Firm is still learning the Ropes of Cyberspace-Review of Ropes and Gray web site
Kyros Web Site Kritique
Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly December 13, 1999
In August I reviewed several web sites including www.ropesgray.com.The review was critical of various aspects of the site and Ropes subsequently (perhaps in response to the review!) posted a completely new site. With a sharper and cleaner style Ropes has tried to shed its legacy of grainy graphics and tiny logos. Unfortunately, while the new site delivers a fresher look it suffers from a variety of other maladies.
The home page welcomes viewers to Ropes and Gray, although there is no indication that this is a law firm nor is there a phone number or address. The page features five brightly colored clip art photos that correspond to the sections of the site: 'Associate Hiring',' Firm Overview', 'Practice Areas', 'Professional Directory' and 'Offices'. The photos are fairly attractive but do not conjure up images of the law. The photos are, in fact, intended to relate each area of the site.'Professional Directory' is matched with a photo of a stencil letter A drop shadowed with the letter Z. Other photos do not work as well-such as a bisected nautilus shell (a sea mollusk related to octopuses but having a spiral shell divided into chambers) bathed in orange light that is associated with 'Practice Areas.'
The photos are enhanced with a javascript 'mouseover' effect. When a viewer sweeps the mouse over each photo in Netscape 3 the border changes to yellow and the corresponding category listed at the top of the site is highlighted. In Internet Explorer 4 the effect causes half of the nautilus and other photos to disappear.
My guess is neither of these effects is what the designer hoped for, but apparently the site was not tested on different browsers (the software that reads and displays web pages) which will display javascripts differently (or in some instances not at all). A web page designer has the frustrating task of making sure the content of a web site works and looks fine even though it will work and look different depending on what browser it's viewed from. Approximately 58% of the traffic to the law firm sites in Massachusetts is viewed in all versions of Internet Explorer; Netscape viewers account for about 34%, the remaining 8% viewers use a wide variety of browsers with such names as Slurp (about 1%) and googlebot (about .5%). (These percentages are based on data kept on about 40 web sites I maintain).
'Associate Hiring' is the most developed area on the site with 15 subcategories. Recruitment is obviously important and the firm has clearly chosen to highlight this area of the site. The links include useful information such as on campus interview dates, decent copy about firm culture, Boston area info and a picture of a candidates potential interviewers. The firm is guessing eager law students are going online to read up on the firm before interviewing rather than consulting Martindale-Hubbell-which is a good bet. Unfortunately, the site also anticipates that the potential candidate is using a high speed internet connection-which is not a good bet. The 'Associate Hiring' page is a staggering 305K and took several minutes to fully load using a standard dial-up connection. This is an unacceptable download speed for any web page and attributable to 4 rotating photos and a java enhanced menu bar.
The remaining sections deliver the expected firm brochure-type information. The 'Professional Directory' is reasonably comprehensive and each attorney listing has email, a bio and black and white photo. The directory uses a simple alphabetical listing which is functional, but requires somewhat inefficient scrolling. 'Practices Areas' contains a brief one or two paragraph description of the relevant area. 'Offices' retains the nice stylized map of the previous site.
Ropes needs to take another look to improve its site further.
