ProLaw
Going paperless
At its core ProLaw is built for small to mid-sized law firms. Its goal is to be a one-stop shop daily workflow tool for lawyers and billers alike.
With features ranging from paperless proforma, focusing on the life of an invoice from generation to client hand off, to matter overviews where matter management and time entry coincide, ProLaw users will find organization and structure to their daily tasks.
The problem
The proposal
The solution
ProLaw legacy was a desktop software based solution, with antiquated ways of going about daily workflows.
Proformas (or pre-invoices) didn’t have an in depth life cycle. In desktop, billers didn’t have many options in regards to generation, tracking, customization, or even accountability for these proformas which lead to a lot of frustration, and ultimately client drop off.
While less of a product issue but certainly a constraint, I was also split on another project at the time so juggling schedules was certainly a challenge.
Create a web based version of ProLaw from the ground up.
Add a whole new module (Paperless Proforma) where users could go to manage proformas from start to finish, while experiencing a smooth transition between ProLaw web app, and legacy desktop.
UX was to spearhead the re-skin of the legacy project. From there I was tasked with helping to enhance the product to better meet user standards. This encompassed elements such as:
Updates to design system components, which would also be vetted for accessibility concerns.
Effortless integration with third party data management systems.
Introduction of new features like data visualizations within a robust dashboard to help users better track their work.
Tools and methods
User personas / participant interviews / journey mapping / story jamming / wire-framing / prototyping / user flow diagramming / agile iteration / high fidelity deliverables.
Conceptualizing
I was brought on initially to help out on the Paperless Proforma module, while also working on another project which, certainly had its challenges. But, I was able to balance the two and design out the admin assign billers, and biller invoicing flows for the final prototype deliverable.
Additionally, I worked on concepts for task management, global search, easy-query and email notifications. Once I was assigned to the ProLaw team sometime later, many these concepts in one way or another made their way into designs for ProLaw’s Workspace, which is the products web based (and much more up to date) version of their legacy desktop software.
Task management
Global search
Key elements
This feature required several layers for consideration:
Administrators needed a comprehensive set of preferences so they could manage DMS connection instances, authentication communications between products, launch parameters once a DMS was initialized, general settings for active/inactive statuses, databases for multiple servers, settings for document types, and permissions for professionals.
User facing items such as document search, import, export, creation and duplication, and check in / check out statuses.
Accessibility requirements surrounding third party applications, namely signing in and out, DMS tokens, and varying levels of permissions.
Tracking data
Data visualization is a key component when dealing with ProLaw clients. Time and money are the bedrock of a firms billing and legal teams and being able to track those numbers is invaluable. Furthermore, having the ability to visually show and present that information in an easy to read and accessible manner goes a long way when a client is looking for a solution that takes the work off of their hands and puts it into an already pre-built graph within their dashboard.
So it’s easy to see why product came to me asking for a dashboard widget which showed a firms billing analytics for yearly and monthly views. The biggest obstacles aside from fine tuning the actual graph itself, was making sure the metrics were of high value to its users, as well as creating a grid view to meet accessibility WCAG standards.
Notifications
In the current version of Workspace users are notified every time a single action takes place depending what triggers they have chosen. This has lead to some users receiving literally hundreds of emails a day, if not more.
I focused on simplify the process by allowing the user to be able to choose between instance notifications, a timed digest, and a scheduled digest. With this system in place every role, from the administrator who just needs to see a digest summary twice a week for accountability, to the super user biller who is constantly needing to generate review and submit proformas can select how often they wish to be notified of updates.
Profiling DMS
Once notifications and DMS integrations were in development it was time to focus on one of the most widely used third party plugins for ProLaw, ProFiling. For this I needed to make sure product and development had every possible user flow and system process in mind before I started designing, and in order to do that properly it was time for some good old fashinoed journey mapping. Of course since everyone was remote, this would be done through LucidCharts.
A look into the current version revealed that it was littered with inaccessible elements, processes that were contradictory, and user flows that were never meant to go live that somehow worked their way into the legacy version.
Side panel approach
The team and I thought it best to move forward with replacing the existing UI under a flying side panel approach. This panel would show when a user selected from any of the ProFiling options that were listed within the ribbon of each of the three Microsoft applications it was integrated with; Word, Excel, and Outlook.
The flows were rather complicated to grasp at first since I had to adhere to Microsoft product rules, while also making sure to improve upon a users journey through our own in house design system, as well as ProLaw’s third party integration constraints. As soon as these were solidified I was able to apply some of the same screen dynamics across all three products which really helped when considering the deadline was only 6 weeks. Overall, the users path through ProFiling became much simpler, time efficient, and easier to understand whether they were a hardened super user or someone picking it up for the first time.