Set in Style

Only rarely do I find a law firm with professional-looking publications — I mean publications that appear as if they were designed and produced by pros.

Take a look at this newsletter published by Weil Gotschal. Take a good look at the page layout and the type. It may not be the slickest design in the world, but it’s solid.

The body copy is set in Stone Serif, and the heads are set in Helvetica. (I would have chosen Stone Sans for the heads to better complement the body.) Italics are used appropriately, and none of the type is underlined. Hyphenation is used to break lines (almost unheard of among law firms), so word spacing is very consistent.

And — to top if off — the newsletter (a PDF document) contains links that actually work! That’s a very rare occurrence in law firm publishing.

Unfortunately not all of the links are set correctly. For instance, if you click an attorney’s e-mail address, nothing happens. Nothing at all*.

And the newsletter contains an extra-special bonus feature — it’s written for a broad audience and it’s well written.

I give it a B⁺.

Now, compare the newsletter to this Weil Briefing. Take a look at the last two pages of the briefing. And try the links on the last page.

This one gets a C ^–.

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What should happen when an attorney’s e-mail address is clicked? For the sake of readers — including potential clients — and Weil’s attorneys, clicking an attorney’s e-mail address should open a new e-mail message with an appropriate subject line. This saves readers a bit of work, and — when one of Weil’s attorneys gets an e-mail with that subject line — he already knows what it’s about. E-mails with that subject line might be routed to a particular attorney for initial review.

Note: Any firm can claim (as many do) that it makes good use of modern technology. But when it fails to demonstrate that, the claim rings hollow.

I just reviewed this client alert that (not which) was published by Winston & Strawn. It has some good qualities, and some not-so-good qualities.

What struck me first about this alert was the typography. While most firms make the mistake of setting body copy in a sans-serif face, Winston & Strawn’s alerts have a much more professional appearance: heads are set in a sans-serif face, and the body copy is set in a serif face.

The second thing that struck me was the complete lack of hyphenation to justify the copy. (For some reason, law firms just don’t like to justify copy the way the professional publishers do.)

The third thing that struck me was the verbiage at the bottom of the alert. To obtain the alert, I simply clicked a link at the firm’s Web site. So it seemed very odd that the verbiage offered me a way to stop receiving alerts from the firm.

Right above that verbiage was this curious comment:

If you would like to review your contact information, please click here.

I clicked the link, and the following appeared:

We’re sorry, but something seems to have gone wrong:

The contact and event information could not be decoded.

If you got to this page by clicking on a link in an email, then the link information in the email may have been split across two lines.You may be able to copy the link from the email and paste it into your browser.

OK. The firm thinks it e-mailed the alert to me. So I did this simple test. I clicked the firm’s logotype at the top of the alert, and guess what? Nothing happened! (Had this alert been produced by pros, the logotype would link to the firm’s Web site.)

I went back to the firm’s Publications page and clicked the PDF icon for the alert, and guess what? The PDF version of the alert is an HTML file!

Just for the heck of it, I chose to view the PDF version of another alert*, and guess what? No links at all! Not even to the firm’s Web site.

Winston & Strawn’s a firm with some chutzpah: it claims it’s one of “the most technologically advanced law firms in the world.” It’s alerts say otherwise.
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* In a tribute to the days before the IBM Selectric became so popular, that alert uses underlines, rather than italics,for emphasis.

Most plepoe can.  

And most people can read this:

Gevin teh wya we raed, the oerdr of the ltteres in wrods dseno’t mtaetr. Waht’s iproamtnt is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it. Tihs is bcuseae poeple don’t raed each leettr invidiudally, but eahc wrod as a wlohe.

And you tghuhot corerct slpeling was so ipmorantt!  

Now, if you work in the marketing department of a large law firm, and you’re responsible for the design or production of your firm’s client alerts and newsletters, you might find this exercise instructive:

Make a copy of the garbled text (above). Then, set it alone on a page. Set it in 14-pt type, and a column 6 inches wide (there should be 6 to 8 lines of copy).

On one page, set it all upper-case; on another, set it all lower-case; on another, set it mixed-case in Times-Roman; and on another, set it mixed-case in Arial.

Then, do a survey. Stop coworkers in the hallway and ask them to read one version or another.

Do they prefer to read garbled copy in the serif face, or the sans-serif face?

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There’s a good reason why professional publishing companies almost always set body copy in a serif face, rather than a sans-serif face and that’s because it’s easier to read.

(Go to your local bookstore and browse through some magazines and books published by the pros; you won’t find much body copy set in a sans-serif face.)

Now, take a look at your firm’s client alerts and newsletters and ask yourself this: why in the world are youy setting body copy in a sans-serif face? The pros don’t do it, so why should you?

When you find the answer, please let me know (by commenting below).

Years ago, when Apple’s Macintosh made it possible for the masses to become typesetters and page designers, the pros laughed at the ransom-note nature of the results. The masses were mixing and matching typefaces and design elements in a way no well-trained typesetter or artist would, and the results were often hideous.

