I’ve been building websites since 1997 and I started building custom designs for attorneys in 2008. I’ve worked on a little over 30 attorney sites and yes I’ve actually done enough of them to have nightmares on occasion. Well it’s usually when I’m behind schedule that I get stressed out about a lawyer site… most of the time I can appreciate them like an art form and I feel peaceful looking at a really well balanced design.

A question prospects always ask me is to describe the custom design process as it pertains to an attorney site. As I’ve gone around the block 30 times on the design and build cycle I’ve got it down to a science.

If a prospect approaches me then I try to answer their questions with the big picture in mind and answer specific questions and describe details with the “right amount” of information. I can talk for hours or days about web design so I tell a prospect right in the beginning that I can give them as much or as little information as they prefer.

If I’m bidding on an Elance job I submit an initial page of text that is tried and tested… but specifically configured with the particular bid in mind. I do a lot of research before I take out the template and modify it for the specific job.

I begin to exchange emails with the prospect and I make sure to respond to every question as fast as possible. I give a lot of helpful info to the prospect and I spend a lot of time on the bidding process. I doubt that any other firms that are Elance providers spend as much time as I do working with attorney prospects and no one has as much experience with the genre. I’m successful with a high percentage of my bids.

After I win a bid I’ve usually exchanged 3 or 4 emails with the client either in straight email (when they approach me)… or in the Elance “work room”. I then try to setup a conference call with the principal and anyone else in their office that may be able to help with the project. The conference calls usually last 30 to 60 minutes and I describe my process and I answer every question. I also ask a lot of questions myself. And I take notes.

After the initial conference call I produce the “Design and Content Worksheet”. It’s usually 5 or 6 pages long in MS Word format and it has a lot of details about the proposed site. I add all the information I’ve gleaned from the client such as name and address fields, and various terms of the contract like are they hosting with me or on their own platform. The client has to fill in a lot of questions on the Design and Content Worksheet but the most important is “give me 3 website you really like and 1 website you really hate”. I give them links to hundreds of beautiful high end designs that I find in portfolios and I ask them to pick sites that I can use as an inspiration for their custom site. I don’t just copy websites. I borrow design elements at times, color palettes sometimes, typography, themes, anything I can identify or the client can identify as being functional and relevant and artistically stunning when possible. The Design and Content Worksheet becomes a guideline that speeds the overall process of building a custom website. It also contains terms that may be thought of as part of a written contract although it remains a guideline more than a contract.

When the client has completed the worksheet, I begin a PhotoShop comp and I hand it to the artist. I’ve worked with a half dozen web artists over the last 3 years. To make an attorney site it requires a lot of conservative foundational and traditional elements, but there is a creative flair that makes the design pop. And no matter how much a person like myself studies and trains to act like an artist, there’s part of the job that just can’t be learned. There has to be natural talent. A good web artist can look at a PhotoShop comp and tell you in 30 seconds what’s wrong with it and in another 30 seconds recommend 5 changes to make it better. When the artist has completed the comp it goes back to the client for challenges. I sometimes add 4 to 6 backgrounds and post the various comps in a NextGen Gallery so the client can comparison shop different overall looks. Sometimes I just send the comp without adding the comparison backgrounds just to get the reaction so far. I recommend to the client that she or he ask everyone in the office what they think and to ask relatives and friends as well. The better the comp is the faster t will be to get the site built and online.

So after we agree on the comp I build the site. It can take me up to 4 or 5 full days to code the most complex designs. There is a 2,000 line programming file called the “CSS Stylesheet” and I’m usually intimate with 2/3 of all the lines in that file when I’m done building a custom attorney website. The CSS Stylesheet takes anywhere from 2 hours when there the site is fairly standard and simple to maybe 16 hours for a site that requires a lot of customization. And the images can take up to another 16 hours when I have to do a lot of work on them. For one thing it can take a long time to pick out the appropriate royalty free stock images from iStockPhoto or Dreamstime. Then I do all sorts of things to change the size and crop the images and add text. After all the smoke clears I ask the artist for her opinion on the layout and color matches I’ve made to her original vision. I’ve worked with the client a lot since she gave me the comp at this point and I can tell her new requirements from the client and explain myself when she asks me about things that vary from her design. Then I present the site to the client and I ask for their opinions and challenges.

After we are agreed on the build, I add content the client gave me. If the client wants to learn how to add and modify content I have a teaching session with them on their site or I setup a special site I made just for them to practice. Invariably the client has learned about a lot of new features since we agreed on the Design and Content Worksheet, and they ask me to add new things to the site. It’s part of the job and I’m really educating the client all along and I want them to be super satisfied that they are getting a truly custom unlimited website. They think of new pages to add, new choices for the menu system, new links and images. We put a lot of time into that Design and Content Worksheet but on a custom design it’s expected to have a lot of new features added before we wrap it up.

When the client is satisfied with the build, we take out the blocks I had installed to keep Google out. We launch the site and add it to the main index of Google, Yahoo, and MSN / Bing.

The job has now reached a milestone… it’s launched and live… but we can expect a lot of new content to be added over the next couple months and I’m ready with 24 hour turnaround on any new request.