How to use Legal Design to find the right Legal Tech for your Business

Legal design allows lawyers to ask the right questions and identify the core challenges they want to solve through legal technology. Legal tech is software and digital products created to optimize systems and processes for lawyers and customers.

Legal tech automates repetitive tasks, gives customers alternatives to expensive legal services, offers groundbreaking research and analysis capabilities, and frees up lawyers to focus on strategic legal work. 

Applying legal design thinking to a workflow or desired outcomes before investing in legal tech means the solution solves the problem. Buying a legal tech solution without fully grasping underlying workflow issues and frustrations exacerbates the issue because the solution doesn’t address the real issue. Legal technology is about people, not software. Legal design uncovers true user needs and identifies the tech that solves the need. Legal design ensures lawyers use legal technology instead of it being another unopened program on a computer. 

Legal technology is part of digital transformation in law. Digital transformation in law means embracing technology in all aspects of the legal space, service delivery, processes, workflows, contracts, customer engagement, and case management.Legal technology and digitization are about people, not technology.

What is legal tech?

Legal tech is software created to optimize systems and processes for lawyers and customers. Legal technology gives underserved markets access to legal services. 

The legal system is labor-intensive, slow, and inefficient. Law is expensive. Lawyers type. Lawyers print. Lawyers scan. Lawyers manage different versions of the same document. Lawyers collect signatures and collate billable hours. Lawyers edit, update, and customize contracts routinely.

Technology offers tremendous opportunities for lawyers because lawyers are able to focus on delivering value. 

Lawyers who use legal design thinking to create or choose legal tech solutions ensure that legal technology solves the root challenges lawyers and customers face.

Legal Tech Examples

Legal technology transforming the legal industry includes the following.

• Document management and document creation software:  Lawyers save time by automating existing document creation or paying a subscription to access cutting-edge templates. Innovative lawyers use contract design to create modular customer-centric templates and automate contract creation.
• Legal practice management software: Software allowing law firms to manage day-to-day workflows and business practices in the firm. The cloud-based software allows lawyers comprehensive access to client details, case management, calendars, documents, time tracking, billing, payments, and accounts.
• Online payment tools that comply with trust accounting rules: Lawyers and clients enjoy simple payment gateways that comply with trust accounting and fiduciary duties.
• AI Legal Research Tools: AI legal research tools allow lawyers to research case law and legislation and use neural networks and predictive modeling to identify strategic options and outcomes based on historical data.
• AI Document Review Tools: Software that quickly analyzes, interprets, and highlights issues saves hours of manual review. Review tools make managing small changes in repetitive documents cost-effective and less labor-intensive. 
• Document storage in the cloud: Cloud storage allows lawyers to collaborate in one workspace, using various electronic documents, rather than sending documents with email. 
• Electronic discovery: Software that searches for online information relevant to a legal matter. E-discovery makes locating documents and creating evidence logs easy.
• E-signature platforms: Electronic signature software means documents are signed quickly and securely. 
• Tools for online meetings: Online meeting tools allow clients to access legal services quickly and conveniently and save travel time.
• CyberSecurity: Cyber security is enhanced with secure and encrypted email, video meetings, document storage, and passwords.
• Virtual legal assistants: Legal chatbots enable legal professionals to focus on strategic legal matters. Clients access routine legal information quickly.
• RegTech: Technology that helps lawyers identify compliance changes and manage regulatory compliance more effectively.
• Blockchain: Blockchain is a decentralized database that cannot be altered once a transaction has occurred. Blockchain in contracting means smart legal contracts that are secure, tamper-proof, and transparent.

How to Use Legal Design to Choose the Right Legal Tech

To use legal design to choose the right legal tech, follow the below steps.

• Use what you have. Investigate the tools already in the business. Look at the functionality to determine if the existing tool has features that haven’t been used before. Tools like Microsoft and Google have collaboration and AI features that can help with documents and workflows.
• Identify workflows and communication. Legal design is an enabler of legal services. Examine and question how to streamline the internal collaboration among team members. Look at the contract management process. Look at how teams collaborate. Does the collaboration work for the individual as well as the broader team? How does legal tech create value within the team? Examine client communication, both internal and external clients, and how documents are exchanged. How are updates and statuses’ shared? Examine how to create value for internal and external clients.
• Start with the end user. Ask questions to identify the fundamental challenge the tech is solving. Review the tools available. Create a shortlist and test them. Develop a proof of concept using more than one tool. Check if the tool is intuitive because people don’t read user manuals or go to training. Testing various tools allows users to evaluate what working with the tool and the provider is like. Involve IT people early to capitalize on the technical expertise. Get feedback from users, build on the feedback, and improve and iterate until the right solution is found.
• Get clear on what happens with the data. Understand where the data is stored and how it is handled. Ease of access and collaboration is vital for teams using the same documents. 
• Ensure change management is the outcome. Legal tech isn’t another software on a desktop. Users must want to use it and enjoy using it. Use legal design to ensure users adopt the tech by making creative videos, guides, and instructions. Find change agents and tech advocates, develop measurable KPIs for management buy-in, and make legal tech wins visible. 

