If you are using the entrust library you can set the role specific things with an $user->hasRole('role') control structure.

thanks

how would you go about designing the directory structure?

A view directory per each user role with it's partials ?

Views/Admin/layouts Views/Member/layouts etc?

I attach "is" and "can" methods to my User object. So I can do things like:

Auth::user()->is('admin');
Auth::user()->can('manage users');

I also use a permissions filter:

Route::filter('permission', function ($route, $request, $permission) {
        if (!Auth::user()->can($permission)) {
            return Redirect::route('dashboard')
                ->with('flash_error', 'You do not have permission to view this page.');
        }
    }
);

You can use that filter in any routes or even do it in a resource controller as follows:

public function __construct()
{
    parent::__construct();
    $this->beforeFilter('permission:manage users');
}

In your views you can do something like this (for small projects):

@if(Auth::user()->can('manage users'))
    {{-- Show menu item here --}}
@endif

thanks @orecrush, very useful