Context
A corporate law firm needed a credible multi-page presence quickly and at a sensible cost: services, pricing, news and contact. For a brief like that, starting from a professional template and customising it thoroughly is the right call, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. The skill is in the customisation, the content structure and the delivery, not in reinventing a carousel.
What I delivered
- A multi-page site covering practice areas, pricing, a news section and contact, with the firm's own structure imposed on the template rather than the template's structure imposed on the firm.
- Component tidy-up: the template's stock sections were pruned to what a law firm actually needs, and the remaining ones were restyled to the Altara Group identity shared with AltaraSocial.
- Performance and accessibility pass on the template's JavaScript stack (Swiper, Magnific Popup, animate.css, meanmenu), removing what was unused and deferring what was not needed above the fold.
Decisions worth noting
- Budget-appropriate engineering. A custom Next.js build would have cost the client more for no visible gain. Choosing the template route deliberately, and saying so, is part of the professional judgement I bring to small clients.
- Group consistency. Because Altara Law and AltaraSocial belong to the same group, the two sites were styled to read as siblings.
Why it is in the portfolio
It is part of the SME and client-website track record, not a flagship, and the resume describes it that way. It is here because a portfolio that only showed platform builds would misrepresent how much of a technology consultant's work is choosing the sensible tool for a modest brief.