For nearly 150 years, The Legal Aid Society has fought to ensure equal justice for all New Yorkers. The oldest and largest social justice law firm in America operates in every borough of New York City, providing unparalleled breadth and depth of legal services. Facing challenges in focusing its brand and uniting over 2,000 staff across 26 offices with a common vision and shared purpose, The Legal Aid Society asked Constructive to help rebuild from the ground up. Their goals? Develop strategy and messaging that communicates their mission, values, expertise, and impact; then redesign every facet of their branding and communications. In the three years since, we partnered with The Legal Aid Society to deepen understanding of what unites them and then design the experiences and communications that embody it.
A Cluttered Brand Looking to Find its Voice
When The Legal Aid Society reached out to Constructive, their brand and communications were scattered and poorly executed— seriously undermining the organization’s reputation as one of America’s most respected social justice law firms. Messaging was unfocused and failed to clearly tell The Legal Aid’s story and impact. The foundation of the brand’s visual identity, its logo, was more appropriate for an urban preschool, failing to project the organization’s strength as a fierce advocate for justice. Despite the volumes of communications produced, there were no brand guidelines or a design system in place to create cohesion. And without clear standards, a DIY design culture across offices, departments, and programs resulted in chaotic communications of questionable quality across digital, print, and events.
Diving Deep Into Culture, History & Impact
During the first few months, we focused on gaining perspectives from inside and outside The Legal Aid Society. After a communications audit, we lead brand and fundraising communications workshops, working with a representative leadership group to ensure that diverse voices were included. Interviews and a staff-wide survey sent to all staff added even greater depth to our understanding of the organization. To get direct, unfiltered feedback on external perceptions of the brand and audience relationships, we conducted independent interviews with clients, partners, government officials, and others. We then rounded out our understanding of the situation by analyzing the branding, messaging, and websites of peers and partners—gaining insight into ways to strengthen The Legal Aid Society’s positioning and differentiation.
Crafting a Compelling Brand Narrative
With research complete, we got to work on strategic analysis; identifying patterns and trends across our research. We first developed preliminary findings and recommendations, organizing ideas into key themes and adding insights and questions to expand everyone’s thinking. We then finalized a new brand strategy with The Legal Aid Society’s team, creating the framework needed to inform brand language and design. To tell The Legal Aid Society’s story, we translated brand strategy into a brand narrative that articulates who they are, what they do, and why it matters. Included in the process was a survey across the organization to make sure that language was values-aligned and inclusive, describing clients, communities, and populations in ways that were respectful and culturally appropriate.
Boldly Demanding Justice in Every Borough
For brand identity, we focused our design strategy on The Legal Aid Society’s top strategic priorities. First was to present a strong, straightforward brand. Second was to emphasize the Society’s all-borough community presence. Third was to highlight individual practice areas while expressing unity. And fourth was to reflect New York City’s diversity. The Legal Aid Society’s master logo is black-and-white, just like the law should be—boldly making the case, avoiding unnecessary decoration, and getting right to the point. Borough and practice-area sub-brands establish a clear brand architecture. Typography is strong and easy-to-read. And the brand’s color system references NYC’s iconic subway lines—an equitable, connecting force that resonates with every New Yorker. Along with the tagline, “Justice in Every Borough,” The Legal Aid Society’s brand identity spans boroughs and practice areas to literally and figuratively represent all of New York City.
Architecting an Engaging & Useful Experience
Alongside brand development work, our digital team developed a digital strategy to create meaningful online experiences with The Legal Aid Society that advance their organizational priorities. After auditing the existing website, we conducted research with staff to understand the role the site played—and could play—in supporting and streamlining operations. We then conducted field visits to offices and courthouses to help us better understand how the website could better support client and community experiences. We then developed personas that focus on audience needs and led collaborative workshops to identify website content needs and features. The result was a blueprint that tells The Legal Aid Society’s story online, advances their goals, and provides valuable information, resources, and services that help people in need.
