ShapiroThomas.com
A cinematic, fully accessible website for a Capital Region law firm — with a source-linked newsroom fed by official municipal agendas.
- Client
- A New York law firm
- Role
- Design, engineering, content systems
- Year
- 2026
- Status
- Live
The brief
Why it needed to exist.
A new firm needed a site that felt established on day one, met accessibility standards a law firm can't afford to miss, and gave the partners a steady, defensible way to publish on the local matters they know best.
The production
What we built.
The firm's public face: attorneys, practice areas, a business counsel program, FAQ, and contact — presented with a restrained, cinematic motion layer that switches off for reduced-motion users and still works without JavaScript.
Its Insights section publishes source-linked notes on local land-use matters. An automated monitor watches seven official planning and zoning board feeds and opens intake items; an AI agent assembles a research packet from the primary records; an attorney approves every article and byline.
01Three directions, one decision
Content gathered through a partner questionnaire, three design options for review, then a motion redesign QA'd against the mockup at desktop and phone sizes.
02Audited to WCAG 2.2 AA
An axe-core audit across every page at two viewports found 96 violations. All were fixed the same day and the re-run came back clean. A published accessibility statement backs it.
03A newsroom with a paper trail
A twice-weekly monitor reads official agenda feeds from Capital Region planning and zoning boards. The automation can gather and draft research — it can never publish on its own.
04Built light
Static HTML, one stylesheet, and vanilla JavaScript. One serverless function handles inquiries; edge middleware handles canonical redirects across domains.
Under the hood
How it’s made.
- SiteStatic HTML, CSS, and vanilla JS on Vercel with clean URLs, structured data, RSS, and a sitemap
- EdgeVercel Edge Middleware for canonical redirects
- EditorialScheduled monitor and research agent under written editorial and source policies; attorney approval gate
- QualityPlaywright + axe-core audit harness across all routes at two viewports; link and metadata validation in CI
Stack: HTML · CSS · JS · Vercel Edge · Playwright + axe-core · GitHub Actions
Stills
From the set.
