In my journey helping the industry move into the #futureoflaw I’ve been speaking with different LegalTech companies around the world. Through these conversations and in my 4 -part COVID series (jump to part 4 for reference) looking at the implication of our current reality against the four pillars of the Legal Industry, I learned about an underlying principle for LegalTech and its future direction: “you are not the solution, you are a solution”.
This principle is underpinned by the fundamental change in the SaaS driven ecosystem that is only increasing in growth by participation and contribution.
So for the LegalTech team building a product, uniquely focused on perfecting an experience in the chain of work that a legal service provider may carry out, the key is understanding where you are in that chain of work and how you can better align with both the clients and other offerings as part of a broader experience.
Let’s break that down and go through a simple, three step exercise I would consider for any LegalTech company in their strategic development path…
Step 1
Gather the crew! Take a piece of paper (physical or digital) and draw a single line across the middle, effectively a timeline. Draw a point in the middle as a point on the event timeline and name your software and describe what it is your software does.
Step 2
With your team, explore and define at least three points on the event timeline that your intended client goes through BEFORE your product becomes useful in their context. Repeat the exercise for what happens after they use your product on their event timeline.
Step 3
With your team, consider the following questions:
Which other solutions in the market could be useful before our product comes into view on the event timeline? Name them and outline their basic service.
What additional considerations did we discover about what our product needs to be/do knowing where it sits in our target customers potential work flow?
how seamless is the experience of our customers to both enter into our product environment and leave it/pass it on when our product’s output is done?
how tuned is our UX/UI to that seamless experience? Does it allow for integration both within our product and within the larger customer workflow?
Exercise Outcomes
You can come out of this exercise with a clearer indication of where your product fits within the ecosystem, where opportunities lie for integrating your product as part of a stack of solutions and how the experience might look to the client. Of course, taking this short exercise and extending it through a thoughtful and high-touch feedback loop with existing clients will add real colour to the data. In any case, with a short session you’ve captured a better understanding of what type of LegalTech product you’re building within the greater ecosystem and can help your teams conversation around integration capacities, plotting a trajectory in your product development, the narrative of your product in the marketplace and ultimately assist your company growth.
What about the Buyers (Lawyers)?
For lawyers who may be looking for solutions in the market place, a version of this exercise is extremely valuable in understanding your own internal workflows, as similar principles apply. As I’ve discussed with my good friend Andrea, process mapping and a visual blueprint of what your firm does is going to be incredibly valuable and necessary to gain a better understanding of what can be amplified with technology. I’ll be interested to hear back from LegalTech companies (and Lawyers alike) who did this exercise and their feedback/results.
Share this post with friends/colleagues who might want to try this out 😊
If you have any question or want to explore this further reach out below 🤓
Quick Updates and Shoutouts
Great to speak with Arwin Ataee of Juristerra which brought this post to life. It’s great to meet a fellow persian since there’s only a handful of us playing in the #futureoflaw space 😎
David, Crista, Lily - Enjoying our interactions and helping with the breakthroughs we all experience when there's room for candid, collaborative conversations 🔥 (Crista helped me with one recently!)
Andrea and I caught up this morning, a more reflective morning and some great feedback about navigating our communities and relationships. I’m also excited about her upcoming presentation at vALTACON!
I’m constantly reflecting on finding a better way to define and share my value among the industry. I’m now organizing a major revamp of my basic website and channels for communications - stay tuned.
As always, the future of law is in our hands 🔥
Q.
Photo by John Doyle on Unsplash