Bringing the Brand to Life Online
Website design provided our biggest and most valuable opportunity to extend The Legal Aid Society’s new design system. We designed an experience that boldly represents the brand, deepens content engagement, and embodies both The Legal Aid Society’s social justice mission and New York City roots. Strong design grids and large headlines make a statement, focus the eye, and make content scannable. Best practices in usability design make navigating The Legal Aid Society’s volumes of content easy. And a rich tapestry of colors and inviting imagery throughout the website adds vitality to The Legal Aid Society’s brand and makes it welcoming—a key strategic priority for an organization that stands as a beacon to those who are overwhelmed by an often unfair and impersonal system of justice.
Making Justice in Every Borough More Accessible for All New Yorkers
The Legal Aid Society operates in a complex justice system that is designed to make the communities they serve feel intimidated and overwhelmed. Given their size and scope of services, the organization itself is similarly complex and can feel confusing. 26 offices and countless practice areas across all five boroughs meant that navigating how to engage with The Legal Aid Society could also be a challenge. Building off our brand strategy blueprint, which structures how The Legal Aid Society explains their network of offices, departments, and initiatives, we designed a website that makes it easy for people to find the right services for their situation and who to contact, based on borough, practice area, and situation. The result makes the complexity of the justice system and a 2,000-person organization working in it for all New Yorkers more accessible—demonstrating The Legal Aid Society’s breadth of expertise, services, and locations available to communities.
A Website that Delivers Direct Support to People Who Need it
A top priority for The Legal Aid Society’s new website was to make it more useful and valuable to the clients and communities they serve—empowering people caught up in the justice system and reducing the burden of excessive helpline calls. To get this right, we performed extensive design research, learning what information communities needed and what the priorities were, and visiting courthouses and offices to learn about their experience. The resulting “Get Help” section uses service design principles to deliver the support communities need—including an interactive glossary that makes confusing jargon more understandable, and the legal system more accessible as a result.
Sharing Authentic Stories & Connecting to Values
A key pillar of our brand strategy was to unite The Legal Aid Society’s staff with a shared vision and elevate the voices of their passionate and dedicated staff of 2,000 people. So, we created a digital storytelling strategy called “A Day in the Life” that gives staff a platform to share what “Justice in Every Borough” means to them and generates pride in the mission. In addition, The Legal Aid Society’s commitment to diversity and inclusion are given a spotlight, elevating one of their core values and attracting top talent to join the organization. And to make the brand more accessible, a full staff directory makes it easy for audiences to get in touch with The Legal Aid Society’s experts.
A Scalable Design System That Supports the Entire Organization
The Legal Aid Society produces a tremendous volume of communications across its offices in support of dozens of programs and initiatives. We left no stone unturned in designing a comprehensive system of marketing and fundraising collateral, community information resources, forms for operations, and internal branding. In addition, staff needed to be able to quickly produce brochures, flyers and other communications for campaigns and community engagement. To meet their needs while maintaining brand cohesion, we created a system of templates that make it easy for different offices, departments, and programs to create the communications they need right when they need them.
Social Justice Web Design That Drives Fundraising & Action
Community engagement and mobilizing are essential to the Legal Aid Society’s work to take on the injustices that hang over oppressed communities. Central to these efforts is elevating advocacy work and connecting fundraising to issues—especially when they dominate the headlines. Leveraging our brand strategy to focus messaging, we designed a flexible system of communications to drive audience support for The Legal Aid Society, whether that’s by lending their voice, volunteering their time, or making a financial commitment.
Our Client’s Take
“The Legal Aid Society is an extremely large, complex organization that works across policy, advocacy, and direct service, impacting millions of New Yorkers. We came to Constructive with the ambitious goals of focusing our message and strengthening our brand to better tell our story, engage our diverse audiences, and unite our practice areas, offices, and people. Their team embraced our complexity and helped us make sense of it to craft new strategy, branding, and communications that resonate and truly represent who we are—highlighted by our new website, an invaluable resource that demonstrates our expertise, delivers service to our clients, and drives our advocacy and fundraising.” Sharon Kleinhandler, Director of Development.
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