LEARNING LAUNCH

Challenge and selection

The future of technology in the legal industry is bright, promising to streamline, enhance and  disrupt existing legal processes. I work for an innovative corporate law firm that wants to use  legal tech start-ups’ products to make our lawyers more effective. As a starting point, we  scanned the UK legal tech market, observing approximately 400 start-ups, and shortlisting 14 to  work with. We would like to ideally partner with these start-ups to use their products.

However, due to the differences in nature between a corporate and start-up, engagement must  be approached carefully. As a corporate law firm we want to use the products offered by legal  tech start-ups to drive innovation in our practice, but we want to do so in a way that increases the  likelihood of success.

I used the learning launch tool – a small experiment that tests your new idea in the real  marketplace – to design small experiment to test each of the 14 start-ups’ ideas within our law  firm. I chose this because we wanted to test quickly and cheaply through experimentation that  partnering with start-ups to drive innovation was a smart move.

I scoped and structured the “proof of concepts”, in order to test whether and how the start-ups  products could add value to our law firm. The proof of concepts would run for 2 months – the  purpose would be to use a short period of time to test that the start-up’s product could be used in  our law practice successfully, and would therefore be a good idea to partner with the start-up  over the longer term.

Application

I created three buckets of assumptions to test (desirability, viability, feasibility) that would have to  bet met for us to work with the start-ups and use their products beyond an initial proof of concept.  Desirability first had to be met, then viability, and finally feasibility. The desirability assumptions  aimed to test whether our lawyers had sufficient demand for the product. The viability  assumptions aimed to test whether working with the start-up made commercial sense and  whether it would bring a commercially positive return. The feasibility assumptions aimed to test  whether our lawyers could work with the start-up. The incremental approach ensured that first the  product had a purpose for the user (a lawyer), before progressing to commercial sense.

Each assumption bucket had 2-3 assumptions to test per start-up. Each assumption had a metric  that would validate or invalidate the assumption. For example, if the revenue generated (by  lawyer time saved and therefore diverted to revenue-generating activities) exceeded the cost of  investment to pay for and use the start-up product, the viability assumption would be validated.

A difficulty I had to overcome was choosing suitable metrics for each assumption. It was difficult  to measure desirability objectively, so for those that required a subjective evaluation, I chose a  numerical subjective ranking to gauge the demand for each start-up’s product. For example, a  lawyer would have to respond on a scale of 1 to 10 how much they saw a need for the product in  their day to day job because it solved a problem that they recognise they have (1 being ‘do not  see a need’ and 10 being ‘definitely see a need’).

Another difficulty was that some start-ups were earlier stage and therefore had relatively  undeveloped products that weren’t ready for use yet. In this case I kept the buckets of  assumptions to test broad, and they are to be refined at a later date.

Insight and approach

Using the learning launch tool allowed me to use a logical approach to assess whether it was  worth our law firm partnering with a given legal tech start-up. Ensuring that desirability was tested  first made sure that the user was at the centre.

I had to build a business case to put forward to leadership, to get sign off to go ahead with the  proof of concept – scoping and structuring the proof of concept using a design thinking technique  made my business case watertight and made it flow better. I had considered all the assumptions  I wanted to test, how I wanted to test them, all within a short two month time period and within  budget.

Using the learning launch tool opened my eyes to the potential of ensuring through assumptions- based testing that 1) somebody wants it, 2) we can create and deliver it, and 3) doing so has the  potential to produce the outcomes we want.

In the future, I would combine the learning launch tool with an ideation sprint to understand the  specific challenges that lawyers face that might be solved with legal tech start-ups. This would  have made the selection of our 14 start-ups even stronger.

