Ellery Kowal

Project Overview

Ellery Kowal is a website for a 41-lawyer business law firm on LaSalle Street in Chicago, built around the questions a general counsel asks first: who will lead the matter, how it is billed and what the firm has achieved. A statue hero, working client tools and a results ledger replace the usual brochure.

Industry: Legal
Created: 2026
Pages: 7
Platform: Astro

The Brief

A Chicago business law firm with 41 lawyers needed a website that earns a general counsel’s trust before the first call: who leads a matter, how it is billed, what past results look like, and a conflict check that does not feel like a form wall. It had to read as established and current, not as another dark, shouting law site.

The Approach

We built the site around one idea, that every word is evidence. A bronze statue and a slow court-seal ring open a cream page set in Gambetta and General Sans, with working tools for booking a strategy call and finding a fixed fee, then a results ledger, partner portraits and a conflict-check letter.

The Outcome

A prospective client can see the six practices and their fee models, meet the partner who would lead the work, read results without client names, and start a conflict check in a few minutes. Seven pages and three articles stay quick on a phone.

About the Project

Ellery Kowal is a complete website for a Chicago business law firm founded in 2011, with six practices from trials and disputes to corporate and M&A, employment, investigations, real estate and IP. It is designed to make a first conversation easy: a partner to call, a fee model for every practice and a conflict check that takes minutes.

The site includes Home, Practices with fee models and results, People with seven partners and a directory of all 41 lawyers, Matters with a filterable results ledger, the Firm, Insights with three articles and Contact with a live map, plus Privacy and Disclaimer pages.

The visual direction is warm and professional: a cream page, ink and one bronze accent, Gambetta for headings and General Sans for text, bright daylight photography, square hairline panels instead of shadows and a bronze statue with a rotating court-seal ring in the hero. Every accordion, filter and menu animates both ways.

Built as a fast static site in Astro with plain TypeScript, Ellery Kowal loads quickly on a phone, keeps motion calm and respects reduced-motion settings. The conflict-check, strategy-call and fee-finder tools, and the OpenFreeMap-based contact map, are built in.