AXIOM law: products that take THE guesswork out of legal engagements

Matching legal talent and clients in a transparent, fast, and efficient product experience.

Axiom has a number of core product experiences which bridge the often confusing gap between clients and companies who need legal representation and those lawyers looking to represent them outside of in house counsel. The core features that i designed were Axiom for Clients a tool for organizations to find the top legal talent, Axiom for Talent, a place for Lawyers and others in the legal field to curate and surface there skills and interest in new work opportunities, and Axiom for HQ an internal tool to assist sales and managers follow the steps towards securing larger contracts between organizations and legal talent.

Understanding our users needs and how best to resolve present INDUSTRY pain points

I worked on designing solutions to manage clients and their legal staffing needs at Axiom. From the lessons gleaned the team and I identified three areas that needed exploration. We broke these out into the internal needs of our Axiom team whose goals included to staffing larger clients. We also looked at what clients wanted who desired to manage their own staffing needs including finding and vetting legal talent. Lastly we wanted to empower the legal talent to provide information that would have surface their experience and knowledge to the right opportunities and also allow them greater flexibility and transparency in their engagements, as that was a large pain point for them in the legal industry.

I extrapolated out a number of user journey’s like those above helping to further refine how user would interact in these different though connected spaces. Starting with the tool HQ as it was an already established internal product I worked to layer on needed complexity. However it became apparent that many of our users wanted to engage in a space where legal talent could curate their knowledge and skills to compete for opportunities.

Common Control UI Library

It was at this point that i realized in order to have additional customer facing products that a common design library or language would be needed. I audited the present UI experiences from the current product and extrapolated out additional UI components and core functionality that would be needed for further feature development. This was shared with our engineering teams so they were aligned on all elements and a process was born that allowed review and implementation of a common UI library.

Axiom for Talent

With a UI library in place I was able to move more rapidly in design and iteration of our first external facing product tool Axiom for Talent. Initially we considered this tool to be a resume platform for legal talent to display skills and experience so that internal teams could surface them to client opportunities. However as we set about designing and developing the tool greater value was determined that this portal would be the place where users would not only upload their work experience but also manage ongoing engagements, gain visibility into where there were on interviews and give them resources to connect with their Axiom account manager contacts.

Validation and Testing

In the process of designing and building the core talent experience it became quickly apparent that user feedback was necessary to ensure our assumptions were correct. I led a number of user testing sessions with different groups of lawyers over a number of different elements that had after internal discussions left internal teams with questions. In addition to this we noticed that “My preferences” panel was the least used/touched UI on the page. This area was the UI governing of how talent defined their schedule and priorities to prospective clients.

I took the initial UI and after a first round of testing created two variations for AB testing as seen above. We learned that most users didn’t need to make changes often. Overall insights included that the original UI didn’t communicate context for what the schedule impact would look like for a given user if they made changes. Another impact was that in a very competitive industry some talent was worried they would hurt their chances for engagements if they made changes to the default. I took these to the designs and iterated, working with internal partners to help provide more clarity and also give additional helper text to communicate changes would not have larger impacts to opportunities.

The other side of the experience: Axiom for Clients

With the product space for talent established i moved to the other core experience needing further refinement.

I identified a number of important values that needed consideration including an easy way to peruse talent, metadata of skills, and actionable items for follow up. Initial designs were created with limited internal testing and validation on a card concepts as a way to condense information into bite sized chunks for readability. Conversations with leadership about the data density of info occurred and I determined there would need to be additional functionality to allow for expanded views of talent. These views though would likely exist outside the card view experience since there limitations on readability including how quickly clients could scan and the hierarchy of information value. I worked closely with my product team to determine though data points most valuable to users to highlight them at the card level before users could dive in more deeply.

Client cards updated designs

Following updates and work with the product team i designed a few iterations. I explored a few options with expanded and collapsing and where CTA’s might be as well as how the changing height might effect scan-ability. Each iterations lessons were learned and reincorporated until I settled on the final design which was vetted by product, engineering and the leadership team.

Final Design

I incorporate the design into a client home page, as well on the actual Axiom website to validate the readability and information density. Once product and engineering were satisfied I also shared the designs internally and select super users for feedback which was very positive. We moved into production and after rollout received a receptive and excited user base. The ease of filtering candidates, comparing experience and understanding availability made the experience more seamless and helped internal partners secure more engagements and sped the process up for all parties involved.

Additional LEssons

From the work on all sides of the core product experience both I and my team learned many lessons and implemented processes and tools to help understand user behavior in our application. This included using power BI, which i help brand and design. I also was part of a spin-off enterprise for a time of a machine learning tool that could read contracts and find and surface needed amendments are addendums.

Timelines and expectations

Communication was key towards meeting strict timetables especially when balancing managing a team, working on 2 core product experiences and assisting a spinoff organization on their design needs. With all those priorities i felt it important to share my bandwidth and so would set time tables on deliverables within the team.

Where we landed

During my time with Axiom the core product was expanded and redefined from one internal tool to two external products and one internal tool. I drive the design and branding for the organization as well as established a UI library to address internal pain points between design, product and engineering. I validated and tested many of ideas we had with users and when new UI didn’t measure up to user expectations I worked closely to identify the issue and provide my team and leadership with creative options for solutions. I mentored more junior designers on my team, giving feedback and coaching where needed. I also provided them opportunities to present work to leadership and lead on design initiatives. From the work I did at Axiom the organization moved forward quickly towards it goal on giving lawyers and clients greater autonomy and transparency into the process of establishing legal engagements.