Finalists: DLA Piper; Keystone Law; Macfarlanes; Morrison & Foerster (highly commended); Paul Hastings; Womble Bond Dickinson.

Mills & Reeve lifted the marketing innovation title for putting together an online resource to educate unmarried but cohabiting couples on the possible legal situations they may encounter – the first of its kind in the UK.

The website project (cohabitation-law.co.uk) was put together in response to a YouGov survey the firm commissioned to tackle misconceptions about the rights of cohabiting couples, which is the fastest-growing family unit in the UK.

The site seeks to guide unmarried couples through the basics such as buying a property and having children, to the thornier issues of what happens if a relationship falls apart and how to protect family finances in the event of ill health and death.

The website is part of a wider push from the firm to raise awareness of this topic as it attempts to become the leading law firm for cohabiting couples. Given a limited budget to build the site, the firm used a web-based template resource (Squarespace), allowing the project to advance from concept to launch in just 16 weeks.

The project proved a quick hit – within the first three months after launch the firm had already received four instructions directly linked to the website.

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