Now, the masses are designing Web sites and blogs and — once again — many of the results cause the pros to cringe.

So . . . if you’re setting type (say, for your firm’s client alerts) or you’re designing Web sites or blogs, you might want to get hip to why the pros consistently do things the way they do.

One good source is Usability News, published by the Department of Psychology at Witchita State University.

Here are a few articles that the marketing folks at big law firms might appreciate:

On white space and readability

On line length

On the use of serif and sans-serif fonts

For some reason, lots of Big Law firms like to use itsy-bitsy type for their Web sites. This is odd, because tiny type — hard as it is to read — tends to repel, rather than attract, readers.

Why would any publisher (law firm or otherwise) do such a thing?

Consider the intro to Winstead’s IP practice description:

Compare the above to the intro to Thelen Reid’s IP practice description:

It’s no contest. Thelen Reid’s copy is much easier to read than Winstead’s.

Sure, anyone wanting to read copy at Winstead’s site can crank up the type size in their browser (and then crank it back down when they go to another site), but why make anyone go through the effort?

Here’s a tip to all the Big Law firms that use tiny type: consider your readers, and what’s most convenient for them.

Consider the following snippet from a newsletter recently published by a Big Law firm:

Consider the first sentence under the head:

Companies and individuals are becoming increasingly conscious of their carbon footprint—a measure of carbon dioxide emissions, which are believed to contribute to global warming, attributable to their activities.

And note the use of a single em dash to set off the parenthetical expression (i.e., a measure of carbon dioxide emissions, which are believed to contribute to global warming).

The problem here is that an editor didn’t bother to review this newsletter before it was published. Had an editor reviewed this, an old rule would surely have been applied: one to separate; two to enclose.

(more…)

Some very good advice to attorney-authors who want to be read and respected comes from Daniel Oppenheimer, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Princeton.

In his paper — “Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: problems with using long words needlessly,” published in the journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology — Dr. Oppenheimer reiterates what few attorney-authors can believe: readers consistently judge the writer who uses plain, clear language as more intelligent than the writer who arranges obscure terms in convoluted constructions.

And there’s some good advice for law firms that use Arial for body copy: readers judge text set in a hard-to-read face as being written by less intelligent authors.

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Professor Joseph Kimble — professor of law at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School — offers similar advice, specifically addressing the benefits to lawyers of writing for readers.

Without doubt, the client alert can be a VERY effective promotional tool, particularly for smaller firms. But only if well done.

Client alerts that aren’t well done are just a waste of time, especially for the attorneys who write them.

In this post, we examine a client alert published by a well-known law firm – one with more than 130 attorneys. We look at what could be done to make the alert more effective (e.g., get more people to mention it).

Before we get started: here’s a link to the firm’s original client alert, and here’s a link to a revision of that alert. The name of the publisher and the names of the authors have been altered. Otherwise, the original is exactly as published.

Now, let’s get started. Review the original alert. Compare it to the revised alert. I suggest you print them both.

Let’s start at the bottom. Here’s the disclaimer from the original (which appears on ALL the firm’s alerts):

Notice anything amiss? Take a look at the copyright notice at the bottom of the disclaimer. Where there should be a copyright symbol, there’s a capital ‘O’ with an acute accent. And there’s a line break between the word Copyright and that symbol.

What else? The copy is center justified.

What else? To prevent “further transmissions” the reader is advised to click “unsubscribe above.” But there is no “unsubscribe” to click. The law firm claims it’s trying to comply with “proposed Federal legislation,” but it doesn’t.

What else? The alert doesn’t bear a date of publication, but it was published four years after that “proposed Federal legislation” became law. And that law doesn’t apply to client alerts posted at law firm Web sites.

Here’s the revised disclaimer:

Let’s go to the top. Here’s the heading of the original alert:

What’s missing? The date of publication. The future reader is left to wonder, was this published last month or last year? (Fortunately, the date of the decision appears in the first line of the body. But it’s a fluke. The typical alert from this firm leaves future readers wondering whether the alert was published ten days ago, or ten years ago.)

Notice the heading. It consists of 16 words, which is a might much for a heading. Check out the first few lines of copy. Can you tell whether the decision was issued by a federal court or a state court? In other words, can the reader decide whether this alert is even relevant? (In the original, which case is being discussed isn’t mentioned until the end of the alert.)

Here’s the heading of the revised alert:

A few observations. First, the heading is down to a more palatable ten words. Also, the reader is provided with a convenient link to the opinion, and is advised that it was an appellate court in California that published the opinion.

Compare the type in the original to the type in the revision. The type in the original is set in a face designed for headings, not for body copy. The type in the revision is set in a face designed for readability. This might seem like a tiny technicality, but it’s not (i.e., pros are always have a reason why they selected this typeface or that).

