Private Client Service - Family Home Office
Disclaimer: I cannot show aspects of this project because it contained sensitive information. I have blacked out sensitive information in my examples below.
The Problem
Personal Client Service attorneys were getting calls from their clients at all hours of the day asking questions about finances, trusts, properties, contracts, etc…
This was straining the relationship between attorneys and clients because clients were calling during personal times believing the attorney to be available.
The attorneys were also billing less hours a day because of these calls.
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Dave
Department Head
The Team
The team I worked on operated as a start up company within an AMLAW 100 Law Firm. We operated with the budget of a large company and flexibility of a startup. Our team used an iterative design process with stand-up meetings every morning. When it came to brainstorming ideas for building mockups and prototypes everyone was involved. We operated in a startup manor where everyone wore a lot of hats and everyone’s opinion was valued.
Ed
Product Development Lead
The head of our department was a partner in the law firm. His role was to budget our team, network us with people across the law firm, help us navigate the business processes within the law firm, and helped us with brainstorming project ideas since he was familiar with the intricate details of the law firm, and legal issues that were not common knowledge for us. Our team often joked that he was our "idea" man.
Ali/Alex
Front End Developers
Our front-end developers were CS majors that worked with me most days. We would brainstorm ideas for our projects front-end design, and figure out how to make it work.
My team's direct manager was a serial entrepreneur that had taken multiple companies from start up to IPO. He knew how to build products, build a team, and run a project effectively. He is great at taking projects from ideation to ready-for-market.
Rachel
Legal Technology
Our legal consultant worked as the project manager of the team. She kept us on task in meetings, took notes, and kept us on deadlines.
Me
UX Designer
I worked as the UX Designer on the team. All the designs used in prototyping, and the final product were made by me. I also made personas and scenarios for the project. I presented our project with my manager to the attorneys that we worked with to build this product.
Drew
Legal Tech & Service Delivery
Paralegal who helped the team with anything we needed. Since my manager and department head were so busy all the time it was hard to ask them everyday questions about projects. Our paralegal was able to fill in those gaps. He had worked at the law firm for a while, so he knew his way around the law firm and had plenty of relationships we used to accomplish projects.
Disclaimer* I was working part time at this law firm through my senior year. In my final term, I was working Tuesdays and Thursdays. I went into work Tuesday for a normal day and the next day I was given notice that I was not permitted back into the office building due to COVID-19. So, I do not have access to any of the drawings, personas, scenarios, notes, or ideas for any of my projects at this law firm. I will be retelling the product's story and recreating prototypes as best I can from memory.
Phase 1 - Identifying the Problem
The Process
The attorneys in the Personal Client Services (PCS) division wanted to create a whole platform for high-net-worth clients. They had seen our Multi-Matter dashboard project and wanted us to do something similar for them in HighQ. The PCS attorneys had a meeting with my team where they described a vague layout of the project. The project required a main website attached to the firm's name. They never explained exactly what that main website would do other than link to the dashboard we would build. They wanted this dashboard to be where families would have all their documents located. My team's part of the project was a small portion of the overall project but was still integral to the user's experience.
This project was run by one of the top managing lawyers in the firm. This person had little to no experience building projects. This became immediately apparent when my team asked for requirements and we were told to “build something and we will let you know what we like and don’t like.” Then we set up a meeting with the PCS attorneys a month after the initial meeting. This is generally how this project worked throughout its entire life cycle. It would be long periods of down time followed by a week of crunch work.
First set of Requirements
“make something and we will tell you what we like.”
So obviously that was not a helpful starting point, but my team set up some meetings to discuss ideas. In these meetings it was often just a lot of ideas thrown around and none of us knew exactly what was or was not a good idea. I would sketch how it could look with rough wire frame designs and keep a list of possible functions. We asked for some example families to try and at least figure out what information we needed to aggregate. That was finally given to us months after we had asked and a bit to late for it to be useful.
We ended landing on a prototype that looked like this.
It had a lot of functions because we were not sure what was wanted. We initially thought that the PCS division wanted it to be more family oriented. We built this with the intention of everything about the family being displayed in one place. We had birthday announcements, properties, property reservation functions, family social media, a picture collage, calendars for family events, links to documents.
Phase 2 - Prototyping
Our first presentation of our prototype did provide much help. It was short, and the attorney that was the head of the project had to leave five minutes into the meeting to deal with a client that had called him. We got little feedback other than to keep working on it. So as far as my team was concerned the family-oriented design was good. We kept working on our prototype. In the first meeting everything was basically HTML and CSS. It looked the way it was supposed to, but did not do anything. For the next month, until our next meeting with the PCS attorneys, we spent getting these functions to work as intended.
This went on for a few months. We would show a porotype and get little feedback on it, so we assumed we were at least headed in the right direction. At some point, a few months into the project we were finally told that what we had built was not in line with what the head attorney wanted. He was looking for something that was simple, easy to navigate, was not flashy, showed you all the family documents, family properties, and had permissions built in so users could only see what they were supposed to see. He explained that a lot of the families he represents have long standing tensions and internal rivalries. So, a family-oriented design was not appealing to his clients.
Second set of Requirements
It should be simple.
Link documents from firms database
Have permissions for users
This was more than easy enough for me to handle. I quickly cut out all the flashy family-oriented content and kept the documents, properties, and permissions. Then I worked on some of the aesthetics and matched them with the main websites style guide. In our next meeting, we showed them what ended up being the final product.
Solutions and Results
Below is an example for the family hub website design. In order to restrict private information between family members, we implemented view restrictions per the instruction of the designated head of the family. For example, this allowed each child to see their own trust information but not that of a sibling, while still allowing for sharing by the whole family for certain designated information. The website housed sensitive family legal documents, such as trust and property information, which could be housed in a central location for the family to access.
Family Home Office Page
What did I Learn
I learned the importance of communication and transparency.
From top to bottom, there was a lack of communication and transparency about the project. It was not until the very end of my teams part of the project before I found out what the rest of the project did. Even then, I know there is more to the project that I just never learned and was never given the opportunity to find out. The project was run in a secretive manner and, on a "need-to-know" basis. I needed to know and was still not allowed to find out. I was part of a team that was building a big portion of the project that was integral to the project succeeding and I knew nothing about the other aspects of the project. I was never given requirements about the entire project until we basically defined them through trial and error.
What would I do Differently
I should not have gone for a family style build at first, but I was never told anything that would make me think differently. The slogan of the project was that this will be the “Family Home Office.” That is why we thought a family build seemed obvious. I should have realized early on that this was how this project was going to operate and been more demanding with information.