Phase 1 Plan & Guidelines
The brand, site, and launch playbook for counselwiseconnectnv.com — everything decided, in one place.
What CWC is — and is never
Counsel Wise Connect is a Nevada legal-education marketing agency. Consumers pay zero — no call fee, no connection fee, no consultation fee, ever. Attorneys pay CWC a flat monthly subscription. CWC's role is non-legal educational intake and routing: a bilingual team helps a caller figure out what kind of lawyer they need, then connects them with a Nevada-licensed attorney through the network.
- A marketing agency, formed as a Nevada entity
- Free-forever legal education for consumers
- A connector to Nevada-licensed attorneys in its subscription network
- A law firm or lawyer directory
- A “referral service” — it connects, it does not refer
- A provider of legal advice, case evaluation, or attorney recommendations
“Counsel Wise Connect is a marketing agency. It is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice or attorney recommendations. Attorney services are provided by independent, Nevada-licensed law firms.”
Compliance frame: NV RPC 5.4 · RPC 7.5 · SCR 189 · NRS 7.285. Ethics-counsel signoff on structure + intake scripts is client-side; it does not block launch.
Brand system
Every mark derives from the approved owl mascot. The palette is pixel-sampled from it and locked — no accent colors, no experimental hues. Never stretch, skew, rotate, or add effects to any mark; the wordmark is set in Fraunces only.
Navy/ink on parchment passes AA at body sizes. Gold on navy is AA-large only — headlines and badges, never paragraphs.
Display — headlines · wordmarks · variable, latin-ext for Spanish diacritics
Body · UI · legumes — variable, latin-ext
Warm-professorial. Plain-language. Bilingual-native — Spanish is its own voice, never a translation. Never sales-y.
The test for every page: would a nervous first-time caller understand this on first read?
Practice areas & intake
Four verticals surface at launch — on the site, in ads, and in intake routing. The rule: never surface a practice area we can’t actually route. Estate, Employment, Real Estate, Workers’ Comp, and Bankruptcy wait for confirmed subscribers.
Car accidents, slip & fall, injuries from someone else’s negligence.
High volume, defensible cost-per-click.
Spanish-demand-heavy vertical.
Spanish-dominant; top ROI on Spanish ad spend.
Caller fills the site intake form — the single intake lane at launch, on every practice-area page and /contact.
The submission routes to Stephanie + the network attorney. The callback is a non-legal, diagnostic conversation.
Callback within one business day — stated explicitly on the site, in the caller’s preferred language.
“We’ll help you figure out what kind of lawyer you need” · “We connect you with a Nevada-licensed attorney through our network” · “Free, bilingual, callback within one business day”
“An attorney will explain your options” · “We’ll evaluate your case” · “Attorney X is recommended for you” — each one is UPL exposure
Site structure
Intentionally small: adding what we can’t fully support at launch. Seven unique templates cover 8 English pages, a full Spanish mirror, and 3 legal pages. Spanish is a first-class mirror written natively — never a translated afterthought.
| Template | What it does |
|---|---|
| T1 · Home | The thesis — hero promise, how-it-works, 4 practice-area cards, trust strip, guides, inline form |
| T2 · Practice area × 4 | Plain-language situations, area-focused callback steps, FAQ, area-preselected form |
| T3 · Blog index | Educational library, filterable by practice area + language |
| T4 · Blog post | Long-form guide with mid-body 'get a free callback' escape hatch + bilingual counterpart chip |
| T5 · About | Why free is really free, how the network works, the people, trust markers |
| T6 · Contact | The conversion surface: intake form + what-happens-next, prominent disclaimer (Cal.com scheduler joins in Phase 2) |
| T7 · Legal | Privacy, terms, disclaimers — single-column prose, ~65ch |
Structured data: Organization everywhere · LocalBusiness (areaServed 89101) on home + contact · FAQPage on practice areas · Article on posts. No LegalService schema — that’s for law firms; CWC isn’t one. Post-launch routes (zip pages, attorney recruiting, extra verticals) are cataloged, not built.
Timeline
Compressed launch: a brand-first, English-only site ships Sunday, Aug 24. Spanish, blog seeds, Cal.com, and the legal-accuracy review layer in the week after — on the live site, without a re-launch.
| Phase | Window | Delivers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Discovery | Aug 17 | Snapshot, content plan, timeline, wireframes on Vercel |
| 2 · Design | Aug 18–19 | Hero pass + all 7 templates dressed in Fraunces + Inter with brand tokens |
| 3 · Development | Aug 19–21 | Vercel-built (EN), Resend form + Turnstile, responsive, metadata + OG |
| 4 · Copy + QA | Aug 22 | English copy across all pages, cross-browser QA, Lighthouse, GA4 + Clarity |
| 5 · Deploy | Aug 23–24 | DNS cutover to Vercel, live at counselwiseconnectnv.com |
Spanish mirror (Aug 26) · 2 seed blog posts (Aug 27) · David’s single-bundle legal-accuracy pass (Aug 27) · practice pages un-noindexed (Aug 28) · GBP created + Search Console submitted (Aug 28) · shakeout close-out (Aug 29) · Quo voicemail line + Cal.com bilingual scheduler follow in Phase 2. Invoice B issued Fri Aug 29, due Sat Aug 30.
Launch is Sun Aug 24 — on the vercel.app alias if the custom domain isn’t live. Invoice B issues Fri Aug 29; the one-week shakeout is the payment gate, not launch day.
Late DNS — launch on alias, cut over Monday. Late blog seeds — placeholder copy, swapped inline. Late legal review — practice pages simply stay noindexed. Nothing above blocks launch.
Local SEO — one zip, then earn the next
Site copy anchors to 89101 or generic “Las Vegas” — never a pre-emptive list of zips. LocalBusiness schema and the GBP service area start at 89101 and expand in place.
Expansion is data-driven: watch Search Console + rank tracking after launch, and add a zip landing page (/lawyers/{practice}/{zip}) only where impressions and clicks prove demand. Practice-area pages are written for Vegas broadly, not per-zip.
Why the owl wins
Ten sites audited — six Las Vegas firms plus Morgan & Morgan Spanish, Avvo, LegalMatch, Priori. 10 of 10 use sans-serif type, a navy/red palette, and attorney portraits as the hero. Zero use a mascot.
The owl + parchment/gold palette + serif display is a category-signaling choice, not decoration — a visually reinforced “education agency, not law firm,” exactly what the compliance model needs. Reference class: Nolo / ProPublica / Priori, not any LV firm.
What success looks like — first 90 days
Organic form submissions / month by day 90
Scheduled callbacks / month once the Phase 2 scheduler lands
Practice areas in top-20 impressions for '[area] Las Vegas'
Compliance escalations from ethics counsel
Plus: Google Business Profile verified within 30 days of launch. First measurable review after day 30. Google phone-call volume is Phase 2 (no live line at launch). Monthly plan: day 30 GBP + reviews · day 60 blog cadence review (6 posts, 50/50 EN/ES) · day 90 first quarterly report to Stephanie + David.