Lachance & Moore Canada - law firm website design for a Toronto-led practice

Lachance & Moore Canada is a 230-lawyer firm across five Canadian offices, from Toronto to Vancouver. It builds on the US edition, as Canadian English does, then changes what matters: Canadian spelling (colour, centre, cheque, but -ize), provinces and postal codes, CAD pricing, PIPEDA and Quebec Law 25, CASL consent, and a palette that reads civic and calm rather than navy-and-gold.

Project facts

• Client: Lachance & Moore LLP (fictional)
• Sector: Corporate law firm
• Markets: Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton, plus a Montréal listing
• Services: Market localisation · Copywriting · Brand adaptation · Law firm website design · Accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA) · SEO foundations
• Templates: 12 page templates shared with every Lachance & Moore edition
• Stack: Hand-built HTML, CSS and vanilla JavaScript; one strings file and one theme file per market

The brief

Close to American, but unmistakably Canadian

Canada sits between the US and the UK, so the edition starts from US English and applies Canadian spelling automatically. Then the content changes: Toronto instead of New York, Ottawa instead of Washington, Vancouver instead of San Francisco, TSX 60 instead of Fortune 500, and a CASL-compliant consent line for email. The design keeps the editorial serif but swaps the warm paper and brass for cool greys, spruce green and one restrained red.

Designing for Canada

What actually changed between the US and this edition

• Story - US edition: Opened in New York in 1987 with four partners · Canada: Opened in Toronto in 1987 with four partners and a disputes practice
• Offices - US edition: Five US offices: New York, Washington, San Francisco, Chicago, Austin · Canada: Five Canadian offices: Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, plus Montréal
• Spelling - US edition: color, center, check · Canada: colour, centre, cheque (with -ize kept)
• Search - US edition: ZIP code · Canada: Postal code
• Currency - US edition: USD · Canada: CAD, shown before tax with GST/HST noted
• Legal - US edition: US privacy, state bars · Canada: PIPEDA and Quebec Law 25, CASL consent, AODA accessibility
• Look - US edition: Warm paper, ink navy, brass accent, Fraunces + Work Sans · Canada: Cool greys, spruce green and one restrained red; Source Serif 4 + Inter

Brand adaptation

The same Lachance & Moore, with a local accent

Spruce green carries the interface; a single restrained red is used only for italic emphasis, so the palette reads Canadian without leaning on the flag. Source Serif 4 and Inter give a crisp, civic, highly legible feel. The LLP descriptor stays.

Homepage and key journeys

A dusk skyline of Toronto with the CN Tower opens the site; the hero asks for a city, practice area or postal code. Office cards cover Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. The Toronto office page quotes 90 lawyers, Chambers Canada Band 1 for Corporate/M&A, and pro bono work in Scarborough and Etobicoke.

Compliance, accessibility and trust

• Privacy policy under PIPEDA, with Quebec Law 25 noted for Quebec residents and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as the complaint route.
• Express consent for commercial email, as CASL requires, with an unticked checkbox.
• Accessibility statement under AODA, with WCAG 2.2 AA as the target.
• Passes automated WCAG 2.2 AA checks on every page at 360, 390, 768 and 1440 px: no contrast failures, no unreachable controls, no horizontal scrolling.
• A language switcher built from hreflang sits in the header on desktop and in the footer on phones.

One system, twelve markets

Every visible string lives in one file per market, and every colour and typeface in one theme file. This edition needed no new templates or components: a strings file, a theme, regional photography and local legal content made it a different brand experience. For a law firm with international plans, a new market becomes a content project rather than a rebuild.

Deliverables

• Market profile: language, formats, legal and seasonality
• Full localised copy across 12 templates, header, footer and forms
• Brand adaptation: palette, type pairing and logo descriptor
• 28 regional photographs (Pexels, credited in credits.json)
• Local legal content
• Accessibility pass (WCAG 2.2 AA, automated) and QA at four screen widths
• Portfolio media: stills, full-page captures, scroll video, OG image, brand board