Last week we launched the new Wayne Law Review (opens new window) website as a complete overhaul from their old site.

Overall design

The look of the site was based on existing material and the overall feel of the new Law School website (which should be launched in the next few months). The homepage is based on elements from the published Law Review. The few elements we added were the social icons, sign-up for updates form and the link to the PDF reader since all articles are provided in PDF format.

Gathering readers

As the Law Review transitions to an online format the need to gather e-mail addresses is high. E-mail is far cheaper to send content than printing a book and mailing it out twice a year. I'm not kidding about the "book" reference, the Law Review is a 500+ page publication! The form in the left navigation gives readers a quick way to subscribe. It sends a confirmation e-mail to the subscriber to confirm it is a valid e-mail address. The site has yet to be announced to the law community but has already had one e-mail sign up. We are hoping for hundreds more in the next few weeks.

Decision to go with PDF downloads

Typically we are completely against publishing anything in PDF format unless it is a form or needs to be printed exactly as designed but in this case we made an exception. The articles, although they are just text, are lengthy, some spanning 30+ pages. Although we would love for these to be HTML, indexed and search-able, the way users interact with these articles is not the typical way people "browse" websites. The primary audience is most likely looking for a specific article and downloads it to read in its original form. Specific formatting and footnotes are essential to the understanding of these articles and they need to be preserved in their original form. So PDF is the download method for the articles.

View the new Law Review website at: http://lawreview.wayne.edu/ (opens new window)