No law firm can today be without a presence on the internet. It is clear that our clients, colleagues and other stakeholders use the internet not only as a source of information but as the primary source of information, about who we are and what we do. It was with that single focus in mind that, in the early part of 2008 we embarked upon a total update of the MacRoberts website.

Since our first site in 1996 much had changed, both in the firm and in the way in which websites were structured; indeed the only thing that hadn’t changed since the 1996 site were some partner photographs. We therefore formed a small sub-group comprising 3 partners, with IT and marketing support and embarked upon a detailed tender process. We (the partner group) knew what we wanted; we and our ultimately preferred supplier, Crown Digital, had spent a vast amount of time visiting other sites (we must have looked at several hundred different sites), talking to colleagues (both legal and non-legal) and to our clients and friends about legal sites that they had visited – lawyers are in fact significant users of other law firms’ websites – and noting what we and they had liked and what they had disliked on each site. It became clear that the “likes” list was much the smaller.

Many sites seemed to prefer a colour palette of bold primary shades drawn from pre-school art class; some had flashing images which seemed unrelated to law and many seemed to consider it necessary to give all the information they had on the front page with the result that the overall look appeared confused and cluttered. Finally, many firms seemed to believe that contacting them was to be a form of Darwinian selection with only the brightest potential client able to find a phone number on the site.

We hope that we have managed to avoid these criticisms, although we may have created others given the necessarily subjective nature of any website. We wanted to have our overall theme of “Strength” reflected throughout the site; so we commissioned a leading Scottish photographer, Craig Aitchison, to produce photographs showing bold Scottish landscapes for our main pages and used other related imagery on the sub-pages.

With the exception of some archived news items, everything is three clicks or less from the home page; and there are contact details links and phone numbers on every page on the site.

However, this was not enough for attainment of our vision. Through our everyday surfing on the net we had seen non-legal sites with ideas which we could incorporate into our site to provide a better experience for visitors and also to complement our corporate social responsibility policies. Basically, we wanted to make the information on the site, and which we produce, available in as many different ways to users as possible. We encourage all visitors, whether client or solicitor to access and receive all the material which we produce; we impose no filtering and restriction and we know that many lawyers in other firms are now the recipients of our legal e-updates.

But this was not enough; many potential users are sight impaired and the amount of information on a lawyer’s website is often daunting and unfriendly. In our researches, we had stumbled upon a company, Voice-Corp, based in Sweden and the Netherlands, which specialises in web-based speech enabling applications and following discussions with them we became the first law firm in the world to utilise their ReadSpeaker technology; by clicking on the logo on each page, the page is dynamically read to the user.

Having started on this process, we discussed with Voice-Corp how else we could enhance our offering and utilise their technology and decided to tailor their AudioNews software to enable the e-updates, news and events notifications which we had on our website to provide the information in the form of podcasts which users could tailor to their interests and thereafter have delivered to them by personalised RSS feeds or to their MP3 player or iPod. All pages on the site are RSS enabled. Whilst there has been some scepticism initially, those who have heard the podcasts have found them a useful additional way of receiving timely legal information.

Finally, one of the most heard criticisms of websites came from users who preferred to print out the information they had discovered for reference, to share with colleagues or to read on the train. Whilst all looked well, when printed the information appeared all over several pages and was almost impossible to follow. We wanted the information to print in a clear and useful manner. In our research we had discovered a site which provided just what we needed in this regard – Leeds firm Clarion – and following discussions with them and their designers, decided that their solution could not be ported to us for technical reasons, and we set about writing our own application on the website as MacR2Go. By clicking on the logo, a personalised booklet of MacRoberts information is produced in PDF which always includes our Home Page, About Us and Contact information – all prepared, formatted and tailored to the user’s requirement.

After 9 months’ of work, the site went live on Christmas Eve. We are still adding to it and changing things – there are probably additional pages every week; users within the firm are vying to add content and we have had thousands of visitors and hundreds of new subscribers for our interactive services.

What lessons have we learned? The project needs to be partner led. Set out a clear vision of what the firm wants – whilst marketing input may be helpful, if there is not partner sign-off and drive, the site is unlikely to achieve its objectives. Decide on graphics early on – what message do you want to convey and what imagery will convey it. Don’t underestimate the time required to complete the site. Keep the steering group small (and the process for retrieving information from others simple and effective) – before we had finished only three partners had seen the whole site; getting sign off from 43 was difficult enough when it came to their photographs! Oh yes, and have fun!

David Flint is a partner in Scottish firm MacRoberts. He specialises in Competition Law, Corporate Recovery, Technology and Media & Communications.

Email david.flint@macroberts.com.