What is Legal Design Thinking?

Mark Beese
Sep 1, 2018 · 9 min read

Last year, the global firm Baker McKenzie launched a new initiative called “Whitespace Legal Collab”. On the 27th floor of their Toronto office on Bay Street, the global firm opened their doors to clients and leaders in business, government, academia and non-profit organizations to “address complex global challenges at the intersection of business, law and technology” according to their website. “Our Whitespace Legal Collab is part of our firm’s wider effort to cultivate a new type of thinking when helping our clients develop solutions to complex challenges” said Paul Rawlinson, global chair of the firm.

Baker McKenzie’s innovation project is one of several law firm initiatives that use a process called Design Thinking. While Design Thinking has become a staple topic in MBA programs and tech companies, it is just now showing up in law practice management circles. With its beginnings at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (known as the dSchool), Design Thinking has been used to create innovative products like the iPhone and services such as Fidelity’s Estate Planning Tools. Design firm IDEO, and its founder Tim Brown, have helped make design thinking a popular management tool through their innovative projects and on-line classes.

What is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is a creative process for innovation. In the same way lawyers use a process for preparing for a court case or going about business development, Design Thinking is a process with five distinct steps to develop a better way to deliver legal services or solve a challenging problem. The five steps are:

Empathize: Through interviews, direct observation and research, one gains an intimate understanding of the user’s situation, need and context. Often, we discover hidden needs and opportunities by simple observation and repetitive interviews. These needs and opportunities may lead to a new a better way to serve a client.

Define: A thoughtfully articulated definition of the challenge, or “point of view” directs the design effort. The “problem definition” is a clear statement of what the user wants to achieve through the process. This may be increased efficiency, lower cost, faster turnaround time, better communication or an improved result. The POV is also the ruler by which we measure success, that is, did the innovation solve the problem we set out to fix?

Ideate: This is the “brainstorm” step, where many varied ideas are generated, tested with the user, refined through an iterative process and several ideas are selected for the next step. We consider non-traditional ideas in order to get the creative and unique solutions we desire. There are a number of tools and skills used in this phase to help teams hone in on an innovative concept, and not just a “doable” idea.

Prototype: A physical representation of the top ideas are “mocked-up” for the user to try them out. We prototype to better understand and refine our understanding of the user’s needs as well as to test ideas for viability. Prototyping is also an iterative process that helps narrow down the ideas to a single concept to test. In legal, the prototype may start as a process map that is implemented on a trial basis to learn if the new process works as envisioned.

Test: Once a single concept is selected for development, we test it with real-life users to find ways to improve the idea before rolling out the program. Again, this is an iterative process that involves constant observation, interviews and refinement until an optimum performance is realized.

The outcome of design thinking is a user-centered solution that may have not been apparent beforehand. Both the designer and the user gain experience and commitment to the solution because both have invested in its development.

What are some ways to use Legal Design Thinking?

Design Thinking has been used in many ways in the legal profession. For example, the Legal Design Lab (legaltechdesign.com) of Stanford University has been a leader in developing new models of access to the justice system. Law departments, such as Microsoft, have used LDT to develop new ways of automating legal contract processes. Law firms have used LDT to both improve internal processes, such as new matter intake and attorney orientation, as well as client-facing processes, such as reducing steps in a legal process and integrating alternative service providers into service delivery processes.

Of most interest to law firms and their clients, however, is how to re-design the delivery of legal services and improving the relationships between law firms and legal departments. Legal Design Thinking can be applied to develop new ways to combine human-centered design and technology to meet the ever-changing demands of the legal profession.

For example, consider how LDT can be applied to:

- How a legal department can find efficiencies by re-designing a legal process to eliminate steps and reduce cost.

- How a law firm can develop a new way to track matter costs and communicate spend-to-budget progress to a client.

- How a law firm can re-design internal processes to be more effective, such as attorney on-boarding, conflict-checking, or associate training.

- How, together, a client and outside counsel can collaborate to find ways to manage a legal project using alternative service providers and new technology to reduce cost and improve turn-around time.

Legal Design Thinking results in not only more creative and effective solutions, but also a closer relationship and collaboration between law firms and their clients, the legal departments.

Key Mindsets for Using Design Thinking in a Legal Context

Design Thinking brings several mindsets that can be particularly helpful to law firms adapting to a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world.

User Centric: Design Thinking focuses on the experience of the user, which can be either a client or someone in the law firm or legal department. Either way, firms can benefit from gaining a more intimate understanding of what their clients are going through, their goals for efficiency and cost reduction, and their operational challenges. Lawyers and staff need to have a “beginners mindset” when observing and interviewing clients to see how they can make their life easier and solve everyday problems that make legal work inefficient. Clients glow in the attention and the process brings a sense of collaboration between attorney and client.

