Creative Director For Law Firm Website/Marketing Agency - remote
The Modern Firm, LLC
Posted 4 years ago
Role Introduction:
We work exclusively with small law firms across the country to develop, manage and promote their websites. We are looking for a person to serve as the creative team lead for our client’s website projects. The person in this role will have a broad, Jill/Jack-of-all-trades, background in website design but will be particularly strong in understanding how graphic design, website UI and architecture, content, and branding all come together to create a compelling website for our clients. Most importantly, the person in this role will enjoy discussing these topics with our clients and team members and championing the project through to completion. This is very much a client facing role with conversations taking place by phone and email.
Here are the 4 primary responsibilities for this position
About Us:
The Modern Firm, LLC is a branding, website design and online marketing agency for solo and small firm attorneys throughout the US. In business for nearly 20 years we have worked with 1000+ law firms in nearly every state (still holding out for Hawaii and Rhode Island) and have a dedicated and creative team of 13 remote employees, 10+ regular contractors and 32 fuzzy office helpers. We’ve been a fully remote company for over 12 years and are headquartered out of Ann Arbor, MI. Our team, while mostly in the midwest, is from coast (NC) to coast (WA).
About Our Clients:
The majority of our clients are solo to five-attorney firms. We go to great lengths to screen new clients and ensure that their needs and expectations are an overall good fit for our services and approach. Most of our clients are pretty successful and established in their practice and are looking for a website to validate, enhance and further grow their practice. They are also typically overwhelmed with being both a lawyer AND a law firm owner/operator. This is where we come in. When we are at our best we are essentially serving as their outsourced web and online marketing department, taking nearly everything related to their online presence off of their plate and onto ours. When we’re successful we are helping our clients get more fulfillment out of running their practice and enabling them to either help more people or be more selective about the clients they bring on.
About Our Websites:
The sites we create are custom built in Wordpress using a parent theme/framework we’ve specially developed for law firms. They are straightforward, fast and easy to navigate. They tell the firm’s story and give a feel for the firm’s personality. In addition to validating and legitimizing the law firm to prospective clients, our websites serve as a primary marketing tool. When combined with our online marketing services, the websites bring in a steady flow of prospective business. You can see examples here and on our portfolio. We produce about 80-90 sites per year.
About The Job:
As stated above, this position has four primary components. Here is expanded information on each:
From the outset we go to great lengths to understand our clients, dig into their story, and distill that into a branding platform that serves as a keystone for their website project. The person in this role will take that branding platform and collaborate with the client by phone to explore design, content and functionality ideas. The result should be a high level vision for the website, how it’s going to be laid out, what it will do, and what creative assets (photos, video, content) will be needed.
Once the vision is set, it needs to be communicated to the team members that will implement various aspects of it. Our process is always evolving, but currently this involves creating a low fidelity wireframe of the website architecture, picking out a sampling of stock art, coordinating with the client’s photographer (if needed) and creating a rough outline of the pages/sections that will go on the website. From there our graphic designer and content team will get to work, usually after a short call/meeting to prep them on the project.
Once mockups have been created, the person in this role will review them internally to ensure that all of the client’s objectives are being met. From there, a screen sharing phone conference will happen with the client to show the mockups, answer questions and take in feedback. This stage will repeat itself, typically twice but sometimes more, until the client is satisfied.
Unlike an agency role where one or more people are working with a single large and demanding client, our client base is spread out across hundreds of accounts, but they all have one thing in common, they’re all small law firms. This means that anything we learn on one project adds to our collective knowledge for future projects and reduces our need to be constantly reinventing the wheel. To that end, we’d like to be more intentional about articulating and improving our company-wide design principles, philosophies and style so that we are consistently producing outstanding work.
A Day In The Job May Look Like:
- A design intake interview with a client (approx 1.5-2 hrs with prep time)
- Preparing a project for the team with notes from the intake call and sketches/wireframes (3-4 hrs)
- Responding to a few emails regarding design feedback (30-60 minutes)
- A phone call to get feedback from a client on their design (30 minutes)
Or
- Two or three phone calls with clients to seek feedback on their design or coded website (1.5-2hrs for calls and note taking)
- Internally reviewing newly coded websites with team (1 hour phone conference)
- A phone call or two with the team to prep them on a new project (30-60 minutes)
- Responding to a few emails from clients on misc. issues (1-2hrs)
- A few phone calls to clients to answer misc questions i.e. “how should I pose for my photos?” (1-2 hrs)
Or (slow day)
- Researching and sketching out new design ideas and website layout concepts
- Following up with a few clients that are lagging on their project
- Writing a blog article for our website
- Assisting with design work (if that’s in your background)
There are natural ebbs and flows throughout the year, but in general we are able to keep to a pretty standard 8 hour work day, most deadlines are self imposed, and so-long as there’s a significant overlap with the main working hours in the eastern time zone, hours can be flexed here and there as life requires.
Essential Qualifications:
- Solid background in website design, ideally with the ability to design a website from scratch
- Hands on experience with logo design, typography, color, web layout design, and image selection
- Current on modern design, wire framing and prototyping tools
- Strong working knowledge of Wordpress, HTML, CSS and website functionality and capabilities - in short, a website guru
- Experienced Mac user
- Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Graphic Design, Communications, or related field
- 5+ years experience in a role reporting directly to clients
- A take charge personality that wants the buck stop with them and get things done
- Ability to absorb and process feedback
- Excellent writing and communication
Strongly Desired Skills and Experience:
- Familiarity with law firms and working with lawyers (very strongly desired)
- Agency experience
- Ability to code a WordPress theme or strong grasp of web coding concepts
- Pre-covid experience working with remote teams
- Can do logo design
- Can grow the ranks of our fuzzy office staff
Pay, Benefits and Details:
- $70,0000-$80,000 yearly salary depending on experience/capabilities
- Medical / Dental / Vision insurance (we cover 70% of employee cost)
- Performance bonuses
- 100% remote but must have significant overlap with 9am-5pm EST workday. Can also work at our HQ in Ann Arbor, MI once we reopen the office.
- Simple IRA retirement plan with 2% match
- Subsidy for home office expenses or coworking space
- Flexible/Unlimited PTO (must take minimum of 2 weeks)
To Apply:
We are only accepting candidates located in the USA.
Please send cover letter, resume, three references and relevant sample work/portfolio to jobs@themodernfirm.com