Legal design forces lawyers to think about what we do and ask, “What value do we create with our legal services? Legal design is a client-centered approach requiring lawyers to understand their processes, ask the right questions, listen, and tune in to their needs.

What are the Benefits of Digitization and Legal Tech

The benefits of digitization and legal tech are listed below.

• Save time and money: Manual work means expertise and services are limited to the number of billable daily hours. Legal tech allows lawyers to duplicate workflows and scale.
• New business: Think about client complaints, frustrations, and wishes. Legal tech solutions transform the delivery of legal services. Innovative lawyers are able to solve frustrations with new legal tech products that meet an unaddressed client need.
• New business models: Replace time-consuming manual work with automation and offer services for different pricing, like value-based or fixed price or alternative fee arrangements.
• Happy customers: Customers get more value by paying for results instead of time. Lawyers forging relationships and loyalty as well.
• Happy lawyers: Lawyers are free for meaningful work, while automation takes care of the repetitious stuff. The pandemic caused rapid changes in how lawyers work. Lawyers and teams are embracing technology to streamline operations and challenge the old ways of the law. 

The Lawyers Design School workshops and courses are illuminating. I’m watching teams using tech to analyze data and refine their service offerings by calculating costs, offering value-based billing based on analysis, and what clients value in their experience with lawyers. 

Project managers who manage digital data analysis are already part of the system in progressive firms. Legal ops is a completely new area of expertise and legal work in in-house teams.

Can Legal Tech Productize Legal Services

Yes, legal tech can productize legal services. Legal tech productizes legal services and disrupts the legal industry. Legal technology companies disrupt the legal landscape. Brands like LegalZoom give access to underserved customers and champion a new way of delivering legal services.

Online dispute resolution platforms allow people to attempt to settle disputes online for a fixed price. Lawyers are used as required. 

Online legal advice platforms connect consumers with lawyers and pay for the product rather than the billable hour. Upcounsel is an example of an online legal advice platform.

Legal process outsourcing to specialized service providers allows lawyers to focus on strategic and valuable work.

Legal tech solutions allow consumers to create simple contracts and wills and complete immigration paperwork online for a fixed price. The opportunities to find a client base looking for fixed-price legal products as a middle ground are huge. 

To productize legal services with legal tech, identify the client friction point or the repetitive tasks that clients pay for routinely. Work through every process step with a design thinking hat on, and examine how to automate and sell the legal service as a product.

Can Lawyers Make Legal Tech?

Yes, lawyers can make legal tech by applying a design approach. The design approach puts users at the center to identify the underlying issue requiring legal innovation through legal technology. Design thinking includes users in the requirements for the new technology and lets them test and give feedback on the proposed solutions. It breaks down barriers, gets buy-in, and creates tech advocates. 

Technology is never about technology. It’s about people. Making the tech is often the easiest, but it’s worthless if no one uses it. Legal design is an enabler of legal services, and true innovation drives change and improves the legal system.

Do Lawyers Need to Know How to Write Code to Make Legal Tech?

No, lawyers do not need to know how to write code to make legal tech. Making digital solutions is a collaborative process involving software designers, lawyers, programmers, and clients. Lawyers need a design mindset that allows them to understand the real need behind the solution, and the other collaborators apply their skills to build the solution.

I don’t know how to code, but I co-founded a legal tech start-up that automates contract creation and created my first legal product to improve my work-life balance.

Example of Digitization in Law in Action

I co-founded the legal tech startup Contract Mill. The business has rebranded as Ment. Ment is a document automation solution. The software allows lawyers to save hours drafting and redrafting contracts. Ment is designed to save drafting time and create opportunities for small businesses to scale and grow without working harder or hiring more people. 

Contract Mill allows you to create clever digital versions of your contract templates and allows your colleagues or customers to build custom contracts by themselves by answering questions.

I built a legal product from scratch when my child was young, and I didn’t have enough hours in the day to serve the clients I wanted to and make a profit. My core offering was shareholder agreements. I identified the customer pain points and automated the contract creation, which included a short consultation. The product was sold online. Clients were buying the product and creating their contracts, and my time investment was the short consultation. I scaled my firm and reclaimed my time by identifying the need and customer base and working out how to deliver the legal service online as a product. The money arrived in the bank on my days off and holidays. It felt great. 

Legal tech is able to make working in law rewarding and meaningful. Legal design thinkers are able to innovate and scale with products consumers want and are willing to pay for. The key to legal tech solutions and digitization is understanding the underlying problem the tech is trying to solve. Legal design thinking is a mindset that allows people to ask the right questions, get curious, test, iterate, implement, and reap the true return on investment in tech. 

It starts with people.