Lawfty

Lawfty is a web-based service that connects law firms with local clients by providing a template experience and marketing services for small to mid-sized firms. They deploy a system of advanced machine learning technologies to handle the time consuming process of new client intake for their partner firms located across the country.

Problem

A series of analytic dashboards connecting these partner firms with Lawfty support were creating reporting issues that impacted their data-centric dialogues.

objective

Evaluate the existing user experience of their internal system that service both the lawyers who handle inbound inquiries from potential clients and the Lawfty operations staff who handle the initial intake. Redesign their dashboard to resolve reporting issues and create a consistent flow of vetted personal injury cases to the firms.

My roles

As part of a 3-member team, my responsibilities included:

User interviews • User flows • Personas • Wireframes • Visual design • Prototypes • Usability testing

a day in the life

We started off our research in conducting interviews with attorneys, as well as paralegals and office assistants, to gather insight on habits, attitudes and behaviors. Three important insights gained during our initial research were:

· Their daily schedules were consumed in hours of research – past case settlements, medical records, police records, etc.

· They exercised a more conservative use with modern technologies – email, word processing, etc.

· Every attorney evaluated each new intake according to two main criteria: sufficient proof of injury and profitability.

From this research we were able to create a unique persona that represented the Lawfty user.

it’s all in the detail

A user flow was used to understand the current intake process and it illustrated areas of flaw in which the firms fail to update status at each decision point. It was paramount to address the information architecture of the intake information considering the meticulous nature of the user’s mental model. Card sorting with attorneys helped us understand grouping and prioritization.

not-so-lofty expectations

Lawfty explained their basic guidelines for design and conveyed just one limitation to avoid using any login/password features in order to prevent any potential security issues. Armed with this knowledge, our team went through 3 rounds of rapid sketching and synthesizing concepts to determine which elements worked best. Each round allowed us to narrow down the features and flow to a final unified design.

one thing leads to another

Usability testing revealed that we needed to clearly define the task hierarchy. Furthermore, we confirmed the finicky nature of the attorneys that became anxious about details not illustrated in our low-fidelity paper prototypes. After making the necessary changes, we advanced to the design of high-resolution prototypes in Sketch and InVision.

it all comes together

The two main pillars of our design concept were clarity and efficiency. Our intention was to display information that an attorney can easily scan. A clear organization of pertinent case information would aid the attorney to make an easier determination on a new case.