Adventures in Lawyer Advertising: What the MoFo?

Morrison & Foerster has fully embraced the moniker MoFo. And now the firm appears to be embracing a WTF theme for its website.

MoFo rolled out the new website recently. Tipsters say the new site took years and many dollars to create. The design budget is rumored to be $1 million. (We’ve asked the firm to comment on the cost, but it has not responded.)

The site, however, doesn’t look like a million bucks. Multiple readers have checked it out and sent us emails like this one:

It looks like someone hacked their site, or that they delegated web design (and authorship) to a 13-year-old kid learning HTML. Truly dreadful.

Most Biglaw websites are pretty staid. MoFo is seriously rocking the Biglaw boat with this redesign. There are mind games, sound effects, and optical illusions. We give you a tour after the jump.


Here’s the site’s new American Apparel-esque welcome page:

If you click on Imagination, MoFo tells you:

We’re rarely at a loss for words. But sometimes showing beats telling.

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We suspect the designers are fans of the puzzles of Myst. This page left us more perplexed than the space-time continuum questions raised by the Lost season premiere last night:

It turns out to be a fun little game. These shapes represent MoFo’s characteristics. Click on a shape to see what two characteristics MoFo combines! Try to figure out what it means! Then click on the little comment cloud on the left for the answer. Here are some examples.

MoFo wants this to illustrate “Acuity and Diligence.”

This said to us: “We will solve your puzzles and clean up your sh**.”

This is supposed to suggest that MoFo is “Predictable and Unexpected.”

It said to us: “We are some crazy MoFo’ers, and we wake up hella’ early.”

This is meant to illustrate that MoFo is “Imposing and Agile.”

It said to us: “We like animals.”

If you’re not tired of MoFo’s mind games, surf on over to Innovation. This page hurts my eyes and my brain:

And then MoFo doesn’t even give you the answers to the optical illusions. It colorfully explains:

Why do clients have to solve the puzzles themselves? Isn’t that why they hire lawyers? Are their prospective clients really supposed to be conversant with the rule against perpetuities? That’s like Daniel Faraday expecting the rest of the Lost characters to understand his physics equations and why the Island can move through time.

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We checked out MoFo’s Commitment and wondered if this is really the image one wants for conveying how “special” the firm is:

Apparently, the website designers were not committed to proper spelling:

Finally, if you click on This is MoFo, you’re taken to a page with ’25 reasons why you should choose MoFo.’ Reasons include #2 – Diversity, illustrated by a box of chocolates and #12 – Kumbaya, because MoFo is good at executing M&A transactions filled with peace and harmony:

It’s hard to focus on the “peace” part of this, because every time you click on those numbers, it makes a gunshot noise. Exploring the page feels like being in a drive-by shooting.

Rather than thinking about the “25 examples of what makes MoFo different,” the page made us think, “This is MoFo. Hire us or we’ll put a cap in your a**.”

Morrison & Foerster [official website]

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