Hall & Wilcox is a leading independent Australian law firm delivering outstanding legal services to corporate, public sector, and private clients.

Renowned for their Smarter Law approach, H&W find solutions that are better, faster, and cheaper, using technology, challenging business models, innovative pricing, and creative resourcing.When Hall & Wilcox experienced significant growth in a short period, they realised their website wasn’t keeping up. Their CMS wasn’t meeting their needs, and users struggled to complete basic communication tasks. At Liquorice, we used research, strategy, design, and development to transform Hall & Wilcox’s website into a flexible, powerful, and intuitive digital experience.

Research & Strategy

We kicked off the project with some initial research into best practice approaches to information architecture, user experience, and user interface design, and an audit of Hall & Wilcox’s own website. We then facilitated a strategy workshop to dig deeper into the brief, growing our understanding of the challenges and goals, fleshing out an SEO strategy, and building user personas and journeys. We also conducted a content prioritisation exercise with the H&W team and used the insights to design a clearer, more intuitive site IA and navigation system.

User Testing

Based on the outcomes of the workshop, we developed a user research plan and created a series of tasks for research participants to perform on the Hall & Wilcox website. We recruited 10–15 participants who fit our personas and conducted a series of unmoderated tests, asking them to attempt tasks while recording their actions and screens. This provided invaluable insights into real user experiences and uncovered any pain points in the user journeys for us to address. Upon completion of the user research, Liquorice synthesised the results and produced a report of our findings and recommendations for UX improvements.

The next step was to create low-fidelity wireframes of the key page templates and modules and gather feedback from key stakeholders before moving into design.

Design

The design approach for the new Hall & Wilcox website was centred around confidence, clarity, and creating a seamless user experience. We also wanted to bring a fresh, contemporary feel to the existing Hall & Wilcox brand to enable it to excel in a digital setting.

We chose a colour palette that spoke to the current brand, created visual consistency, and met accessibility standards. We also chose a new, contemporary headline font with a confident-yet-approachable personality. The minimal design and use of white space allows every design element to stand on its own and be communicated clearly to the user. We aimed to avoid clutter or complexity in all areas, making it easy for users of all abilities to navigate the site with ease across all screen sizes.

Development & Launch

We undertook the front and back end development of all templates and approved designs. This included writing and populating the CMS with instructions specific to the site, as well as populating sample content from the design process (with full content populated by client Admin users during the UAT process).

We handled the DevOps and setup of staging and production servers, and managed the licensing for the CMS and required plugins. Liquorice’s design team and project manager conducted a QA testing process to ensure development matched the designs. This was an iterative/agile process with the design team working closely with the development team to ideate technical solutions for bugs discovered.