Why 'Humanizing' Technology Will Empower Legal Teams
Empathy, communication, and continuous improvement are keys to successful technology use.
Successful legal tech selection, implementation, and adoption require legal departments and the organizations in which they sit to prioritize the needs of the people interacting with the technology and the processes it will enable.
One of the desired outcomes of successfully leveraging technology is that people are enabled to work at their optimal level of proficiency and capabilities. We call this “humanizing technology.”
This practice focuses on the user experience and the necessity of making legal tools, processes, and their output accessible.
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Following are areas where legal departments should focus their efforts:
Empathy and User-Centered Design
Involve end-users, such as legal professionals and clients, in the selection, design implementation, and testing phases to ensure that the technology meets their needs and is easy to use.
This is where the corporate buzzwords “process optimization” come into play.
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Infuse empathy into the design process. Understand the challenges and pain points of stakeholders (legal and business) to design processes and technology solutions that address their needs. Integrate legal technology seamlessly into existing workflows. Avoid disrupting established processes and ensure that the technology enhances efficiency rather than creating additional burdens.
User-centric design requires evaluating and understanding how the active participants in the process interact in the environment and what the company’s culture/industry is. By doing this, organizations ensure the key participants are taken into account in selection and implementation.
Clear Communication and Storytelling
Clear and transparent communication is important to build team support and executive buy-in.
User-centered design includes communication with individuals impacted by or benefiting from change.
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Take this opportunity not only to understand their needs and collect data points but also to tell the story and pressure test the future state vision for how technology will benefit them and ease their points of friction.
Lawyers are skilled problem solvers. When they are presented with an issue, they interpret law and precedent and come back with legal analysis to provide guidance to their client.
In the case of technology implementation, this approach leads to failure and frustration.
Technology design should be a collaborative effort to uncover what will achieve the desired results for the majority of the parties involved. It involved bridging the gap of understanding by being fully transparent, compromising, influencing, and solving together.
Unlike in Field of Dreams, if you build it, he will NOT come. You cannot buy and implement technology, plug it in, and expect everyone to use it.
You must inspire and incentivize people every step of the way to understand the value technology will bring once it is in place.
Feedback and Continuous Improvement
During the design phase, include a governance model to manage the technology owners and incorporate feedback mechanisms to gather input from users.
Actively seek feedback and use it to make continuous improvements, demonstrating a commitment to user satisfaction. Address easy fixes quickly and be transparent on how issues are being addressed.
This prevents frustrations from festering and turning into something bigger than the original problem.
Embrace a culture of continuous improvement that monitors not only the technology but the environment that it supports. Be responsive to changes like shifts in process steps and to those teams engaged in the process.
These all have an impact on the original design of the tool that will need to be adjusted to reflect the new environment.
By incorporating these strategies, legal technology can become more approachable, user-friendly, and aligned with the human aspects of the legal profession.
Humanizing legal technology enhances its acceptance, adoption, and overall impact on legal professionals and clients.
Elizabeth Lugones is COO/ Senior Advisor of UpLevel Ops who has built and managed Legal Operations teams in various industries in both public and private companies over her 20+ year career. She excels in global project management and business reengineering, with particular expertise in process improvement, change management, cross-functional collaboration, and team building, but her true passion is helping others find their own strengths and talents and harness them for the value of all.
