01
Restraint is the brief.
Most animated signatures are built to be noticed. A lawyer's has a different job: to be trusted at a glance and then forgotten. So the motion should be the smallest that still says someone made this with care.
The design shown on this page moves once per loop, as a band of light passing across the photo, and spends the rest of its time still. Nothing flashes and nothing plays sound. In a client that will not animate, it looks like what it is at rest: a well-made signature with a face in it.
02
What belongs in it.
- Your name
- As you sign letters, with post-nominals if you use them.
- Role and practice area
- Partner, Employment. A client scanning a thread should know who you are to them.
- The firm
- Its name and mark, small, so the firm is present without competing with you.
- A direct line and email
- The number that reaches you, not the switchboard.
- What your rules require
- A registration number, a regulatory statement or a confidentiality notice, where yours ask for one.
That is the whole list. A lawyer's signature earns trust by what it leaves out: no inspirational quote, no award badges, no three-line legal disclaimer set in grey on grey above the name.
03
Disclaimers and regulatory lines.
What a lawyer's emails must say depends on where you practise. State bars in the United States, the regulators of England and Wales, and bar associations across Europe each set their own rules, and firms often add their own on top. Check what applies to you, because this page cannot.
Animated Signature does not have a field for a legal notice yet. Add yours in your mail client's signature box, directly under the signature you paste in, as plain text. It stays readable when images are blocked, which is exactly when a notice matters most.
04
Tracking, and what it never sees.
There is no tracking pixel in any signature, so nothing records when a client opens your email. Link tracking, which counts clicks on your signature's own links, is on by default and can be switched off for good; the links then go straight to where they point, with no redirect in between.
The product never sees your correspondence. It keeps your signature, your images and a count of clicks per link, and nothing about the people you write to.
05
When a banner makes sense.
Rarely, and then for a reason a client would welcome: a briefing on a change in the law, a client seminar, a published insight. Give it an end date and it disappears the morning after the event.
