Leave the first meeting a touch smarter than you arrived.
Success story · Law · Missouri
A trial firm's story, told with trial-firm discipline
The summary
UPWARD led Scharnhorst Ast Kennard Griffin's messaging from the ground up, confident without boast, and rebuilt every attorney profile to one clear, repeatable structure. We directed photography on location in Kansas City and built the site for search and AI answers, with schema tailored to a multi-attorney firm. AI names SAKG among Kansas City's high-stakes litigation firms, and the firm runs its own site day to day.
Key results
Real numbers only
UPWARD didn't just build us a website, they helped us tell our story. The new site finally reflects the caliber of our team and gives us a foundation that's easy to manage and built to grow with us.
Customer profile
The firm
SAKG is a Kansas City boutique civil litigation firm built for the trial: more than twenty trial attorneys representing Fortune 500 companies, healthcare institutions, construction firms, and design professionals in complex, high-stakes matters. Over 5,000 cases resolved since 2006.
The mismatch
The quality of the work had grown well beyond what their dated WordPress site could communicate. Attorney profiles varied wildly in tone and depth, the firm's trial-first identity was under-told, and the polish clients experienced in person vanished online.
Why UPWARD
SAKG's clients meet the firm in high-stakes litigation, where confidence without boast is the whole voice. The firm's old site could not hold that register: attorney profiles varied wildly, and the trial-first identity clients felt in person barely came through online. Firm leadership needed that same tone set once and carried through every attorney page, every photograph and every line of search structure. UPWARD led the messaging from the ground up and directed the photography in Kansas City, so the whole site reads the way the firm actually sounds.
The work
We led the messaging from the ground up, working with firm leadership to strike the balance a trial firm needs: confident without boast, experienced without arrogance. Every page was written to feel human, professional, and unmistakably trial-focused, from 'A Civil Litigation Firm Made for the Trial' to 'Principled. Purposeful. Proven.'
We standardized every attorney profile to one clear, repeatable structure, then directed professional photography in Kansas City so the visual library matches the caliber of the bench. Purposeful brand details throughout, down to a custom motif drawn from the firm's own logo.
And we built it to perform where clients actually search: full SEO foundation plus Answer Engine Optimization, with JSON-LD schema tailored for a multi-attorney firm, structured so AI-powered search tools understand and recommend them. The firm manages day-to-day content confidently on its own, with UPWARD as the safety net.
The partnership
SAKG runs its own site day to day, with UPWARD behind them for the deeper work. Kansas City is a second home for ours.
The work is out in the world. Go see it.
Keep reading
Built for firms like this: Website design for law firms
The ask
A conversation
One conversation, with the two of us. No account manager between you and the people who'd do the work. And if you're happy with what you've got, that's fine too.
Cody usually replies within a business day.
