New
Lawyer Career Toolkits

After the successes of the new design system launched in 2025, the New Lawyer Career Toolkit was the next big challenge for me.

The Problem: The ABA wants to provide resources directly to new legal professionals that helps them as they come out of law school. I was tasked with building a new treatment that, while aligned with the ABA’s design system, had a distinctive look, and could be used both digitally as well as reproduced in print and would align with future 1L, 2L and 3L tookits.

The Solution: Framing images with high contrast colors creates a window into the world of new lawyers that the audience can enter into themselves, with there being an option for light and dark, allowing options to best suit the image. To pull this off without more direct skeumorphism I decided to create a pattern that would capture a feeling of flow. This pattern could both build visual interest and guide the viewer into the world of an image. Depth was created by having this pattern begin and end outside of the frame, and either implicitly or literally dip into the photo, most often by going behind the inside of the frame. This is paired with bold text that overlaps with the frame and merges with it. Last but not least we have the explicit brand of the New Lawyer Career Toolkit