LawSeek-O

LawSeek-O aims to revolutionise legal information access with the help of AI. Their goal is to bridge the information gap by offering a one-stop shop for understanding law, getting personalised guidance and connecting with legal professionals.

Timeframe:

Jan-Feb 2024 (2 weeks)

My role in our team of 3 designers:

UX UI Designer (User Research, Survey, Interviews, Affinity Mapping, Key Insights, Competitor Analysis, Customer Personas, User Flows, Wireframes, Prototyping, Client Presentation)

Tools used:

Google Workspace, Slack, Zoom, Rev.ai, Figma, FigJam, pen and paper, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Firefly, Canva

Getting started

Introducing LawSeek-O

LawSeek-O wishes to bridge the legal knowledge gap by enabling its users to obtain affordable and reliable information, receive personalised advice and connect with legal professionals.

LawSeek-O’s mission is to democratise legal information access through human expertise and AI-learning, by striking a balance between simplicity and credibility.

What guides our journey?

The client brief

Design an AI chatbot MVP for LawSeek-O’s mobile platform that allows users to get simplified, jargon-free and reliable legal advice and information.

Who will be LawSeek-O be helping?

Our core audience

The client’s intended entry market is represented by professionals in creative industries (designers, artists, writers, musicians, as well as theatres, production houses etc.); individuals in the sports industry (athletes, agents); students, startups & SMEs.

Why does it matter?

Key figures

⚖️ 2 out of 3 of adults in England and Wales (66%) have experienced at least one legal issue in the last four years

👨🏻‍⚖️ Of those who had a legal issue, half (52%) received professional help, while 38% did not receive any legal help

📜 1 in 3 adults did not have their issue resolved adequately (32%), while 1 in 5 adults had an unmet legal need because they did not get professional help (20%)

*Source: Legal Needs Survey 2023 by the Legal Services Board and the Law Society

Kicking off the discovery phase

Insights from our user research

We started our journey by arranging an initial Zoom meeting with the stakeholder to get further clarification on some elements of the brief. We then went on to creating and circulating our screener survey, conducting user interviews, and analysing the research insights.

Our approach for this project:

STAKEHOLDER MEETING

Our in-depth conversation with the stakeholder helped us learn more about the business, the founder and his goals, as well as unpack the design brief. We wanted to get a bit more information on the business model, the target market, the infographic visualisations capabilities of the chatbot, the relationship between some of the existing features etc.

The two concepts that came up as main pillars for this design challenge were simplicity and credibility.

SCREENER SURVEY

Goal: Understand how people seek out legal advice and information

Respondents: 33 people

Distribution: LinkedIn connections, clients, work colleagues, design student community at Experience Haus, WhatsApp groups, friends

What did we ask about?

  • Frequency of interactions with legal info

  • Challenges faced

  • Where would they seek help

  • Sources of information

KEY SURVEY FINDINGS:

  • When coming across a legal issue the majority of respondents sought help (84.8%)

  • About 40% of people spoke to a legal professional or a family member / friend for advice, and about the same 40% relied on Internet searches (official websites, Citizen’s Advice, forums or ChatGPT)

  • The top 3 challenges users encounter are related to the high cost of legal advice, the presence of jargon, and their general lack of legal knowledge

USER INTERVIEWS

Research goal: Gaining a deeper understanding of how people seek out legal advice and information, explore preferences, behaviours and challenges encountered by users when dealing with a legal query

Respondents: 17 people

What topics did we cover?

  • User motivations and goals when seeking legal guidance

  • Challenges and pain points

  • Tools and resources used for accessing legal information

  • What aids simplicity and clarity of a legal document

  • How do users assess credibility of a source of legal information

AFFINITY MAPPING

EXTRACTING KEY INSIGHTS FROM OUR INTERVIEWS

  • The high cost of legal advice can be prohibitive in accessing reliable information

  • Jargon is a barrier when navigating legal information. Simplicity is key, therefore well-structured and jargon-free documents increase comprehension and accessibility

  • Knowing the information source and/or author boosts the trustworthiness factor

  • The look & feel / aesthetic of the platform impacts on the perceived credibility of information

  • AI is a great starting point for minor legal queries, but for important issues users would ultimately want to see a lawyer

From data to people - who are our users?

