It is official: Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer’s web-site is a cut above the competition. In a significant coup for its marketing department, the magic circle giant was the clear overall winner in the first benchmarking survey of the UK’s top 20 law firms’ websites. The survey, commissioned by Legal IT and carried out by Intendance, a web design, consulting and development firm, scored all 20 firms’ websites in three categories — content, usability and design — which were then combined to give an overall score.
There is good news for Beachcroft Wansbroughs and Herbert Smith as well, as they were placed second and third respectively in the benchmarking study. Scores were expressed as percentages, with 100% representing a ‘perfect’ site. Sitting comfortably on 87%, Freshfields just pipped Beachcrofts to the post by a single percentage point. It was a photo finish that could have gone three ways — Herbert Smith was only 2% adrift of the leader. However, those firms with the worst public websites, DLA and Addleshaw Goddard, have a lot of catching up to do.
Within the three categories, Freshfields and Slaughter and May achieved the highest score for content with 91%. Simmons & Simmons was highest for usability with 88% and Eversheds’ site was the slickest, topping the design category with 96%.
Survey methodology
Intendance ensures its scoring system — which has gained credibility in published surveys of smaller law firms and barristers’ chambers during the past three years — reflects the increasingly high standards demanded by website users and strikes a balance between an objective and a subjective assessment of each website.
The 20 firms were selected as those with the highest number of fee earners. To carry out a direct comparison between the top 20 survey and last month’s survey of 100 smaller law firms (the Solicitors 100), the assessment and scoring techniques were identical.
Beyond the accepted minimum standard for a commercial website, Intendance has not attempted to assess the quality or relevance of the website content itself. To reflect the website design standard for screen resolution, all websites were viewed on an 800 by 600 pixel screen setting.
Top three websites in detail
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer
The first impressions are of an elegant website with a nicely uncluttered home page. Content is available in both English and German. There is a keyword search facility and site map available and the ‘Client Net’ section offers a variety of extranet services. A single image on the home page changes when the browser is refreshed.
Publications are available to download in Adobe pdf format — also in several languages. Freshfields did incur a slight penalty for heavy use of pdf, because the files can be bulky and visitors are required to download the Acrobat reader software before reading the document — which can be a problem when operating from behind a corporate firewall.
The media release subscription service is a good idea and colour-coded menus improve the ease of navigation. Office contact details and a downloadable map are readily available and lawyers’ CVs and lawyer location maps can either be viewed online or easily printed.
Freshfields’ UK graduate recruitment relies heavily on a Flash introduction — which reduces its appeal to some users and has similar download issues to Acrobat — but on the plus side, the information provided is extensive.
The assessors awarded points for the links feature under the careers pages, the recruitment brochure and application form, and the down-loadable brochure of the firm.
Beachcroft Wansbroughs
At first glance, this appears to be a good, attractive, professional site. It makes good use of dynamic menus, but the Flash-reliant home page was a negative point, as was the need for users to do a lot of scrolling on most pages. The site uses ‘breadcrumbs’ and colour-coded menus; features a client login facility and a good site map. There is also a useful feedback form available.
The site provides contact details for all offices and a map in pdf format. Beachcroft’s application form is available in both pdf and Microsoft Word formats.
Herbert Smith
This is an attractively laid-out website with the added bonus that most pages are printer-friendly.
Users can subscribe to publications and view contact details for all offices, but if there are maps for each office, most are not easy to find. There is a separate navigation menu for graduate recruitment and you can order brochures from the site, which also presents a lot of information and advice to help students with their applications.
The FAQ section is useful and an online application form is supplemented by a printable pdf version. There is an alumni login facility. On the downside, most pages require judicious scrolling.
Content
High scores were awarded to websites that met more than the minimum requirement for a good legal website. Apart from including information about the firm, the partners and their areas of practice, credit was given to websites that have upto-date news, events and seminars pages, a publications section and links to other websites of interest. Credit was also given for websites that had multilingual pages and other features such as an extranet facility. Access for visually impaired visitors was also assessed, using the widely used ‘Bobby AAA’ guidelines and the existence of a text-only version of the website.
The average score for content was 82%. Slaughter and May and Freshfields shared the highest score of 91%. Irwin Mitchell — the only website in the sample to be ‘Bobby A’ compliant (none achieved AAA compliance) — followed closely with 90%. Allen & Overy was placed in fourth position with 89%.
Freshfields and Slaughter and May both have up-to-date news, seminars, events and press release pages. The two firms’ websites also include a down-loadable brochure and multilingual pages. Ashurst received the lowest score for content: 73%.
Additional information
. All 20 sites had a news and seminars page, of which 17 were up-to-date.
. Fifteen websites had extensive recruitment pages.
. All sites had a contact page with at least one map.
. Seven websites featured a downloadable version of the firm’s brochure.
. Eight websites were (partly) multilingual.
