McGlinchey
With 16 offices across the U.S., McGlinchey Stafford PLLC has aggressively and strategically grown beyond its original Gulf Coast/Southeast roots. Building on more than four decades of success in both established and emerging sectors, firm leaders have seized an opportunity to double-down on their commitment to highly regulated industries, such as financial services, chemical/energy/industrial, insurance and transportation, as well as others where the firm can build a super-regional or national practice.
Competing with several other agencies for the website design, Content Pilot was hired because we brought a strategic and comprehensive approach to the engagement – strategy, design, content and technology, using our customized WordPress platform, CP Web Pilot for WordPress. At the same time, we were hired to work with ten of McGlinchey’s top industry teams on their positioning, business development and go-to-market strategies, ensuring that their unique strengths are featured and highlighted in elevated ways. We worked closely with the marketing, business development and PR team led by McGlinchey’s terrific project manager, Mary Pendarvis, every step of the way.
Very soon after Heather Morse joined the firm as Chief Business Development Officer, the lawyer-rich website committee (which included lawyers at the highest levels of the firm), determined with her that the logo and what it stood for no longer represented the firm’s image, reputation and goals of today and tomorrow. That led to a swift but thorough logo redesign, development of a meaning-filled new brand and, of course, rewriting the content and the website design.
Key firm and lawyer attributes that surfaced during the interviews with more than 70 lawyers were:
- McGlinchey has never been (and is proud of the fact that it is not) a “white-shoe” firm.
- Lawyers are friendly, relatable, accessible and likable.
- They aren’t afraid to pursue a non-linear path to solve a problem. They creatively exploit non-traditional approaches.
- Lawyer teams have agility and elasticity. They comfortably flex to what the clients’ needs are.
- Because of their depth and history in the financial services sector, lawyers have seen virtually every issue before. This creates tremendous efficiencies across all sectors and service areas.
- Clients come because of lawyers’ expertise and stay for the extraordinary value they receive.
- Lawyers make a serious promise in the tagline: We give you more. (Read more.)
- And, they deliver.
To design the new five-color logo we built on the above foundation, considering our raw materials – the words, colors, shapes and fonts. McGlinchey leaders embraced the idea of shortening the logo name to one memorable word and saw the positive message in the shield as a means to protect, safeguard, defend and shelter clients from harm. The bold sans-serif font (Campton) set the direction for the boldness of the website design – from fonts to untraditional page layouts to colors. The colors each represent qualities and attributes that tie to core values of the firm. (Read more.)
We interviewed more than 110 lawyers to write their biographies, industry and service descriptions. The bios include a first-person, here-is-how-I-do-business statement or two, a keyword-rich and relevant summary of their strengths and focus, plenty of detailed experience and a brief “Outside the Office” snapshot that shows they are well-rounded, interesting people. Believing the bio content should be viewable the second a visitor lands on the page, we feature the large, magazine-style environmental portraits on the bottom of the desktop page. The lawyer image appears on top of the mobile page. Enjoy exploring the bios – why don’t you start here? mcglinchey.com/people/chris-a-bottcher
mcglinchey.com/people/mark-s-edelman
mcglinchey.com/people/magdalen-blessey-bickford and the chair of the website committee, Joel Mohrman mcglinchey.com/people/joel-w-mohrman.
We established very high standards for compliance and ensuring that we were not exhibiting unconscious bias in the design, content or functionality. For the website, complying with the ADA accessibility (WC3 WCAG 2.1) Level AA guidelines was imperative. At every decision point, we asked ourselves the questions, “Will this comply? Is this accessible and welcoming to all visitors?”
The website is designed to feature the work of McGlinchey lawyers with an “our work” section and “featured client stories – how mcglinchey gives you more” appearing in most industry and service descriptions. In addition, because McGlinchey lawyers consistently demonstrate that they are looking at and anticipating what’s ahead, each description has a feature called, “what we see on the horizon.” Enjoy perusing these examples: mcglinchey.com/industry/education
mcglinchey.com/industry/technology mcglinchey.com/industry/transportation-and-logistics and mcglinchey.com/industry/financial-services
McGlinchey.com is intended to answer questions, elevate the remarkable expertise and experience of the McGlinchey lawyer teams and put a firm stake in the ground as to what it’s like to do business with them.
Among the great feedback McGlinchey has received are these quick stories: A recent lateral in Houston said this: “The whole website is great. It was the first intro I had to McGlinchey and it’s what made me seriously consider the firm… Having a site that makes me think ‘this is a place I could work’ is really something.
And from a summer associate: “The diversity of your attorneys (on the website) was one of the things that attracted me to the firm. I like the ‘look’ of the website overall – it stands out and doesn’t look like an old-school law firm website.” It was the second time one of the firm partners had heard that in a week!
#wegiveyoumore