Review: Law Office of H. Michael Steinberg, Denver Criminal Attorney

The Law Office of H. Michael Steinberg, situated in Denver Colorado, operates a visually appealing website built - at least in part - by its owner. It is a multi-page site, which contains a good deal of relevant information, as we shall describe into more detail shortly.

Mr. Steinberg and Achieve Web Design, Inc., which is duly accredited in the footer, surely understand how to create a visually appealing interface. What greets the visitor is a large, somewhat oddly shaped banner displaying a slideshow of attractive images (presumably from the Denver area.) The company logo sits proudly as en emblem on the left top corner, underneath which we find a so-called "marquee" - rolling text displaying contact information for the law firm. The color scheme is brown, basically, albeit with different nuances.

This website uses the entire screen with, but text and navigation menus are confined to about 75% of the screen area, meaning that there is one wide column of blank space on either side. This works well and helps to focus our attention upon the contents. The top navigation menu is simple and practical, merely a few crucial links and a search box.

The real site navigation takes place through 15 navigation buttons located vertically on the left-hand side. These work in the manner that hovering over any of the menu items will cause the sub-menu items to roll out. We found that about half of these buttons had sub-menu items underneath, but there is no easy way of telling which ones they are. Therefore, it is possible that some visitors may never discover the wealth of "hiden information," which is a shame. Also, we did experience sub-menu items slipping away, so that we had to repeat the movement. These imperfections should be addressed when the site is redesigned or upgraded.

Have no doubt: Mr. Steinberg is a criminal law specialist with a solid track record, which includes many years of practicing law and being a prosecutor. Apparently, he enjoys writing about both himself and the law. This he does rather well, and any prospective client of his will find the visit well worthwhile, as will probably many scholars and others with interest in criminal law.

Critique

Our main points of critique for this website are as follows:

1. Mr. Steinberg's enthusiasm for writing and explaining tends to produce very long web pages, which lack some navigational support and/or visual enhancements. No matter how relevant and interesting the contents may be, we seriously doubt whether most readers will make it to the end;
   
2. Mr. Steinberg's writing style tends to be a bit academic. While this style works well for explaining many things, it does not always suffice to capture the reader's attention where this is most important;
3. Adding to this slightly dull impression, Mr. Steinberg and his designer do not seem to have fully understood the importance of using visual effects to highlight important portions of text. In other words, there are no text boxes or other enhancements to bring snippets of text into clear focus;
   
4. Mr. Steinberg would be well-advised to consider breaking some web pages into smaller portions, which would make navigation much easier and also add meaning to the distinctions between different subjects;
   
5. The website desperately needs proofreading. Without wanting to go into detail, we found numerous typographical and grammatical errors, including words and phrases that were repeated, words that had been glued together due to lack of spacing, double spacing, and so forth;
6. Hyperlinks were generally difficult to spot. We found a few links that were broken, and at least one was impossible to open without installing special software (no notice was provided);
   
7. Headlines are inconsistently formatted, which may cause some confusion and make it more difficult to understand how the contents are organized;
8. Non-hyperlinked text is oftentimes underlined, which is generally unacceptable. Only hyperlinks should be underlined, as a general rule;
9. The law firm collects private data through its contact form, but apparently has no privacy policy. 

Conclusions

This website is well-designed and fully operational at the most basic level. It is informative, to say the least, both about the firm and about criminal law matters. It makes the proprietor appear trustworthy and competent. But much work needs to be done to address the above concerns, as it stands the website is far from optimized.

Site reviewed (URL): http://www.hmichaelsteinberg.com

Date, 1st review: January 23-24, 2010

Webmaster notified:  January 24, 2010