Defining archetypes and personas

The seasoned business owner

ANDREW, 32, IT Consultant

A successful business owner based in West London. Married, has 2 young children. Travels across Europe for client work. As family is growing, he now wishes to buy his first home in London. He has decent legal literacy, but needs to get professional legal guidance regarding the purchase of a new property.

  • Self-employed, good income

  • Intermediate legal knowledge

  • Regular legal needs (client contracts, Ts & Cs, contractor agreements)

The budget-conscious legal novice

ELIZA, 27, Graphic Designer

A young creative living in East London, originally from Italy. Studied at University of Arts London and now wishes to get a full time design role in London. Has no legal experience at all, and needs legal advice for her immigration status (to understand and simplify documentation required for her application).

  • Freelancer, limited income

  • Basic legal knowledge

  • Occasional legal needs (client contracts, intellectual property / copyright)

The ambitious professional

TIANA, 35, HR Coordinator

A driven HR professional from South London who works at an architecture firm in Central London. Passionate about her work, she always wants to do well in her role. Tiana has limited legal knowledge, and now needs legal guidance to write up an employment contract for two new company joiners.

  • Full-time employment, steady income

  • Moderate legal knowledge

  • Semi-regular legal needs (contracts, employee handbook, disciplinary actions)

Exploring individual narratives

User stories

While analysing our research insights and defining our user archetypes and personas, we were also able to identify some of the most common situations and user narratives in the quest for legal guidance.

🧑🏻‍💼 As a seasoned business owner, I want to be able to get simplified versions of legal work documents, so that I can work more efficiently, be more knowledgeable, and to protect myself and my business.

👩🏻‍💻 As a budget-conscious legal novice, I want to get reliable and cost-effective legal guidance, in simple jargon-free language so I can navigate challenges in my business and get clarification for personal legal issues.

👩🏾‍💼 As an ambitious professional, I need a way to create legally sound contracts and work documents for new employees myself, so that I don’t have to consult an employment lawyer.

Walking in the shoes of legal guidance seekers

Mapping their journeys

In order to understand the bigger picture and empathise with our users even more, we created journey maps for two of the personas that we thought LawSeek-O would help best - the budget conscious legal novice Eliza and the ambitious professional Tiana.

However keeping in mind that Law Seek-O’s goal is to provide access to reliable legal advice and information first and foremost to those who can’t necessarily afford professional assistance, we decided to take the Budget-Conscious Legal Novice archetype forward as our primary user (Eliza), and have the Ambitious Professional archetype (Tiana) as our secondary user.

Customer journey map for Eliza, our budget-conscious legal novice user:

What are the main obstacles?

Problem statement

At the moment legal information available online is full of jargon and presented in ways that are really hard to comprehend and overwhelm users. Professional legal guidance and trustworthy advice is often expensive, preventing people from getting the help they need.

LawSeek-O needs to create an accessible and cost-effective AI platform that simplifies legal jargon, clarifies legal concepts, offers guidance and helps solve personal legal matters step by step.

Crafting clarity

Solutions for simplifying legal guidance with AI

As we learned from our research, for some major legal matters AI would be a first step in getting an initial understanding of things. This is why LawSeek-O will be offering its users access to legal education through ZenBot, as well as the chance to use their other service, ZenConnect, for those who wish to have professionals resolve more complex issues on their behalf.

However keeping our focus on the AI chatbot brief (creating an MVP for mobile devices), at this point in our project we started working individually to come up with our own solutions for the problem we identified together.

CREATIVE IDEATION

Solution 1: Allow users to clarify terms and understand legal concepts quickly and easily by using a Zenbot search function

Solution 2: Help users summarise a legal document and get a simplified, easy to digest version, regardless of their legal literacy

Solution 3: Provide users with downloadable templates of legal documents that they can use in their jobs or businesses

Solution 4: Offer users step by step guidance with their legal issues, by providing up to date information and infographics to aid the understanding of different processes visually

SKETCHING THE USER FLOWS

BRANDING CONSIDERATIONS

The client brief was to give the chatbot an element of fun and friendliness, but also to convey LawSeekO’s mission of providing reliable, simple but trustworthy legal information and guidance to its users. This is why I chose the following branding elements:

Tone of voice: professional yet friendly and relaxed, conversational, informative

Visuals: minimalist designs that balance professionalism with approachability and simplicity.

