Improve Client Satisfaction Without More Work: Designing Smarter Legal Services, with Laura Hartnett

Zack Glaser: 

Hi, I’m Zack. 

Stephanie Everett: 

And I’m Stephanie, and this is episode 609 of The Lawyerist Podcast, part of the Legal Talk Network. Today, I’m talking with Laura Hartnett about design thinking and how to design a client experience that will wow everyone. 

Zack Glaser: 

Oh, I love that. Well, Stephanie, recently, you and I do CLE talks all over the place. You do a significant amount more than I do, but recently you and I have both done CLE presentations about AI. And I’ve noticed, I know you have too, a little bit of a kind of change in the topics that we do. I’ve started talking about actual AI agents and kind of rubber meets the road, sort of how do you use that? And honestly, I was surprised at two things. One is the level at which people are starting to engage with those agents, but then also the like, okay, I get it. I’m comfortable with the concept, but how do I do that? 

Stephanie Everett: 

I agree. I also have noticed myself, I’ve stopped talking about whether you’ll use the tools and instead shift it to, here’s how you need to train and how to deploy these tools for your team because there’s a lot of inconsistency and training that’s needed to be done. So I feel like I’m leaning a lot more into that in my talks. But I agree. I think people are warming up to it, but the idea of, okay, that agent thing sounds cool, but I don’t even know. I don’t even know how to get started. And that’s what people are coming to us now saying, okay, now what, Zack? You convinced me, but what do I do? 

Zack Glaser: 

Yeah. And I think it’s scary, but we know that we’ve got to do it. You know you’ve got to do your SOPs. You got to get your data into the right place. And it’s one thing to know that you need to, and it’s another to do it. And so I wanted to take today, because I did get to say this to a couple people at my most recent talk, but I wanted to take today to say, we actually have a product for that. We know that that’s a thing. We bring in Sam Hardin, we bring in Drew Bloom, we bring in all of our AI thought leaders that we have to do this like getting your AI house in order product. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Yeah. We’re super excited about this. I shouldn’t surprise anyone, but we really invested heavily last year in bringing these really amazing, super smart people onto the team, but also really training our current team and giving us a space. I mean, you and I have been on the team for a while, but we’re on an AI task force and we’re encouraged and we do play and experiment with these tools every day. I feel like it’s part of my job to try to stay ahead of our clients. I don’t have to stay 10 steps ahead, but I’ve always said like, “Guys, you don’t need to go learn everything about interviewing skills and how to hire your team.” I do that and then I try to distill that to what you need to know. So I’ve always taken that attitude as that’s my job as a business strategist. 

And now I feel like that’s my job in the AI world. That’s our job is how do we keep up with enough to know and to help our clients take the next steps. And so that’s the new service that we’re rolling out and helping people with where we can come and sit side by side with you and help you figure out how to use these tools for your specific practice. 

Zack Glaser: 

Yeah. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention, speaking of some of the artificial intelligence and tech brains that we have, we’ve got Ben Shore here as well. And I get to talk to him and you and all these people a lot on our kind of sister channel for AI Calibration Weekly, but that feeds into our AI readiness package that we have. And I just want to absolutely promote that as something that people can go to, something that people can see and we’ll drop a link to that in the show notes and you can always find it on our website at lawyers.com. And now here is Stephanie’s conversation with Laura. 

Laura Hartnett: 

Hi, I’m Laura Hartnett. I’m a legal design consultant at Law by Design, and I bring design thinking to lawyers to help them understand their practice of law from the client’s perspective and exposing the things that lawyers don’t typically get to see. 

Stephanie Everett: 

I am so excited about this because I love, love, love what you’re doing. And I think we should probably just start and get everyone on the same page because people hear design and they probably go to fashion or interior decorating, right? Yes. Yes. Which is design, but there’s other concepts of design that we’re talking about here. So maybe I’ll just give you the floor to kind of tell us what you mean when you say design. 

Laura Hartnett: 

Yeah, absolutely. So design thinking as a concept, it came out of Silicon Valley and you think of Apple and Google and you think of you get your phone and it didn’t even come with a manual. It was so easy to click through and you understand it’s intuitive almost. And so this is this whole idea of, yes, not designing like an interior. And I had an interior designer help me select all my pieces to represent yourself for balanced colors, that sort of thing. This is about service design. So it’s very similar, but in a way of how do you want to feel as you go through this experience? What are the highs, what are the lows and how does that apply? So design thinking really came to law. I want to say sort of mid 2010s is when it really started to take off and really thinking about first the client experience of understanding typically how stressed, how anxious, how scared, how fearful that people are when they come to approach a lawyer. 

