Reprinted with permission from The Relevant Lawyer—Reimagining the Future of the Legal Profession, avail- able for purchase from the ABA Webstore (shopaba.org) at http://shop.americanbar.org/eBus/Store/ProductDetails. aspx?productId=187108732, 2015 © by the American Bar Association. All rights reserved. This information or any portion may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association or the copyright holder.
applications focus a significant portion of the design of their products and services on user experience. These companies look at the user’s journey through the user interface they have developed and make sure that it is not only intuitive, but that working on the device or using the service instills brand recognition and loyalty in the user. Based on our understanding of the level of engagement needed for online delivery, law firms engaging in virtual law practice must also learn about user-centered design.
User-centered design requires establishing empathy for the users—the law firm’s clients. This includes an understanding of what their needs and desires are and looks at how the clients would search for a law firm, browse the law firm website, decide to work with the law firm, and so on through the entire process. To discover empathy for prospective and exist- ing clients, the law firm must do some ethnographic work. This means speaking to clients and potential future clients about what they want and what their experiences are with related legal services. This user-centric focus, used by many companies to design products and services, is found in design methodology, a concept taught at Stanford University’s Design School (d.school) and at IDEO, a design and innovation consulting firm based in Palo Alto, California, among other prominent design and busi- ness institutions.
Lawyers designing new forms of legal service delivery may also con- sider methods such as gamification to increase online engagement with clients. Gamification is the use of game mechanics in non-game applica- tions. Gamification occurs when you take a process, such as filling out an online client intake form, or all the steps needed to handle a case as a pro se litigant, and add game elements to that process to motivate the people involved to complete the tasks in a different way. Game mechanics or the elements of a game include levels, rewards, exploration, progressions, feedback, storylines, quests, challenges, and achievements, among others techniques. Several years ago, gamification made its way into the work- flow of companies. A report by Gartner Inc., an international IT research and advisory company, showed that 70 percent of Global 2000 organiza- tions would have at least one application that was gamified, and predicted that 25 percent of workplace processes redesigned would have a form of gamification designed into them by 2015. Other professions, including THE RELEVANT LAWYER: REIMAGINING THE FUTURE OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION
Reprinted with permission from The Relevant Lawyer—Reimagining the Future of the Legal Profession, avail- able for purchase from the ABA Webstore (shopaba.org) at http://shop.americanbar.org/eBus/Store/ProductDetails. aspx?productId=187108732, 2015 © by the American Bar Association. All rights reserved. This information or any portion may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association or the copyright holder.
the medical profession, have already added gamification to user-centric design to increase engagement with patients and are seeing positive results. Through concepts such as design methodology and gamification, innovative lawyers will be reevaluating the process for delivering legal services to consumers online and making business and website design decisions based on user data and experiences from case studies rather than on the models of traditional law firm structures. The potential for these “redesigns” in the law firm business model may lead to new tech- nology platforms for secure online delivery.
VIII. Conclusion
The Internet as a platform for the delivery of legal services will empower lawyers to reach a latent market for legal services in ways heretofore not possible. Powered by software legal applications, lawyers can offer fixed- fee legal services at an affordable price to those who could not afford legal fees. Software-powered legal services delivered over the Internet will provide the pathway for the legal profession to reinvent itself, retain its identity as a learned profession that serves society, and provide a decent living for its members.
Sources/Reading
Stephanie Kimbro,Limited Scope Legal Services: Unbundling and the Self-Help Client (2012).
Stephanie Kimbro, Online Legal Services for the Client-Centric Law Firm (2013).
Stephanie Kimbro,The Consumer Law Revolution: The Lawyer’s Guide to the Online Legal Marketplace (2013).
Stephanie Kimbro, Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online (2011) (second edition 2015).
Mitch Kowalski, Avoiding Extinction: Reimagining Legal Services for the 21st Century (2012).
Richard Susskind, Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future (Oxford Univ. Press 2013).
101