Beveridge & Diamond

The firm: Beveridge & Diamond is the largest and most prominent U.S. law firm focused on environmental law and litigation.

The challenge: Environmental law is rapidly evolving from traditional “smokestack,” “drainpipe,” and land contamination issues. Technological advancements, new U.S. and international regulations, pressures from customers and non-government organizations (NGOs), and a focus on sustainability throughout the economy create new challenges and opportunities for the firm and its clients. To thrive in this new business landscape, Beveridge & Diamond needed a website that would not only reaffirm its longstanding position as the leading environmental law firm, but also project the firm as nimble, forward-thinking, and on the forefront of emerging issues—indeed, defining the new era of environmental law. The firm also wanted to amplify the presentation of its environmental and tort litigation practice, which encompasses over half the firm’s work, and to better explain how it assists clients with both regulatory and litigation issues.

Your Honor Awards

The Beveridge & Diamond website was honored as the Winner for the “Tech Management” category at the 2019 LMA Mid-Atlantic Your Honor Awards

Horizon Interactive Awards

The Beveridge & Diamond website was honored as Best In Category (Legal) by the 17th Annual Horizon Interactive Awards

AVA Digital Awards

BDlaw.com was honored as a Gold Winner in 2019 by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals

Brand Refresh

To better establish the firm as modern and dynamic, the Beveridge & Diamond logo was evolved. The refreshed logo was optimized for use on digital platforms, and it features brighter colors, a streamlined form, and sleek typography. The firm wanted to retain both its diamond-shaped icon as a visual cue to the firm name, and its use of green and blue, which represent land, water, and sky in the logos of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and many state and international agencies.

Interactive Homepage Marquee

To convey the breadth of the firm’s competencies, especially around emerging areas of law, an interactive homepage feature was created that allows users to mouse-over hotspots on carousel photos to reveal information about the firm’s capabilities. Each expanded hotspot also includes a link to additional information within the site.

Focus on People

To reflect its values of diversity and inclusion, the firm wished to place more emphasis on the personalities of its lawyers and their deep engagement in the subject matter, which would also encourage a strong emotional connection with website visitors. To help accomplish this, new portrait photos were shot by Zinn Photography with creative direction by Great Jakes. All firm lawyers were photographed with both a traditional head-on portrait and a second “action” shot. Bios were also reimagined by creating a prominent lead-in headline field and optional pull quote sidebars so that lawyers could quickly state their core expertise and focus and include additional tidbits about themselves, if they wished. Recognizing the critical client-service roles of its other personnel, the firm added names and contact details of legal administrative assistants to lawyer bios and created bios for paralegals and firm management.

Attorney, Service, and Industry Microsites

The website features Attorney Microsites—a unique approach to lawyer bios that was pioneered by Great Jakes. Attorney microsites are, essentially, small websites for each attorney that fit within the firm’s larger website. Attorney microsites can be customized to the specific business-development needs of each attorney and contain any number of pages or type of content. For a great example of how the firm is using the attorney microsite functionality, see Aaron Goldberg. Our microsite technology was also deployed for the firm’s Services and Industries. For a great example of Services, visit Air, Climate Change, and for a great example of Industries, visit Renewable Energy.

Firm Highlights on Homepage

The bottom of the homepage features a firm highlights section that randomly teases selected content found deep within the site. The highlights feature always includes one “Featured Attorney” (in keeping with the firm’s focus on people) as well as reputation-enhancing content such as Whitepapers, Case Studies, Articles, and News.

Dynamic Content Teasing

The website’s backend is equipped with Great Jakes’s new User Engagement Toolbox. This allows the firm to easily create and manage sidebar content, including “suggested content” teasers that keep site visitors engaged (and dissuade them from making a hasty exit). The firm can manually curate suggested content, or the feature can be set to “automatic mode,” which uses a proprietary algorithm to suggest relevant content. This was important to the firm, as it wanted to include many calls-to-action for visitors and to showcase possibly relevant additional capabilities and resources.

Resource Centers for Hot Topics

To demonstrate the firm’s expertise in cutting-edge areas of the law, Great Jakes’s microsite technology was used to create a series of “Resource Centers.” Each Resource Center contains a repository of reputation-enhancing content related to a new or emerging area of law. The firm can quickly launch new Resource Centers via Great Jakes's content management system as developments merit. For a great example, check out the West Coast Environmental Resource Center.

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