Using WP for a small-business/professional non-blog website

Hi, guys. I’m a new user, and I need to make me a webbie for professional services (translation, mostly legal translation). Basically an extended business card, like ToS, ego wall, details of offer, and so on. No industry news, no newsletters or subscriptions to receive news about what my cat had for breakfast. I won’t be playing the “industry authority” game. Any new degrees or publications will be added silently to the CV, not made a news item of. The closes thing to real posting will be translation samples and I’ll probably need to inject arbitrary code to effect a two-column view. (Now, if somebody is aware of a plugin that allows you to divide a post into two colums, that’d be solid gold.)

In this connection, I’d like to ask a couple of questions of the more experienced users here (which is probably everyone but me). I’m not a real webdesigner myself, from 1998 till now I’ve made just a couple of sites and done a couple of PHP or other coding projects as an amateur that grew up with QBASIC on a 286. Nothing fancy. I don’t have the knowledge of someone who really sits inside it, knows the trends, good practices and recommendations and the reasons for them. Which is the knowledge I’m seeking here.

So, I would normally be inclined to go with pages and write directly on them, perhaps inserting arbitrary code to align stuff or add some CSS gadgetry (if actually). But then why not use posts if they have their functionalities, some of which could actually be used intelligently for my purposes, perhaps? I already know there are two schools of thought here and even an eclectic school but the articles I’ve found in Google so far aren’t really specific, hands-on enough to help me figure it out.

Overall, I’d just need to maintain a non-blogging overall impression, as in it’s okay if the website has blogging features in it but it has to be a decent company site/personal site of an independent professional (I’m not decided here yet, I don’t know if the “company we” or the “independent professional I” works better). Can’t look like a personal blog with a price list slapped on it. It’s gotta be as professional as a briefcase. It needs to make a banker or insurer or accountant think I’m serious enough to work with, so it can’t be too much of a “next generation” thing.

pros for posts:
+ everything comes in categories: there are offers for business clients, individuals, law firms, outsourcers etc., ToS has sections too;
+ particularly samples of textual work are by definition post material;
+ indexability/easy tree structure;
+ leaves room for a blog/news service if I really want one in the future;

cons against posts:
– sole pages being Main, Contact and About or something along those lines, that’s a miser of a menu bar;
– post/category-based structure has the potential to look like a duct tape solution adapted from a blog;
– potentially lacking in gravitas or professional solidity in the eyes of some recipients;
– can’t glue specific posts to specific pages;

pros for pages:
+ fills up the menu bar;
+ is a full page, not a buncha posts, more solid etc.;
+ more intuitive navigation for people not used to “social media”;
+ avoids any possible stigma overworked members of the bourgeoisie in “serious jobs” could associate with posts and postings;

cons against pages:
– a bit of a bother when it comes to adding the content, arranging or moving it etc.

But these are just my semi-educated guesses. I’m here to ask people who have more of a foundation to form opinions.

So, can I have any insights or tips?

Any specific plugins or widgets that come to your mind as necessary or useful here basing on your experience? I’ve already made a thread about themes in the theme section. Struggling with that choice too. The choice of theme will influence my choice of either posts or pages for layout, which is why I can’t really put the content in first and check later in theme previews.

Thanks for your time in advance, I appreciate it.