Long Law: legal design for modern law firms.
Long Law is a legal design consultancy that works with law firms and sole practitioners to improve the way that they work. From designing seamless client experiences to improving internal workflows, Long Law works with clients to better design your corner of the legal profession.
What is legal design?
As the legal landscape continues to evolve, law firms are constantly seeking innovative ways to improve their services and adapt to changing needs. Clients expect firms to effectively leverage technology and offer a smooth client experience, and new lawyers entering the market want to work for firms that sincerely value work-life balance and flexible work arrangements.
Legal design is the application of design thinking principles to the legal field. It uses a series of human-centered design tools to identify and diagnose challenges facing your law firm and designs solutions that are practical, engaging, and user friendly.
Design has a reputation for being about aesthetics. But everything around us is designed including the systems, processes, and rituals that make up a law firm. Great design is, as they say, 99% invisible; while users may not be able to put their finger on it, a well-designed experience is one that is felt by users. A firm that is well designed is one that people refer work to and that the next generation of legal talent wants to work at.
Who else is using legal design?
Legal design is happening across the legal sector in various capacities. Large law firms around the world are building internal design practices and academic institutions are leveraging legal design to address civic issues.
What kind of problems can long law help me address?
Design itself is agnostic and can be applied to any discipline. Virtually every aspect of the legal system would benefit from more thoughtful design.
Long Law uses a series of design tools to help identify challenges your firm is facing and develop solutions that work for all stakeholders involved. You may be starting with a question or a problem statement—like Why are clients surprised by our fees? or How might we better estimate litigation?— or you may be looking to find overall efficiencies. Based on your goals and the challenges you face, Long Law offers a range of services from conducting full design audits to designing for discrete issues.
How does it work?
Every engagement is different, but these are the general stages you can expect in a typical design project:
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Beginning with the 50,000 foot view, we use design tools to help identify the most pressing issues facing your firm on a 1, 3, and 5-year time horizon. At this stage, we identify and scope priorities to work on throughout our engagement.
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Focusing on your firm’s top priorities, we engage in a series of design activities to design and prototype potential solutions. Design sprints vary in timeline and scope, and are focused on developing ideas that can be put into action.
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After testing prototypes and integrating the feedback we receive from those prototypes, we work with you and your team to implement solutions into the business in a seamless way that ensures minimal disruption to the practice.
Want more information about our packages or how it works? Reach out to schedule a consultation.
About Medina, Principal of Long Law
I am a designer and a lawyer practicing in British Columbia. Before being called to the bar, I worked as a design strategist for almost a decade, working with corporate clients to identify and scope challenges they faced as an organization, and design and implement user-centered solutions. I also worked for the Government of Alberta’s Digital Innovation Office, where I lead a team to design a court case management solution for the Court of King’s Bench.
With a Masters of Design in Strategic Foresight & Innovation and a Juris Doctor, my training and experience lends itself to a unique understanding of legal culture and the sui generis nature of issues facing the legal profession.