Only 19% of Large Law Firms Have Mobile Sites
The Law Firm Mobile Blog just released a new report on the state of the mobile web for AmLaw 200 and Global 100 law firms:
What We found
- Of the firms on the 2011 AmLaw list, 37 firms (19%) have mobile sites.
- Of the firms on the 2011 Global 100 list, 22 firms (22%) have mobile sites.
Best Practices
- Layouts tailored for the size and proportions of a smart phone screen
- Professional look-and-feel through appropriate graphics and layout. The best sites “fit” the screen.
- URL input box automatically hides itself
- Amount of content on each page is appropriate to reading on a phone
- Easily accessed “home” button
- Mobile web site that “feels” more like a native application than a website
- Simplified navigation interface
- Appropriately sized text
Bonus Practice
- Options to allow users to share content via social network services (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter)
Areas for Improvement
- Text-based site (This is deja vu for websites at the infancy of the web)
- Letting your developer generate a cookie-cutter site similar to many other clients
- Failure to automatically direct a smart phone user from the firm’s main site URL to the mobile website
- Providing only limited content (e.g., only offices, only general description)
- Awkwardly placed graphic elements
- Taking up significant space on the mobile web home page with general firm description text
- Including too many navigation and content elements
Overall, many large law firms in the AmLaw 200/Global 100 are not yet part of the mobile web. For those firms who have created mobile web sites, many have done an admirable job. We look forward to seeing law firms engage more aggressively in this area in the year to come.
We give credit to the LexBlog and its State of the AmLaw Blogosphere as inspiration for this report.
And there's more. Click to read the entire report.
