Legal by design: Bringing customer-centric thinking to legal service

After two decades working across digital publishing, human-centred design, and leading growth in creative agencies, one principle has consistently proven itself: design matters - but not just in aesthetics. Design, at its core, is about intention. It's about crafting experiences that work for the user. When I stepped into the legal world, I was struck by how little of that thinking had made its way into the day-to-day client experience.

Law, for the most part, is still designed around lawyers.

Now, that might sound obvious - or even reasonable. After all, the law is complex. Legal services require deep expertise, precision, and often caution. But when legal delivery is built around the firm’s convenience, its risk tolerance, and its internal structures - rather than the needs of the client - we get what most SMEs are stuck with today: expensive, opaque, and intimidating services that often create more stress than clarity.

It's time legal started putting the user first.

Commercial law firms aren’t built around the customer

If you’ve ever worked with a traditional law firm as a small business owner, you know the feeling. You’re unsure what you're going to pay. The documents you receive are filled with legalese. Updates come in spurts, often after a chase. And every new query - no matter how minor - feels like it’ll start the meter ticking again.

This observation is rooted in how legal services are designed. They're structured for internal efficiency and professional protection, not for clarity, speed, or usability from the client’s side.

Compare this with how digital services operate. In the media and tech world, we obsess over customer journeys. We map every touchpoint. We test language, interfaces, and flows. We tweak based on user feedback because we know that trust is built not just through what we deliver, but how we deliver it.

Legal hasn't caught up to that mindset. And SMEs, who are often time-poor, resource-constrained, and in urgent need of practical advice, are paying the price.

Designing legal services for trust and usability

The goal isn’t to dumb down legal services, but to make them usable. SMEs don’t want 30-page memos filled with case law. They want to understand their options. They want to make informed decisions. And they want that insight quickly, in plain English, and in the context of their business.

Designing legal services with this in mind means asking different questions. Not: “Have we covered ourselves?” but: “Will the client know what to do next?” Not: “Is this technically correct?” but: “Is this commercially helpful?”

Trust, after all, is a design outcome. If a client feels in control, understood, and informed - they trust you. If they feel confused, in the dark, and constantly unsure about costs - they don’t. Legal advice might be correct, but if it’s not usable, it’s not valuable.

Borrowing from the digital playbook

In the digital space, we wouldn’t dream of launching a product without user testing. We track engagement. We respond to data. We iterate. It's not about getting it perfect the first time - it's about being responsive to how people actually use the product.

Legal services can take a page from that book.

Customer journey mapping, for instance, can reveal friction points in onboarding, reporting, billing, and communication. Service design sprints can help reimagine everything from how clients are introduced to a service, to how outcomes are presented. Even simple tweaks - like clearly packaged pricing, shared dashboards, or monthly check-ins can transform how legal feels to a business owner.

And just like in SaaS or media, those improvements aren’t just good for the customer. They’re good for business. Clients stay longer. They refer more. And critically, they see their legal partner as an enabler - not an expense.

From touch points to trust points

Every interaction a client has with a legal provider is an opportunity to either build or erode trust. That email you send after a meeting. The way a contract is presented. The responsiveness of your team. These aren’t minor details. They’re design moments.

And in legal, where trust is the entire product, they matter more than most.

At Lawyerlink, the legal subscription service we’ve built for SMEs, this thinking shaped everything from day one. Our team designed Lawyerlink around these principles - applying customer-centric design from brand inception through research, product and service development, and every stage of the customer journey. We’ve borrowed techniques from tech and service design to create onboarding flows that demystify legal engagement. Clients receive straightforward guidance - not legal jargon -and we check in proactively, not just when something’s gone wrong.

The path forward

The legal profession is understandably cautious. But there’s a difference between preserving rigour and resisting change. Law can - and should - embrace design thinking, not just in how it looks, but in how it feels to the client.

That means:

• Mapping the end-to-end client journey
• Reducing complexity at every step
• Speaking the client’s language
• Designing for usability
• Using feedback loops to improve
• Prioritising trust as the ultimate metric

If the legal industry wants to stay relevant to the next generation of business owners, especially SMEs, it needs to move beyond the firm-first model. It needs to become a service. A partner. A product that’s as thoughtfully designed as any app or platform those businesses use every day.

Because at the end of the day, legal is not just about being right. It’s about being useful. And usefulness, like trust, is something you design.