Iterative process: Design Thinking is a process of trial and error. Much like Agile Development in the software world, Design Thinking is best done rapidly, trying out new ideas with clients before they are fully baked. This will be a challenge for some lawyers and business professionals. However, the iterative process will result in better solutions and a closer relationship with the client.

Work in Diverse Teams: Interdisciplinary teams with people from different backgrounds, experience and perspectives will result in more creative and innovative solutions. The benefits of putting people from finance, marketing, development and IT together with lawyers, clients and outside experts to solve “wicked” problems are obvious.

How do you learn to use and apply the Legal Design Thinking process?

The best way to learn LDT is to do it. Like most leadership skills and management techniques, LDT takes hands-on practice, not something that is easily picked up from a book or webinar. The best Design Thinking workshops focus on:

- Why we need to innovate

- The client’s perspective on innovation

- What is Design Thinking and how it works in legal

- Design Thinking Mindsets, Skills, Tools, and Processes

- Hands-on Hackathon or Design Thinking Experiential Challenge

The Hackathon gives every participant to act as both designer and user. Participants go through the entire Design Thinking process, from user interviews to developing a final physical prototype (think pipe-cleaners and construction paper) in a fast-paced exercise.

This summer I facilitated a legal lean sigma workshop, hosted by a law firm and attended by senior partners and their top clients. Over the course of two days, these multidisciplinary teams analyzed and re-designed critical processes that addressed real-life legal and operational challenges. Clients loved the opportunity to not only learn a new management technique, but to also collaborate with their attorneys to create new and better ways of working together. This was, in my mind, an ultimate act of client service.

Getting Started with Legal Design Thinking

What really irritates your client or “user” in your firm? What issues cause a stumbling block over and over again? What is an issue that slows progress or irritates people? Take it upon yourself to design a new solution. Get some training in Legal Design Thinking and recruit a multi-disciplinary team to design a new solution. Go through the five steps (and remember, LDT is an iterative process, so you will have to go through some steps several times):

Empathize: Observe people when they experience their “pain points” with the issue. Interview users about their experience and look for insights that could be used later. Meet as a team to discuss, analyze and prioritize what you discovered.

Define: Focus on what problem you are trying to solve. In a single sentence, outline your design goal. For example, “design a client matter progress dashboard that tells both the client and the legal team where they are in terms of schedule, budget, critical tasks and responsibilities.” Or, “design a new partner on-boarding process that is efficient for the new attorney and effective in preparing them for success in the firm.”

Ideate: In your team, brainstorm different ideas. Go for quantity, not quality at first. Stretch to think “out of the box”. Don’t squelch ideas, rather build on each other’s ideas. Sort the ideas into themes. Consolidate and refine. Then choose three or four ideas that might have the most promise, the “fan favorite”, the most practical and perhaps most wild for further consideration.

Prototype: Create a physical manifestation of the four ideas (don’t worry — they don’t have to work or be perfect) and test them out with your users. Watch their reactions. Ask them about their experience. Note their questions. Go back to the drawing table and re-design a prototype that integrates the feedback and takes it to the next level. Repeat as needed.

Test: Once you’ve gotten enough feedback that your prototype seems to meet your user’s needs (and addresses your problem definition), make a working beta test solution. Try it out on a low risk project. Watch for reactions, interview for feedback, and measure results. Refine your beta test solution until it is ready for prime time.

Now that you think that you have a working solution, think about what has to happen in the organization for it to be accepted. Change is hard in law firms and legal departments. Your launch strategy will be as important as your new design. Consider using corporate storytelling or developing a persuasion strategy to minimize distractors and engage evangelists.

Good luck with your innovation project! Legal Design Thinking results in not only more creative and effective solutions, but also a closer relationship and collaboration between law firms and their clients.


Mark Beese is President of Leadership for Lawyers and Founder of Design Thinking Legal. He focuses on helping lawyers become stronger leaders and business developers. A former AmLaw 100 CMO, he is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inductee in the Legal Marketing Association Hall of Fame. He provides Legal Design Thinking Workshops for legal departments, law firms and associations. More information at DesignThinkingLegal.com and LeadershipForLawyers.com. Contact Mark at mark@leadershipforlawyers.com

Mark Beese

Written by

Speaker, trainer and consultant to law firms and PSFs in the areas of leadership, innovation and business development. www.leadershipforlawyers.com

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