And then the question is, does that experience get better or does it get worse? And how can we as lawyers make that a good experience for the client? I think I add a little extra dimension as an attorney myself because my ultimate care too is not only in the client, but also in the attorney. So what I do also is I really want to look at what is the service design? What are the services that the lawyer’s providing? Where are our stresses? Where are our highs and lows in the process? Because unlike when I had an interior designer sort of pick the things from my office and work with me on that, we’ve never designed the practice of law. And I know that’s where you’re out here, Stephanie, preaching the good work out there because we do. We need to design how we practice law and we have choices. 

We don’t have to take the formats that have been inherited and passed down to us, 

Zack Glaser: 

But 

Laura Hartnett: 

We can really rethink what is a practice of law that I want to have? And then also what is a practice of law that helps my clients experience it in a way that perhaps maybe, just maybe they might leave it with some delight. I mean, imagine. Imagine that future for the practice of law. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Yes. I love that. And I love, yes, I’ve been preaching this a lot lately. You don’t want to just take what you inherited and slap your name on it and say, okay, this is how we’re going to do things. This is your chance to really step back and be intentional. And so what do you tell somebody that’s like, okay, that sounds interesting, but what does it look like? Where do I even start in this process? 

Laura Hartnett: 

You start from where you are, which sounds like the most basic, easiest thing. And I also recognize that’s also one of the most hardest. What I particularly love to do in my work is you get in a room with whiteboards and sticky notes and lots of markers, sometimes lots of candy as well. That always helps. And you start with questions of really getting into first, who is your client? So we even draw a little stick figure and really identify and get into those empathy questions of what books are on their bedside table, what keeps them up at night? First of all, do you have some of this information? If you don’t, then maybe it’s time to start asking some of these questions to understand your client’s pain points, even when they’re not working with you because they will carry over into their work with you. 

And same thing for the attorneys. So really trying to paint this picture of who is this full client and then who is also, who is the attorney? Who is this law firm? What are you about? Where are you going? Really starting from where you are and then starting to build out, okay, now that we know who we are, what do we do? So a lot of times, and I know I shared an article about, and we’ve talked about sometimes you need to secret shop your own law firm. You need to kind of understand what is it like? What are your clients doing before they call you? Because something triggered them to pick up the phone, to send that email, to get that contact, to get that referral, and what was that? And then we start plotting out all the points in their journey exactly from that initial intake. 

What does that look like? What are those systems? What’s your hold music? I mean, I just want to say, can we please look at the hold music that’s going on out there when we have to sit on hold? No wonder we hate it. So all of these little things, but also some of the big things with how lawyers present information. And that’s, and I know I’m kind of segueing into some of the background that really pulled me into this where I was going, I can’t practice law in the same ways anymore, is that we would write these 10-page memos that were just full of gobbledygook. And I would do this as a litigator in big law. And then when I switched and I became in- house counsel, I was on the receiving end of these 10-page memos where the information that I needed was buried on page four. 

I was also, what I had to do as in- house counsel is I had to turn this 10-page memo into slides for the board and I thought I should have just had my lawyer, I’ve had an outside counsel write the slides. So there’s also these moments, these little moments in terms of what is that experience like, but also big moments of how we’re delivering information and is it in a way that our clients can understand, they can process and they can actually use after we give it to them. 

Stephanie Everett: 

I suspect that when you were in the role of a client in that in- house role, I suspect that none of those attorneys ever came to you and said, “Hey, I’m just curious, how are you going to use this memo? What do you need? What are you going to do with it next?” Because if you had then said, “Well, actually what I have to do is take this and turn it into a slide deck.” I suspect that that would be shocking for some people and they’d be like, “Oh, I never knew that’s what you were going to do with it. ” Because they didn’t ever ask the question of like, “What happens next?” 

Laura Hartnett: 

That’s exactly it. They said, “Do you want an email or a memo?” Those are your two choices. And so as the lawyer trying to get all this done and reaching out to them and trying to figure this out, I did not think outside the box at that point in time and your clients aren’t either.That’s what is really the job of the attorney to slow down the process just a little and ask some of these background questions or these future questions like you’re saying, where are you going with this next? Who are you going to give this to? Because sometimes when we look at, you may think you know who your client is, but the circle might be even wider. When we think about trust and estates attorneys, you’re meeting a client maybe at different stages of their life, and maybe not your client in an ethical sense, but truly your client who’s going to read your work product, work with it, are trust companies, banks, the kids, the other family members. 

So how do you shape your work for not only the client that’s right in front of you, but all of the clients that are going to interact with your work? 

Stephanie Everett: 

I think there’s so much, I’m just sitting here thinking already, because we may have talked about this, but we’ve done exercises with in Labcon, for example, of what if you had to draw your engagement letter? You get no words. It can be a comic strip or a cartoon or just pictures and making people go through that exercise really makes you think, one, what is the critical information that my client needs to understand and how can I better convey this to them? And I just thought it was such a powerful exercise. I actually had an attorney come up to me afterwards and was like, “I think I might use this. ” Because lawyers think in words and clients might think in pictures or emotions or something, I don’t even know what else, but we’re not always matching those two things up. 