In order to humanise the chatbot, I decided to have an AI avatar that would make it more relatable, and add a bit of a personal element to it.

For screen backgrounds I thought of legal-themed illustrations to reinforce the app's purpose without feeling too formal. These clean flat-style illustrations (scales of justice, law books, contracts) could be used further in onboarding screens, section headers, or background visuals.

Colour palette: I chose a mix of light turquoise, navy blue and grey, based on colour psychology guidelines.

  • Turquoise - adds a modern and approachable touch while still maintaining professionalism. It’s also associated with communication and clarity, aligning with the AI chatbot’s purpose

  • Navy - represents trust, professionalism, and authority, which are crucial attributes in the legal field. It conveys a sense of reliability and competence

  • Grey - offers a clean, neutral background that enhances readability and creates a sense of clarity and transparency, which is important for legal content

Typography: based on the brief, I felt like the Jost font family would be a great choice for this project.

A sans serif cheerful font, Jost was inspired by Futura but designed with the digital era in mind. It retained the geometric qualities and added additional design elements, such as the contrast in thick and thin strokes, for better usability on digital screens. With a variety of weights available to support different projects, Jost is ideal for a brand that wants to convey modernity and friendliness.

USER TESTING

During the development process I have tested different concepts and the prototype with 5 users. I had a very positive feedback overall, with very small tweaks implemented:

  • My initial user flow had a sequence of questions for users starting the chat, i.e. three filters asking about the Area of Law they needed assistance with? Specialism within the Area of Law selected? and Type of Assistance Required? Two users pointed out that choosing areas of law and specialisms might not be very straightforward for people with no legal literacy, which is why I reorganised it to allow people to type in their questions directly into a search bar, or pick a category of help ZenBot could offer based on their needs.

  • One user suggested that when needing clarification or summarising a document, it would be useful to have the ability to take photos of legal documents, not just upload from your phone, which is something I added to the final design.

  • One user mentioned that having official sources of information linked into the answers would be great for building ZebBot’s credibility. As the issue that came up once or twice during interviews as well, this was a super easy fix, and I incorporated the idea into the finished designs.

  • Finally, the general sentiment was that the ZenBot app feels ‘simple and easy to use’, with ‘clean UI that aligns with other AI bots I’ve used in the past’.

DESIGN EVOLUTION & PROTOTYPE

Low and mid fidelity wireframes

Clickable prototype

Summarising our contribution

How did we help LawSeek-O users?

  • We provided a tool for LawSeek-O users to easily access reliable legal information and advice

  • Created a user interface which feels friendly, professional and trustworthy, helping to reassure any concerns around use of AI

  • Enabled users to get their legal queries answered quickly and easily - type in their own questions or choose a help category, voice search, add documents by uploading or by taking photos

  • Eliminated the cost, time and stress currently associated with accessing legal support

Now, next, later

Our recommendations for LawSeek-O

What needs to be done now?

  • Train AI chatbot with legal professionals and maximise human expertise as much as possible

  • More testing with users of different levels of legal literacy

What comes next?

  • Build a web app version of ZenBot

  • Develop ZenConnect to give users the option to hire legal professionals through the app

For the future

  • Decide what the free and paid versions will include

  • Offer subscriptions to companies

  • A feature that allows individuals to connect with others experiencing the same legal challenges

Looking back on this project

Lessons learned

  • The novelty of this project came with lots of challenges as I was just starting my journey in UX design, but came to realise that the more I researched on the topic, studied resources and learned new tools and methodologies, the more confident I felt by the end when doing the client presentation

  • User testing is everything, no product should be delivered without having rigorously covered this stage of the process

  • I really enjoyed working as part of a team for this project, and realised how satisfying and exciting the ideation process can be when brainstorming with the right people

Cristina Grimoldi - Freelance UX UI Designer:

While working alongside Andreea on the LawSeekO and Wellx projects, she consistently demonstrated a deep passion for UX, design thinking, and problem-solving, making significant contributions that were instrumental to our success.

Andreea showed a strong interest in UX research, ensuring that our design decisions were always grounded in user needs and data-driven insights. Her thorough approach to user testing and feedback collection allowed us to iterate quickly and effectively, leading to a more refined and user-friendly final product. Andreea also excels at keeping lines of communication open and transparent. Her active listening skills and thoughtful feedback have consistently contributed to a more cohesive and effective team dynamic.