Digital law – designing for a global marketplace

I’ve known the Managing Director of Digital Law, Peter Wright, for quite a while. When Peter launched Digital Law back in 2013, he had the branding designed by another agency as part of a sign-up offer for his new office. It made sense for him to go down that route at the time; but I wanted the opportunity to design Digital Law’s branding myself.

Peter’s business grew and I kept in touch with him. As I watched the company grow, I couldn’t help but feel that its branding wasn’t doing the company justice. There were just too many inconsistencies. The strap line was confusing. Digital Law’s social media channels were pushing out contrasting messages. The company’s name was being formatted in completely different ways (sometimes it was in all upper case, other times it was written as a singular word). As a designer, I knew that what seemed like minor errors had potentially damaging implications for Peter’s business.

My team made the decision to sit Peter down and explain what we saw as the flaws of the Digital Law brand. While Peter and his own team could showcase their experience and knowledge in meetings — and of course, through their work — their online presence was really failing them.

During our meeting, it became clear that Peter not only understood our perspective but that he had been concerned about the branding too. He agreed that the inconsistencies across the Digital Law brand and social media channels had become an issue, and had potentially lost him some clients. He really supported our vision for a comprehensive rebrand for the company.

Customer-centred design

We began with some deep thinking, both in terms of the brand strategy as well as potential new marketplaces for the business. We soon realised that when it came to working with law firms, if Digital Law wasn’t positioned in the right way, they could be mistaken for competition.

What Peter and his team were offering went well beyond what traditional law firms could handle. With over ten years of experience in the digital legal sector, and with GDPR and other digital regulations coming to fruition, the company had the expertise and background to handle the more in depth elements of digital law that are required not only by these traditional law firms’s clients but the law firms themselves. Identifying that Peter’s classic competition could make up a big portion of his client base had a really significant impact on our strategic vision for the brand.

We knew that another segment of that client base was going to be tech companies. These days, specialists are a necessity. Tech firms would rather use a law firm that specialise in digital than a more generalised one that has a conveyancing expert to side step into digital. They have specific needs that require an expert opinion — one that Peter offers through Digital Law.

We spent a lot of time combing over the customer landscape to get to grips with what these potential opportunities were. The entire process began with this strategic approach.

A global business needs a global brand

From the start, we knew that the Digital Law brand couldn’t be mistaken for a traditional law firm. One of the first things we did as part of the rebrand was to look at global digital companies. We felt that the digital streaming service Spotify was a great example — their design was bold and simplistic.

We decided to approach the design for both the logo and the website with reference to these global, digital brands. The aim was to attract new clients, from both tech and law firms, by positioning the company as experts in this specialist field. All of the visuals and design work were created to appeal to this customer landscape.

Our initial brief from Peter was to draw more business for Digital Law from across the UK. But off the back of our work the company began to get opportunities from around the world — everywhere from Tunisia to the US and Saudi Arabia.

Digital Law is a great success story in its own right; and Peter really got a return on his investment in the brand. That’s the power of design; it’s the kind of transformation that we always aim to achieve — and the results we like to see.

And as a designer, very satisfying to have been a part of.

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View the Client Journey

Meet the client – Peter Wright

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