Let’s make one more visual comparison of the original and the revision. Here’s the first bullet point in the original:

Here it is in the revision:

Now, this might seem like a small thing, but the difference between a quality product and a mediocre one is often the cumulative effect of a bunch of small things. (Compare a Volkswagen to a Mercedes. You can use either one to go to the store to buy a quart of milk, but one is worth far more than the other. Why?)

In the original, underlines are used. In the revision, they’re not. Big deal? No. But the use of underlines suggests that the publisher hasn’t mastered the IBM Selectric, much less the PC. When a firm uses underlines for emphasis, tick marks for quotes, and hyphens for em dashes, it suggests that either the firm doesn’t know how to set type, or it doesn’t much care about such details.

Let’s look at a few more differences between a client alert that’s been touched by an editor, and one that has not:

• Click either one of the authors’ email links in the original. Then, click an email link in the revision. Notice that, in the revision, the subject line is automatically completed. This is a convenience not only for the potential client who wants to contact an author, but for the author as well. It lends to the notion that the firm is very concerned about client service and knows its way around computers.

• The original file is 32K; the revision is half that size. The original file contains a great deal of HTML that isn’t used, and a good bit of HTML that isn’t needed.

• If you look closely, you’ll find many other small changes between the original and the revision, including changes to the copy. For instance, in the original, the abbreviation MEC is introduced in the first paragraph, but then Medical Executive Committee is used throughout the alert. (Why introduce an abbreviation if you’re not going to use it?)
  

Like I said at the top, the client alert can be a very effective promotional tool, but only if well done (i.e., touched by an editor).

There’s an old saying: “Things aren’t always as they appear.” When it comes to your law firm’s Web site, that’s something to keep in mind.

Why bother to mention it? Because I keep running into law firms that think their Web site looks just fine — and to them, maybe it does — but to others, it looks like it needs some serious attention.

Consider the following snippet of copy from a site that’s well done:

The copy is very readable, don’t you agree?

Now, consider a snippet of copy from a site that’s half baked:

Not so readable, is it?

I’m not going to get into a bunch of technical details about cascading style sheets, measures of type size, line heights, and such. I’m not even going to bother to mention that the first snippet is set in Verdana — a very good choice for body copy displayed on-line — and the second is set in Helvetica — a terrible choice for body copy presented in any manner.

What I am going to point out is that the publisher of the second snippet, unlike the publisher of the first, didn’t bother to make sure that its copy was readable on most computers (e.g., most screen sizes and resolutions, most browsers, most operating systems, etc.)

Here’s the point: when you publish hard copy, you can be sure how it looks to everyone, everywhere. When you publish a Web site, you have to take precautions to make sure your copy is readable to all. It might look just fine on all the computers your firm owns, but it might not look that way on another computer, with another operating system, and another browser, etc. You have to do some testing to have any assurance that your site looks just fine to most.

Consider a firm that claims it really understands technology. It claims it’s fantastic when it comes to e-discovery. But failing to apply due diligence to its Web site can make those claims seem downright silly.

Look! You wouldn’t want one of your attorneys showing up for an important client meeting with dirty fingernails. And you know exactly why.

Then why in the world would you publish a document that makes it seem as if you could care less about how your firm appears — and not just to one potential client, but to so many of them?

Consider the following excerpt from an article published by one well-known firm:

Not so easy to read, is it? That’s because there’s not enough contrast between the copy and the background.

Note: And when the article is printed on a black & white laser printer (e.g., you’re going to read it on the plane or on the train), it’s not readable at all. That, despite the fact that it could easily be set to print just fine (i.e., black type on a white background) on a typical printer.

An effective tool for making sure that foreground/background color combos offer good contrast (read legibility) is offered by the Web Accessibility Tools Consortium.

Use it. And consider this. A law firm that says it’s very knowledgeable about ADA compliance should show that it’s thinking of people with limited visibility, like color blind law school students using the Web to search for summer jobs.

This site will analyze your firm’s site to make sure that its “contrast is high enough for people with visual impairments.”

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Now, consider the following excerpt from a client alert published by another well-known firm:

Once again, the reader has to struggle.

I know what you’re thinking — all you have to do is zoom in on the copy, and it will be so easy to read, right? Wrong! The client alert is a GIF file, so zooming in on it just leads to this:

If you want your firm to appear sharp — like it’s the sort of firm that pays close attention to even the smallest detail — then make sure its publications look sharp.

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I suppose this is as good a place as any to note that very many of the largest, best-known firms don’t bother to review their own Web sites.

Lawyers don’t bother to review their firms’ sites to make sure the articles they’ve written look like they’re set in style. Managing partners don’t bother to make sure that their firms’ sites make a good impression, and that lack of concern has the power to leave potential clients with the impression that — despite what the firm says — it certainly doesn’t pay attention to detail (and the partners don’t review what their associates are doing).

A firm’s site can do the firm just as much harm as good. When potential clients review a firm’s site and see that the firm publishes documents that can’t be read, they’re not going to be favorably impressed.

Would you be impressed with a firm that doesn’t bother to review its own work?