Laura Hartnett: 

That’s exactly it. There’s an incredible woman out of India that she’s created something called Lawtones and she makes it sort of graphic novels, cartoons that really explain what law is. And it’s helped to, when you’re working with underprivileged populations in housing or children’s rights. So lots of access to justice is really leading the way in this area. And sometimes as lawyers, we can think, well, that’s not professional or that’s for a different group. But honestly, when we look at our own, the way now that we interact with society and the quick videos that we see on the internet, I mean, our attention spans are becoming much more visual and much more short. So it is entirely appropriate to send a pictogram of what it is. Or I keep talking about journey mapping, which is really giving your client a map, and I do mean a visual map of what’s going to happen next to sort of set out the procedures because as, and I can say as a former litigator, I knew what the process was and some of my sophisticated clients did, but not everyone. 

So how great would it be if I had a standard document to say, “This is how litigation typically goes, or if I’m a divorce attorney, here are the typical stages, here’s the typical timeframes, here’s how you might feel. Here’s when I want you to call me and really teach the client how to interact with you. ” That sort of information helps them feel so safe and less anxious. It’s what we’re doing with our … When I think with my anxious child, it’s what we do with her. It’s also what we need as adults when we’re in stressful situations, which really is why we’re working with a lawyer. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Yeah. I always talk about with clients the Domino’s Pizza Tracker, right? What a revolutionary amazing thing. And I’m not saying Domino’s is the best pizza in the world, but what they did with that was so smart because now I can look on my little app and I can see it’s like it’s going in the oven and now it’s cooking and getting all hot and bubbly for you. I mean, so they use really good words and then it’s getting quality checked, but when it comes out of the oven, and isn’t that what our clients want? Because so often they come and hire us, especially in litigation world, and then we go silent for a while because we have to do this work or there’s a flurry of activity and then there’s a long silence. Maybe we’re waiting the 30 days for opposing the other side or it takes a while, whatever it is, right? 

There’s a long period of time where nothing’s happening. And I think that is what creates some of the anxiety. For clients, they’re like, “What’s going on? Or did they forget about me? Are they still…” So imagine if you thought through that, like what you’re saying, put yourself in their shoes and now you said, “How can I get them comfortable with the delay?” And guess what that also does, people? They’re going to stop calling your office all the time because now they know what’s happening and you’ve told them- That’s exactly it. It sounds so simple. 

Laura Hartnett: 

It does. And I also recognize how hard that is really for us to change as a practice. It’s incredibly hard. We are a practice that operates on tradition, operates on precedent. So doing something differently is hard. And I knew I was onto something when I was a litigator and we would have these weekly meetings with our clients, updating them about litigation and the meetings would get moved or they wouldn’t pay attention or they wouldn’t read the email that we read in advance. And I pulled from, I was a management consultant before I went to law school. And so I would say, why don’t we have a dashboard that the client can just check in and we can have, here’s the different features that are going on, here’s red, yellow, green. Something they could quickly understand and then they could also communicate in their corporation to their higher ups, or that’s something that they can share with their family or the other people because again, your client isn’t always that one person in front of you. 

So it was really thinking about it from that perspective that made me change and go, “Oh wait, this works better for both sides.” Yeah. And what you’re talking about too is in design thinking, we call it analogous thinking that we pull from other sources of information. So I’m always thinking, the dentist is always the one that gives me so much inspiration, which is good and bad. And I love my dentist, but why do I have to fill out this same form in pen and these tiny little lines? The intake process is maddening. But I do, but I get the text reminder really helpful. Why doesn’t my attorney send me a text reminder before we have our call or before we’re going to meet? So your Domino’s Pizza example is right on. And that means we can pull from all of these services that we use on a daily basis that people now expect that their lawyer meets those standards as well. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Yeah. I read something that you wrote this morning. I don’t know if you wrote it this morning, I read it this morning, but you were talking about AI and how easy it is. I mean, I think you used the example too of like going to Dr. Google and we know, I mean, I do it, like if I have symptoms, it’s just easier to go on the internet and figure out like, is this worth a trip to the doctor and where it is going to be annoying and all the things or can I kind of figure this out on my own? And we know lawyers, I mean, we should know that our legal clients are doing something similar with the internet now with AI. So how do we as lawyers start thinking about that and designing around that reality? I 

Laura Hartnett: 

Am so glad you asked that because you have just hit on the conversation that so many of us are having right now because you’re absolutely right. And I believe and a solo practitioner, a friend of mine who does immigration law, that she’s seeing that too right now where so many people are bringing her, “Hey, I came up with this contract on ChatGPT. Can you see if this is okay?” First, thank goodness they’re bringing it to her because that means that there’s a whole nother group of people that are just going on the advice of the AI and going forward with it. So I think one thing is that we do need to educate our clients when to call us and when not to. I mean, and I think in this weekend, we look to doctors, we look to dentists, we look to other professions. Another one I think of is that I don’t have an accountant right now. 

