Making Legal Publishing EZ | Forwardslash - Web Strategy, Design, & Development in Brooklyn, NY

The Challenge

To take the elaborate and sometimes confusing process of legal publishing and simplify it into a system on the level with the ecommerce sites of less-involved industries. The original site was packed with pages of legalese that we boiled down into something not only manageable, but enjoyable in its ease-of-use.

EZ Legal Publishing is run by a collective of attorneys who saw a worthwhile niche in providing legal publishing services – abiding by each state’s individual publishing requirements for incorporating a business, for example. One of the reasons they are so successful is that many people don’t know these requirements exist, and even less know the process of fulfilling them. When they wanted to redesign their website, they charged WebExpo to bring this process to the public.

The Process

Our job was twofold. First, we had to give this esoteric process an online interface that an everyday person with no legal background could understand. Second, we had to invent customized web forms to satisfy the unique needs of this generally unknown operation.

Starting out, we condensed the information into digestible doses and put it behind a fun-to-use, interactive map. Only the particulars of the user’s desired state were displayed, with the help of a quick-reference table. Within two clicks of any page on the site, the user can know exactly what their legal publishing requirements are, and how EZ Legal Publishing can help.

We also customized the “checkout” process specific to the service. Instead of overwhelming the user with form after form, the fields appear one-by-one as the user enters basic information, narrowing down what’s displayed to only what is relevant. Our WooCommerce system further simplifies what was before a generally tedious experience.

The Results

Now, EZ Legal Publishing’s clients can submit their requests start-to-finish in a matter of minutes. They have no idea of how arduous the process once was – which was our goal from the beginning.