Usability
The average score for usability was 76% — the weakest of the three categories. High scores were awarded based on the ease of finding and extracting information and took into consideration a range of criteria, including the profile of the web-site on the search engine Google, the speed of file download, the technical design of the navigation menus, the presence of a site map, the need to scroll pages and the ability to print web pages.
Simmons & Simmons was the top scorer in this category with 88%, followed closely by Wragge & Co with 86%. Beachcrofts and Herbert Smith followed closely behind in joint third position, scoring 84%. Simmons met most of the requirements for usability. However, its website does not make use of dynamic menus which greatly aid navigation through any website with extensive content (all websites in this sample have extensive content). DLA and Irwin Mitchell achieved the lowest score in this category with 64%.
Additional information:
. Five websites relied on a home button embedded in their logo (they have no prominent home button), which can slow navigation.
. Only nine websites employed use of dynamic menus. For the rest, this oversight increases the number of clicks between pages.
. Seven websites do not have a site map.
. Only five sites are ‘printer friendly’ on all pages.
. Five websites were not ‘printer-friendly’ pages at all (Irwin Mitchell, Cameron McKenna, Slaughter and May , Ashurst and Clifford Chance).
. Speed of download was important. Downloads from Allen & Overy and Hammonds appeared unduly slow.
Design
The average score for design was 82%. High scores were awarded in this category for fundamentals such as the clarity of text, colour and balance between use of menus, text and images. Websites that require the use of the animation software Flash, or were built using a ‘frames’ structure, were penalised because of download issues and search engine issues respectively. Wherever possible, the expert panel assessed design on an objective, quantifiable basis, but by definition design assessment does involve a degree of subjectivity. Personal opinion was limited to about 10% of the total score for this category and final scores were always agreed by at least two judges.
Eversheds received the highest score in this category with 96%. The website design was clean, simple and uncluttered. The website looked attractive: use of colour was good and heavily contrasting colours were avoided. Dynamic images enhance the visual impact of the website.
In this category Eversheds was closely followed by Freshfields with 92% and Herbert Smith with 91%. Linklaters and Camerons followed with 88%. DLA received the worst score in this category, trailing the field with a mere 66%.
Additional information:
. DLA, Addleshaw & Goddard, Norton Rose and Slaughter and May were all penalised for having frames-based websites.
. Seven websites used Flash, so were penalised.
. Pinsents used no images on its website except for the watermark background, so it was somewhat featureless in terms of design.
Top 20 websites and Solicitors’ 100 Survey comparison Before Freshfields, Beachcrofts and Herbert Smith get too used to resting on their laurels, here is the uncomfortable truth: they were all beaten by a medium-sized law firm. Collyer-Bristow, which has only 89 fee earners and a tiny fraction of the big boys’ marketing budgets, beat them all with an overall score of 91% — 4% higher than Freshfields. The comparison was made by putting the top 20 results side-by-side with the Solicitors’ 100 survey, published by Intendance in April this year. If Fresh-fields had been a subject of that survey it would have come in second.
In the content category, Freshfields and Collyer-Bristow are level pegging at the top, with 91%. With 91%, Payne Hicks Beach beat Simmons by 3% in the usability stakes. Eversheds’ score of 96% for design is four points below Collyer-Bristow’s perfect score of 100%. DLA, with 72%, would have been placed in joint 25th position in the Solicitors’ 100 Survey.
Unlike the Solicitors’ Survey, in which content was the weakest category, usability is the weakest category for the 20. Perhaps this reflects both the extensive resources that a large law firm can rely upon to populate a website, while also highlighting the problem of how to organise and present such an extensive range of content without overwhelming the website user.
Bobby Compliance — website accessibility for disabled visitors
None of the top 20 websites were ‘Bobby AAA’ compliant. Only Irwin Mitchell claims to have achieved ‘Bobby A’ compliance. In the Solicitors’ 100, Payne Hicks Beach (www.paynehicksbeach.co.uk) and Burton Copeland (www.burtoncopeland.co.uk) had a text-only version of their website for the benefit of visually impaired users.
Additional comments on the top 20 websites
Most of the websites had a client extranet facility, as should be expected of them. A number of firms provide advanced search facilities in addition to standard search. Online services appear on a number of sites. Most of the top 20 firms have dedicated micro-sites for careers and graduate recruitment. However, most sites require users to install Flash software to view them properly. This insistence on using Flash is actually viewed by many experts as something of an outdated approach.
Also, very few external links were featured on the sites, which could be construed as a narrow-minded strategy.
James Tuke is a consultant at Intendance, a website design and management firm.
News
Website Survey: Top of the class
Published: 22/07/2004 00:00
Email article | Comment on this article | Sign up to News Alerts
Job of the Week
Inhouse Intellectual Property - London
Job of the Week
Inhouse Aviation - Ireland or Amsterdam
Quick Job Search