BACKGROUND
A modern intranet provides a centralized platform for storing and sharing legal knowledge. Lawyers need to easily access relevant information and best practices. With an outdated intranet, usability, navigation, internal communication, document management, and collaboration all suffered. This led to the number one issue. Difficulty finding relevant, updated information.
Like many organization’s, there’s a ton of email communication. It is the most trusted source of internal communication. But what if irrelevant information jamming up your inbox? Can we communicate in a more relevant way and reduce the reliance on email for communication?
For security and usability reasons, law firms typically don’t manage documents with mobile devices, but there is useful information to access securely and remotely – especially in today’s mobile work environment. Nonetheless, the firm faced several challenges with their existing intranet:
- Outdated Design: The existing intranet lacked a modern look and feel, making it less engaging.
- Document Management: Content authors and owners had a hard time publishing and managing documents and links. This comes with administrative overhead, the risk of lost or outdated files, or worse, abandonment altogether.
- Search Sucks: Difficulty locating information of common tasks for diverse roles at the firm.
- Information Overload: Users struggled to find relevant documents, policies, and announcements.
- Lack of Mobile Usability: The intranet was not optimized for mobile devices, hindering remote access.
OBJECTIVES
- Modernization: Transform the existing intranet into a sleek, responsive, user-friendly platform.
- Enhance the User Experience: Improve navigation, search interfaces, and mobile responsiveness.
- Efficiency: Streamline processes, target audiences, automate routine tasks, and test search efficacy.
APPROACH
1. Discovery and Analysis: Conduct workshops with key stakeholders to understand pain points and requirements. Analyze existing content, user profiles, and workflows. Identified five key personas and developed them.
2. Design and Redesign: Simplify navigation using mega menus and categorize and target content logically per user feedback and tree-testing. Collaborate with UX designers to create wireframes and mockups. The design also prioritized personal experiences and targeted communications based on role, and office location. Introduce a clean, intuitive interface with personalized dashboards and targeted information architecture.
3. Content Migration: Migrate existing content (documents, policies, forms) to the new SharePoint Online platform. Ensure seamless transition without disrupting daily operations.
4. Customization and Automation: Develop custom workflows for each line of business and office. For example, document approvals, professional services and support, and customize content elements for each one. Integrate legal research tools, case management systems, and other trusted applications on the firm’s network. Tested user segments to adjust search algorithms and results to suit their needs. Designed templates for news, and content updates.
5. Improve Search: Evaluate common queries, interfaces, results, algorithms. Understand what user segments are searching for, and promote common use of the firm’s unique vocabulary. Also, let’s test the segments to see if they can find things faster.
6. Mobile Optimization: Configure a custom responsive layout and menu for mobile devices. Enabled secure access to content and legal resources and made sure accessibility standards were met for each user of the network.
Results
- Efficient Workflows and Knowledge Management: Custom workflows reduced manual tasks, allowing lawyers to focus on legal matters. Automated notifications ensured timely responses to publication inquiries. Minimizing the risk of lost or outdated files. Streamlined document storage, retrieval, and version control with custom web parts. This facilitated knowledge sharing across offices.
- Improved Search Results: Each user segment reported improved time on tasks related to searches they performed often in their roles.
- Mobile Access: Lawyers accessed critical information from their smartphones, enhancing productivity. Mobile responsiveness improved overall efficiency.
- Improved User Adoption: Lawyers and support staff embraced the new intranet due to its modern design and ease of use. Adoption rates increased significantly within the first month. Authors were able to engage with specific user segments on a regular basis and reduce their reliance on emails by 7% post launch.
CONCLUSION
The new intranet UX empowered Ballard Spahr’s professional staff and 600+ attorneys to work smarter, collaborate effectively, and save time. It allowed for quick dissemination of important announcements, policies, and updates. Lawyers can make informed decisions based on real-time information.. By embracing the modern platform, the law firm positioned itself for continued success in the digital age.