We run each engagement through the same four steps, and nothing goes live until your attorney approves it. Here is who does the work, and how we run it.
The team
Derek Noble
VP of Partnerships and Growth
Derek has spent more than twenty years in search, eight of them running his own agency. That means he has sat on both sides of the table: the owner who had to meet payroll out of client results, and the strategist who had to explain why a ranking moved.
At Smart Chimp he leads partnerships and growth. He is originally from Scotland, and you will hear it about three words into your first call with him.
Jenaye Merida
Director of Design
Jenaye leads design on the law firm websites and pages we build, and she also runs her own studio, Merida Creative. She came to design after a decade in publishing: first as a publicist and marketing strategist at Lifeway, then as a literary agent and marketing manager at K-LOVE Books and WTA Media. In every one of those jobs the work was helping someone find what they had to say and getting it heard.
That history shows in her layouts. A legal page that gets quoted needs a structure software can follow and a look a nervous client trusts, and she designs for both. She is a Squarespace Circle member with close to fifty custom sites behind her, built for recording artists, well-known authors, nonprofits, financial practices and law firms.
Jana Abadiano
Paid Media Strategist
Jana plans and runs paid campaigns for our firms on Google, Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn and ChatGPT, plus retargeting for people who visited a firm's site and left without calling. She owns the whole campaign: planning, ad copy and creative, audience tests and the adjustments that follow, with reporting that shows plainly what each channel produced.
Her background covers search marketing and paid social, including years at agencies whose U.S. clients ranged from online retail and local service companies to schools and wellness brands. Because she has run both sides, she plans search, social and retargeting as one sequence rather than three separate buys, and she moves budget toward whatever the numbers support. Every ad she writes for a firm is lawyer advertising, so it goes to the attorney for approval before it runs.
Jeremy Bales
Video producer, director and motion designer
Jeremy is a video producer and creative director with his own independent studio. His work spans brand stories, educational pieces, interviews, promotional video and motion graphics, and he carries a project from the first concept and script through editing, animation and delivery.
For our firms that means attorney introductions, practice-area explainers and short answers to the questions clients ask, scripted from the attorney's Voice DNA profile so the video sounds like the lawyer a client will meet. On every project his aim is the same: help the right viewer understand what the firm does and what to do next.
How we work with firms
- We say so when it is not worth doingA firm may be too early for this work, or its market may already be well served by a competitor doing it right. You will hear that on the first call, not three months in.
- Exclusivity on most monthly plansWhile your plan is active, a direct competitor in your practice area and market cannot hire us for the same work. Your proposal names both.
- It is all written down, and it is yoursThe voice profile, the research, every claim and the source behind it. If we part ways, your firm keeps all of it.
- Your attorney has the last wordWe check each factual claim against a primary source before you see it, and nothing publishes without a licensed attorney's approval. We do not give legal advice.
Where to start
The easiest way to judge the work is the free homepage redesign: fill out a short form, and we design a new home page for your firm and send it as a private link. A call is optional. To see everything we do first, start with our services for law firms, or get in touch with a question.