From two training sessions to none.
Redesigning the internal tool legal experts use to check content before an AI can rely on it. Scheduled for three months, finished in under one.
An AI is only as good as what it knows. Behind the product, legal experts review every article before the AI can use it. This is the tool they do it in.
Make reviews faster
I was asked to speed up legal review in an internal pipeline tool. It had been built without design or product involved.
Checked my reaction against theirs
I used the system myself and had a lot of comments. But I didn't want to act on my own reaction, so I went to the legal team. They had almost exactly the same problems.
My notes
- Too many steps and screens
- No clear start or end to a task
- Flat screens, no hierarchy
Legal team
- Too many steps and screens
- No clear start or end to a task
- Flat screens, no hierarchy
This was a design problem, not a speed problem.
That's the whole job
A reviewer picks a document, sees its contents, works through each article, checks it against the original, then edits or approves. Everything that didn't serve that, I took out.
- 01Pick a documentPanel 1
- 02See its contentsPanel 2
- 03Work through each articlePanel 2
- 04Check against the originalPanel 2
- 05Edit or approvePanel 3
That became three panels, each holding what the reviewer needs at that moment, all visible at once.
Dense on purpose
Three panels on one screen is busier than a layout that hides things behind navigation. I chose it deliberately, because people were losing their place moving between views. So I spent the effort making density readable, not hiding it.
The tabs came back
The editing panel was built with tabs, to show more information per document. In testing, the legal team's questions came straight back. So we sat with the tech team, who own the database, and agreed which details reviewers actually use. The user evidence convinced them.
The history
We were missing each article's amendment history. It only came up in longer, deeper conversations with the legal experts, not in the first round of feedback. I designed it as a sliding panel with the article and its full timeline.
"This makes it easy to see all the versions."
- Domain expert, after testing
With expert users, the thing they can't work without often isn't the thing they tell you first.
No training needed
The full walkthrough, with the real screens, is something I share in conversation.