InCloudCounsel

InCloudCounsel is a fast-growing technology company serving clients ranging from investment banks to global consulting firms. 

Executive Summary

Context: Enterprise legal tech, 20-40 person startup, 2019
Users: Freelance lawyers, global investment firms, and In-house Attorneys
Role: Product Designer
Team Members: 6 Engineers and 1 Head of Product
My Contributions: Full stack of product design for new product features

Outcomes: After creating personas, journeys maps, wireframes, and conducting months of interviews, I built a prototype and further refined the design through user testing. The final result exceeded expectations requirements of integrated seamlessly with the existing product, provided automation, allowed for flexible tracking, and massively decreased the time and worry of users.

The Complete Story

THE PROBLEM AND CONSTRAINTS

When a “sell-side client” contacts potential buyers, they establish hundreds of inquiries, each can result in a unique and multi-step legal process. This leaves sell-side clients and their legal team managing hundreds of documents, timelines, and correspondences with only basic tools like email and spreadsheets. The amount of labor this repetitive process took and the lack of data visibility are huge problems.

In addition to the user’s problems, they were only familiar with digital products 10-15 years out of date, and InCloudCounsel had been working with sell-side clients about improvements for a long time, but also informally and never reached consensus. This meant a successful design would offer a solution, unify the varied expectations already established, and remain simple but not overly “modern.”  

THE RESEARCH AND INSIGHTS

To meet these challenges, I created an interactive user journey, user flows, data-driven personas, and a design system based on Atomic Design to ensure the design was constant and always familiar to sell-side clients. Using these tools, I was able to unify the knowledge and expectations of the team while confirming the needs of the user. When combined with user interviews, this information proved that a solution would need to do at least three things:  

1. Establish a new area within the current interface without disrupting and of the current experiences 

2. Solve for the two most significant points of time and frustration: signatures and status updates

3. Give visibility and tracking to the individual and whole process   

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Workflows were essential to establish what the functions of the app really were and making sure everyone had a clear vision.

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Organizing design system using Atomic Design, we establish a singular source for design and engineering to pull from

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Speaking with clients, attorneys, and looking through older interviews, I established user personas to communicate an approximation of who our users were.

THE PROCESS AND PRODUCTION

Looking to find the best place for the feature to exist within the current layout, I consulted the existing user flows, account manager, and users to make sure I had a clear understanding of behavior on the app. The resulting designs fit seamlessly into the existing environment and could manage documents, users, and the list of receivers. 

Once I had carved out space for the feature to live and the basic features, I began adding flows that would allow sell-side users to send documents, collect signatures, and display statuses. With the new system, updates like “sent,” “received,” or “in progressed” were added and communicated automatically, saving the sell-side user time and adding to their data visibility. 

View fullsizeLogin - used to generate contacts

View fullsizeStored doc - allows for faster outreach

View fullsizeSignatures - Verify NDA and report signage status

View fullsizeEmails - Automated for seller and receiver

Once the initial features and interface tested positively and went through critiques, I was able to focus on analytics for tracking the inquiries made by the sell-side users. From previous interviews, I knew which data needed to be communicated and created a prototype to show and develop with the users. After several iterations and legal discussions, we developed a tracking display that gave a high degree a fidelity and flexibility.

OUTCOMES

Working with users, engineers, and product leads, I created solutions that used software to manage the sell-side process, automated status updates, and provided data visibility. While not the project’s goal, perhaps one of the most important results was building the trust clients had for InCloudCounsel’s design and showcasing the design team’s prowess. More defined outcomes were:

• Breaking a system-wide process into an easily navigable interface

• Drastically reducing time and improving visibility across user sets

• Data visualizations that provided big-pictures insights and flexible reporting

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