Peer to Peer Magazine

51 WWW.ILTANET.ORG Drive Superior Lawyer Experiences Through Design Thinking FEATURES KIMBERLY GIERTZ Kimberly Giertz, Chief Information Officer at Marshall, Gerstein & Borun LLP, oversees technology strategy, innovation, information governance and systems security. As a member of the firm's Technology & Information Governance Committee, she strategizes on and leads workflow automation and innovation initiatives and develops best practices to minimize risk and optimize efficiency and effectiveness in delivering client services. Kimberly has a passion for continuous improvement and approaches those projects by thinking outside the box for benefits to both internal and external clients. Contact her at kgiertz@marshallip.com. Both Hull and Alber point to the importance of empathy and deep understanding of the business to improve the experience and effectiveness of internal operations, which directly affect the quality of service that lawyers provide to their clients. Alber writes, "Lawyers must offer and deliver legal services 'designed for our clients and their tasks.' This is empathy in action." Replace the word "lawyers" with the phrase "legal support staff," and you have a new imperative. Great client service requires that lawyers be provided with the tools to deliver greatness. That responsibility falls to us. We must focus inward and utilize design thinking for the benefit of our internal clients: the lawyers. The Alber and Hull articles highlight the use of design thinking to address pain points in which their resolution would have a direct impact on the boom line in terms of productivity and efficiency. Our lawyers want to understand their clients' pain points; we as the administrative team must understand our lawyers' pain points, which oen include those of the client. Key Principles To tackle an internal project using design thinking, you need to move beyond concepts and themes and get to practical questions. Hull talked about the key principles of design thinking," which provide a powerful framework for determining the right questions that will help you create a solution that makes sense for your lawyers and your organization. Empathize: First, you must understand the problem. What are your pain points? What feels like it should be easier? Where do you feel like you are wasting time? What kinds of unbillable tasks are you performing that others could perform? What kinds of feelings do these issues raise? Empathizing will give you the information to translate feelings into fact-based problem statements and requirements. Define: Examples of project types include optimization, automation, error reduction and risk mitigation. To help define your problem, speak the language of key players and use terms that will help them identify with the project. What are the end goals? What does success look like? Who are the key players, and how do their roles fit into the larger picture? Who are the subject-maer experts? What is the value to the external client? How much change will the organization tolerate? What is the risk-of-failure threshold? What is the timeline for delivery? How do the key players want to feel aer the issue is addressed? Ideate: Involve everyone in the process or problem and talk about possible solutions. In this step, you might uncover related problems or interdependent challenges that can throw you off course, so keep track of both related and unrelated items that come up in these sessions. One of the best ways to do this is through focus groups or brainstorming meetings where there are representatives of every role connected to the challenge. KEY PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN THINKING Human-centered design principles include empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing. These principles provide a powerful framework for change, and it all begins with empathy. EMPATHIZE DEFINE IDEATE PROTOTYPE TEST

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