A premium headless platform for an international law firm: fast publishing and editorial independence
Client
Amsterdam + Partners LLP
Year
2025
Industry
Legal Services
Services
Engineering, CMS Architecture, Design System, Performance
Amsterdam + Partners — rebuilt as a premium headless corporate platform
Amsterdam + Partners LLP needed a digital presence that matched the authority and sophistication of their practice.
We built a headless Next.js platform on Storyblok CMS and developed the design into a layer of subtle, craft-driven animations — GSAP-powered scroll transitions, considered hover states on team profiles and navigation, and smooth page entrances that give the site a sense of quiet confidence without ever feeling showy.
The editorial team now publishes independently, pages load in under a second, and the motion design reinforces the firm's authority at every interaction.
<1s
Page load times with ISR and static pre-rendering
100%
Editorial independence — publish, preview, and update without developer support
99.9%
Uptime since launch on Vercel's edge network
The Challenge
Pain points that motivated the rebuild
Legacy WordPress site
The existing site was built on WordPress with an aging theme. Content updates required developer involvement and the design no longer reflected the firm's standing.
No editorial autonomy
Lawyers and marketing staff couldn't publish press releases, white papers, or team updates without technical help — slowing down communications.
Fragmented content types
Press releases, white papers, team bios, and page content were managed inconsistently with no unified content model or publishing workflow.
Poor performance + SEO
Page load times were slow, metadata was incomplete, and the legacy URL structure made migration risky without careful redirect planning.
Design didn't match the brand
The firm's visual identity — authoritative, international, premium — wasn't reflected in the website's generic template-driven design.
Full site experience — homepage, team profiles, press releases, and white papers
Goals
What success looked like
Editorial independence
Give the team full control to publish and update content — press releases, white papers, team profiles, and pages — without developer involvement.
Motion that feels intentional
Develop the dark-theme design into refined GSAP-driven animations — subtle scroll reveals, polished hover interactions, and smooth transitions that feel premium without being distracting.
Clean migration
Migrate from WordPress without losing SEO equity — map every legacy URL and preserve search rankings.
Fast, SEO-optimized delivery
Deliver sub-second page loads, complete structured metadata, and a responsive experience across all devices.
Interactive hover states across navigation and team profiles
Built with
01 — Our Approach
Discovery + content audit
Mapping legacy content types to a structured CMS model
02 — Our Approach
Headless CMS architecture
Implemented Storyblok as the headless CMS with a structured content model for press releases, white papers, team members, and flexible page sections. Built webhook-driven cache invalidation, draft preview mode, and a modular page builder so the editorial team could compose pages without code.
Modular page builder powering flexible layouts in Storyblok
Modular page builder powering flexible layouts in Storyblok
03 — Our Approach
Pixel-perfect development + animation
Grayscale-to-detail hover interaction on team profiles
Results
The rebuild gave Amsterdam + Partners a digital presence that matches the authority of their practice — pixel-perfect development with a refined animation layer that makes every interaction feel intentional. The editorial team publishes independently, pages load in under a second, and the legacy migration preserved all SEO equity.
Full editorial independence
The team publishes press releases, white papers, and team updates directly in Storyblok — no developer tickets, no delays.
Sub-second page loads
Pre-rendered pages with ISR and optimized assets deliver fast, reliable performance across all devices.
Zero broken links
60+ legacy WordPress URLs mapped to new routes — SEO equity preserved through the migration.
Pixel-perfect craft
Every component built 1:1 from Figma with GSAP-driven animations layered on top — subtle scroll reveals, hover states, and transitions that feel premium and intentional.
Lessons + Next Steps
Invest in the content model early: structuring press releases, white papers, and team profiles as distinct content types in Storyblok paid off in editorial clarity and front-end flexibility.
Legacy redirects are non-negotiable: mapping every WordPress URL before launch preserved organic traffic and avoided broken backlinks from legal directories and press coverage.
Next steps: multi-language support for the firm's international practice, enhanced analytics dashboards, and expanded content types for case engagements and thought leadership.
Have a similar challenge?
Need a corporate platform that gives your team editorial independence without sacrificing design quality? Let's talk.