Chambers & Partners launched a mobile-optimized version of its website last week.
Having spent time trying it out over recent days, I’m impressed.
It’s better than I expected.
That’s not intended as a criticism of Chambers, but the company has never been a technology pioneer and still has an old-fashioned nineteenth century quill-and-ink flavor to its culture, despite its recent website overhaul.
The navigation is clear and nicely laid out on my iPhone, and the site appears to offer pretty much all the same content as one could find on the regular desktop website and hard copy publications.
That’s no mean feat when you consider how much information the company produces through its large portfolio of legal directories, as well as additional products like the legal practice guides.
As a technological challenge, it’s harder to convert a legacy business with an existing website of such size and complexity to a mobile version than to start with a mobile-optimized site from the beginning.
Chambers & Partners isn’t the only major legal directory with a mobile site.
Thomson Reuters-owned FindLaw did the same in 2010.
Seattle-based Avvo went mobile in 2011, although the site, which started in 2007, was online-only from the beginning.
Martindale, surprisingly, does not have a mobile version, although its sister product, Lawyers.com, which is more consumer focused, is optimized for smartphones.
Other directories like Best Lawyers and Super Lawyers have yet to develop mobile sites.
Some Euromoney directories like Benchmark Litigation are mobile friendly, although others like IFLR1000 and Asialaw Profiles are not.
Legal 500 is not yet mobile optimized, although the company produces a number of ebooks.
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