I have TurboTax, but I feel safe and secure using TurboTax. So the accounting profession figured this out somehow. So how do we teach our clients, yes, go use it here, but if you have X, Y, and Z, then you need to call me. Or how do we change our services? So maybe we do offer a service which is, I will do a 30-minute review or I will do a quick review of your ChatGPT contract or we teach our clients that by them starting in ChatGPT, it’s going to take us longer to go through it and try to figure out. I think of I brought a really excellent form will to my attorney because my very smart trust and estates friend had drafted it in another state. And so I wanted my Ohio attorney to use it. And she’s like, “That’s going to take me longer. 

Laura, I have a form. I want to use my own form. I can’t check that. ” So we’ve got the same problem today. So how as attorneys do we educate our clients and say, “You don’t use AI. Let me use AI. I’m going to be fast. I’m going to train it. I know how to prompt it. You give me the specifics that you need and I’m going to come up with that. ” So maybe we need to pull back the curtain a little bit as a legal profession and show our clients where we’re using it so that way they feel more comfortable going, “Oh, they’re going to be fast. Maybe this is going to be cheaper.” Again, we can have the whole discussion about flat rates, billables, all that kind of thing. But that goes back to why we need to redesign our practice of law for the world that we live in now. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Yeah, I love it. I keep thinking of, there was a advertising campaign around my town, this urgent care did a series of billboards and on one side it was like you go to the ER when you have a compound break, you go to urgent care when you sprain your ankle or whatever. And it kept giving all these examples. Clearly, I don’t remember them all now, but I was like, “That’s really smart. Oh, I didn’t know if my bone’s not sticking out because urgent care can do an x-ray because some people don’t realize that. Yeah, you can get an x-ray there if it’s really bad, ER, otherwise urgent care.” 

Laura Hartnett: 

That’s right. What is that information that we put out as attorneys in your field, whether it is before the … Call us before you get to this stage in the dissolution of your marriage, or call us before this stage as you are trying to purchase this company. We need to educate our attorneys, our clients. 

Stephanie Everett: 

Laura, this has been so great. And I know people’s brains are just already turning and thinking with ideas. One of our core values here is stay curious. And so sometimes I like to ask people, what are you staying curious about right now? What are you learning and exploring either personally or professionally that you might be willing to share? 

Laura Hartnett: 

It really is AI at this stage. I mean, both personally and professionally, understanding where I use it, understanding where I don’t use it, knowing that I’m going to have to educate my kids on this and how important that is to get them that AI literacy that we didn’t grow up with and we’re still just trying to figure out from this thing that’s been out for what, two, three years and really as we’ve known it. And then of course, professionally, understanding how much it is changing the game of law and also the emotional reactions that we and clients are having to it. And we’ve been through technological advances before. I know I started practicing when sometimes we would still get a fax and that was incredibly annoying and people who didn’t trust email or people who didn’t trust Zoom. “Oh, Zoom is not secure. “And then the pandemic happened and it’s like, ” Well, throw that out the window. 

“So how are we going to design our practices of law where we can help ourselves by using this technology? And we can help our clients, but do it in a way that, again, continues to delight us and make it easier for us and doesn’t add to our burden. And that is the ultimate question I keep reading about. And I think a secondary question that dovetails with that is also the generations of there’s so many generations in the workplace right now. And I mean, I look at my spouse as a college professor, so I always get to hear about the philosophies of this next generation coming out of college and how optimistic they are and how creative, to your point, they are, and how are we going to have all of these generations work together? That’s something that we also need to design for, especially once they start becoming our clients as well. 

Stephanie Everett: 

A lot to unpack there. We’ll have to have you back on the show so we can kind of continue this super fun conversation. If people are interested and want to learn more about design thinking and some of the work that you do, where would you send them? 

Laura Hartnett: 

Yeah, I would say I’m very active on LinkedIn. So look me up. I am Laura Hartnett, H-A-R-T-N-E-T-T on LinkedIn. My website is laurahartnet.com, but I will be adding … Also, I’ll have a diagnostic on there of if you are wondering whether your law firm is client centered, I’ll link to that on LinkedIn as well to understand where you can kind of look through and evaluate, do I ask myself some of these questions? Do I know the client perspective? And kind of get a read on where you are to better understand that. 

Stephanie Everett: 

I love that. Well, thank you so much for being with us today. It has truly been a pleasure. 

Laura Hartnett: 

Thank you, Stephanie. Thank you so much for having me.