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Premium WordPress Themes for Law Firms

This started out within the comment thread of my last post about WordPress and it reminded me again that I need to update a much older post about what premium WordPress themes I like for professional-looking web sites.

As I’ve said before, I’m loyal to about three theme developers. But I’m now looking at two other developers and their themes, particularly a few specific themes that appear to be tailored to law firms and other professionals.

WooThemes

Elegant Themes

ThemeForest

Templatic

Obox Design

Finally, I haven’t talked about WordPress “frameworks.” Frameworks are themes but with a somewhat different focus. Frameworks are essentially theme design scaffolding for WordPress. Depending on the framework, you get up on the scaffolding and supply the design elements from whatever menu the framework offers. I’ve not used frameworks such as Thesis or Headway or Thematic. One, they just haven’t appealed to me and they are generally more expensive (but not a whole lot, actually). And two, I like the supreme flexibility to switch out various themes and functions, something that’s a bit more limited and complicated in a framework.

Gregory Luce - While blogging for the Practice Blawg, Greg was the Practice Development Director at the Minnesota State Bar Association, where he oversaw development of the association's various member-related online services. A 1993 graduate of the University of Minnesota School of Law, he has been an attorney in private practice, a solo practitioner, and a staff attorney for Legal Aid. He currently works as a consultant and develops products for Lawyerist Media, LLC.

14 Comments


  1. Raymond Chandler
    Oct 01, 2012

    Maybe I’m just a minimalist. But so many of these ‘custom themes’ seem to be way to busy for my tastes. I like to just create a nice crisp framework out of the many free themes available.


  2. Elizabeth
    Sep 19, 2012

    Very cool article and resource! Thanks for putting this together. I really like Elegant Themes. I just the home page of a website to be somewhat calm and welcoming – like the front door of a home. Thanks again for sharing your expertise!


  3. Tina Willis
    Sep 18, 2012

    Hi. I’m looking at themes for my first legal website right now. I have already developed a fairly extensive website for an unrelated business, but the design was simple. I used purchased software, which I actually loved because of the degree to which I could customize almost all elements of the design (e.g., buttons, textures, colors, etc). But that format looks quite dated compared to the newer, snazzier themes available. So I wonder if you could answer a few questions for me.

    1) Have you tried YooThemes or RocketTheme? I really love YooThemes but underwent total meltdown the first and only time I tried their themes. Mind you, I really didn’t even understand WordPress at that point, so *possibly* I would feel more comfortable now. My primary goal just lis to find a theme that will give me the greatest snazzy factor with the least amount of coding knowledge. So do you have any thoughts on whether using either of themes might be a good or bad idea?! :)

    2) Very specific question regarding the SimplePress theme. I never could determine (despite multiple attempts) exactly how to properly size photos to fit into those panoramic style sliders. Where do you get those larger pictures for your legal site? Or do you just use regular style photos somehow (and, if so, how??!)

    Thanks for a great blog and any thoughts on my questions.


  4. PraJ
    Jul 18, 2012

    We used theme forest for http://www.vehiclesafetyfirm.com/blog/ We should try our WooThemes as well. Thanks :-)


  5. Don McCullough
    Jul 17, 2012

    I am an attorney and am building my first website.

    What are the current recommended WordPress Themes for law firms?

    What about The Practice from ThemeFuse?

    How does that compare to other wordpress themes such as Genesis?

    Is there a non-attorney theme which can be adapted to my needs?

    My webstie will be pretty complex.

    Any suggestions?

    Thanks.


    • Andrea Hable
      Jul 18, 2012

      Hi Don, You don’t need to have a law firm specific theme, many of the business themes will also be good for law firms. You will want to look for one that reflects the image/brand of your practice (colors, style, etc) and will accommodate the pages and images you want to include, and incorporates social media if you want that feature. The other consideration is one that has good customer support if you plan to do anything complicated. We don’t have a list of recommended themes because there are so many themes and everyone’s needs are different.


  6. lauren
    Jun 13, 2012

    in case you missed it, there are a ton of free legal themes specifically for wordpress on legalwebsitetemplates.net. I’ve used them before.


  7. David Cantor
    Jun 07, 2012

    Often times custom theme development can work wonders. We’ve gotten many compliments on our theme we use for our website: http://dmcantor.com. It seems to convert pretty well and WordPress is really a pretty decent CMS.


  8. Nilesh
    Mar 11, 2012

    Great post and very useful tips. Thanks for all the great suggestions.


  9. Steve
    Jul 01, 2011

    Hi Greg,

    I came across your blog, as I am looking for some the best wordpress themes for websites for law firms. Unless I’m missing them, I do not see them on this post, but I was hoping you could e-mail me what you have and the costs etc. Thank you.

    Steve


    • Andrea Hable
      Jul 07, 2011

      Hi Steve, The post reviews the best places to find themes, but we don’t actually provide any themes ourselves. Some of Greg’s favorites are noted in the review of each website (click on the bold red name in the post and it will expand). Let me know if you have any other questions.


  10. Jay Palter
    Jun 16, 2011

    Great collection of premium theme suggestions – to which I would add http://bizzthemes.com/ which offers some nice ones. Check it out. Thanks.


  11. Grant Griffiths
    Apr 18, 2011

    “I like the supreme flexibility to switch out various themes and functions, something that’s a bit more limited and complicated in a framework.”

    You really should give Headway Themes a try before you make such a statement about frameworks in general.


    • Gregory Luce
      Apr 18, 2011

      Fair enough. I will plan a post on frameworks generally and give Headway and Thesis a spin if I can. Thanks for keeping me honest.

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