Hoppin Grinsell is a community centric civil and commercial litigation firm whose practice is rooted in years of professional experience at leading New York law firms, in academia, and in empathy. They make elite representation accessible.
When Hoppin Grinsell reached out to me, they identified this problem that they would like the solve as a business and with their website:
Small businesses have a hard time finding affordable legal services for business disputes.
As a new law firm, Hoppin Grinsell needs to distinguish themselves to gain potential referrals from within the industry to find their clientele.
Given the short timeline for this project, the client provided the research for competitive and feature analyses.
After reviewing other websites and having been part of the intended audience themselves as lawyers who have made referrals, Hoppin Grinsell determined the fundamental architecture they needed to start, with a plan for an additional page for media in the future post-launch. I would design with the following sitemap:
As the Hoppin Grinsell team were in a new stage of ownership after departing from top law firms from which they came, they were distinguishing themselves as uniquely academic yet empathetic lawyers practicing in and for the great city of New York.
Hoppin Grinsell wanted to present simple, striking, and the sense that they can get clients where they need to go, but also something familiar within law.
Typically law firms have a similar design that has become generic. For example in New York City, the firms have a hero section with a skyline image. Readers including legal practitioners and small businesses have had to dig through to find particular reason for working a firm.
A minimalist grid-like layout to evoke an overall sense of New York City that would also guide the viewer through the pages. Reading through it would be as easy as walking through NYC streets.
I was inspired by Piet Mondrian as the city is a cultural hub, by New York’s streets, and by the subway. The overall design would wrap together Hoppin Grinsell’s interest in community, their humble sophistication, and sharp professional service.
For their team bios, considering that both founders have a background in educational institutions dedicated to research, the credentials are listed simply as in academia.
Throughout the website, I maintained the grid for consistency and used the color to highlight areas, background text, and actions to take. This gave space to more specific information in the black text on white background.
One thing that attracted Hoppin Grinsell about the idea of NYC is the rapid connections to many district points. We see this with having all the options to reach where we need to go such as by the subway, train, planes—even by foot.
So for the logo we kept the initials, in line with law firms, but molded the lettering to have structure and movement to illustrate the rapid connections that Hoppin Grinsell can provide in their service. Finally, we kept the colors as black and white: bold, universally classic, and professional.
After designing, I built the website on Webflow and passed it to Hoppin Grinsell for their launch. In time they would add a News section.
