entrapment case the firm successfully handled, U.S. v. Johnson, including the trial brief, motions and news articles.
While the site delivers content, it could use a facelift. There are no graphics with the exception of a gray circle and the small blue and red buttons. The site also lacks Meta-tags which would allow many of the search engines to index it.
Every page contains links at the bottom that enable the user to navigate to any other area of the site, and cleverly draw the user from the top to the bottom of every page.
Overall a very solid site.
Style: B-
Content: A
User Friendliness: B
Download speed: A
Mayo Law Offices
http://www.mayolawfirm.com
A solo practitioner with a specialized tax planning practice, Todd Mayo has an informative and tasteful site. Divided into five main areas: "Nonprofit Organizations", "Philanthropy", "Land Conservation", "Attorney Profile," and the obligatory contact information page, the site is geared towards other lawyers and sophisticated clients.
"Nonprofit Organizations" contains no general introductory material but jumps right into the topic with a technical case summary of a Seventh Circuit opinion of an important decision affecting tax-exempt organizations. The page contains links to IRS regs and several short commentaries by Attorney Mayo on the impact of recent case law on the tax-exempt status of charitable organizations.
The section titled "Philanthropy" opens with the same summary as "Nonprofit Organizations," which creates confusion, especially since there are no graphics or headings to differentiate the pages. However, the section is loaded with information about case law and regulatory matters. This page would benefit from better organization, since its length requires users to scroll through the materials to find what they are looking for.
Links are provided in the upper left hand corner of each page. This placement makes them easy to find, but forces all of the text throughout the site to be right justified. This unnecessary alignment affects the usability of the information since any text printed directly from the site will be similarly aligned.
A competent site with a good deal of information.
Style: B
Content: A-
User Friendliness: B-
Download speed: A
All contents copyright K. W. Kyros, PC
Website designed and hosted by Lawyerviews.com