North Carolina Bar Association

Designing a Dynamic Website for NC’s Largest Legal Association

As the largest and most prominent legal association in the state, the North Carolina Bar Association brings together lawyers, judges, paralegals, and law students in a community dedicated to sharing knowledge, expertise, and opportunities for professional development.

We had previously worked with the NCBA to design and build a website for the North Carolina Bar Foundation, a subset of the organization that promotes access to justice. Needless to say, we were thrilled when the NCBA approached us again to design and guide development for their core website, NCbar.org.

Designing a Functional Tool

Before turning to the look and feel of the website, we worked closely with the NCBA team to reimagine their platform as a fully functional tool that would appeal to stakeholders of all technological ability levels. That meant spearheading the discovery process to refine project goals, identifying areas of friction for users, and thinking through a new approach to the site’s structure and navigation features.

With the goal of an exceptional user experience in mind, we transitioned our thoughts into detailed wireframes that communicated our initial design plans to our partners at the NBCA. Foundational elements included smooth UX, a streamlined aesthetic, and clear paths to the member portal, public resources, and CLE materials.

Once the wireframes were approved, we moved into the next phase of the design process: fine-tuning the website’s look and feel.

Developing a Fine-Tuned Look and Feel

The NCBA’s old website had become outdated and cumbersome, so they knew from the start that they wanted their new site to reflect the modern organization that they were in real life. We accomplished this by leveraging our years of experience in custom law firm website design. With the addition of fresh, bright colors, fun background textures, clean sans serif typefaces, and other playful touches, the NCBA site immediately took on new energy and character.

In addition, we cultivated a great user-experience by incorporating elements like a distraction-free takeover menu, subtle hover effects and visual feedback, prominent focal points, and easy-to-navigate content areas. These features ensure that all NCBA members and site visitors are able to find what they’re looking for with ease.

Achieving a Successful Result Through Collaboration

Here at NMC, we occasionally serve as a partner agency in cases when two heads are better than one. So after we wrapped up the design and strategy work for the NCBA, we handed our plans to the organization’s development partner, who already had significant experience with the website’s association management system and related tools. We were glad to work together to get the job done right.