Litigo
The challenge
Wilson Elser, a national litigation firm with 40+ offices, was managing critical casework across disconnected tools and ad-hoc workflows. They hired our team to design a better system. I joined from day one – before the product had a name or roadmap – helping define it from the ground up and leading design through discovery, MVP development, and pilot rollout.
Our solution
The design opportunity was twofold: (1) create enough structure to unify the workflows of ~3,000 people, while leaving room for the variability of real legal work; (2) surface the immense density of case information in ways that were legible rather than overwhelming. By balancing flexibility with consistency, we gave teams a system they could actually rely on: Litigo, a single platform where case data, tasks, deadlines, and reporting live together. Rolled out in early 2025, Litigo is now in use across practice groups, with adoption continuing firm-wide.
My role
I led design from early discovery through MVP launch and pilot rollout, partnering closely with the product owner, business analysts, engineers, and client stakeholders to define and deliver Litigo. My role spanned everything from user research to visual design, including:
Leading user research (17+ interviews across roles: attorneys, paralegals, legal secretaries)
Synthesizing insights into personas, journey maps, and product requirements
Working closely with developers and legal stakeholders to scope features and align design with business priorities
Creating Litigo’s design system and designing foundational userflows
Continually refining features post-launch based on pilot team feedback
What are they actually doing, day to day?
One of my first initiatives was a series of in-depth user interviews to uncover how work really happened – not how the tools assumed it did. We wanted to understand the mechanics of their day: What did their workflows actually look like? What slowed them down? What did client expectations demand? I focused on:
How legal professionals actually work: not just process maps, but what’s really on their screens and desks
Where friction showed up: bottlenecks, errors, and ad hoc workarounds
How expectations were shifting: rising client demands for transparency and speed
Across 20+ sessions with legal secretaries, paralegals, associates, and partners, the picture grew clear: everyone had their own system, and none of it was sustainable. Tasks lived in inboxes, legal pads, or memory. Finding a single file could take minutes – or never happen. Old, slow, disconnected tools forced people to prop up workflows through sheer will and internal knowledge.
To make sense of the interviews, I built a system to log pain points, tag recurring themes, and trace how issues showed up across different workflows. Pairing qualitative stories with structured data allowed us to spot patterns early, distinguish systemic problems from one-off complaints, and separate role-specific needs from universal ones. These conversations proved pivotal in helping the team prioritize features that addressed real, repeated pain.
I used a combination of Condens and Airtable to structure and synthesize findings in a way that would scale as research expanded.
Key insights
Across roles, offices, and workflows, a few consistent problems stood out:
A balancing act
Teams were managing cases in whatever way they could– Word templates, email chains, spreadsheets, even legal pads. That freedom gave teams flexibility, but it also led to duplicated work, fragmented processes, and critical knowledge gaps. Some groups cobbled together their own workarounds, but nothing existed to provide consistent structure across the firm.
On top of that, every matter generated a staggering volume of information: intake data, deadlines, client guidelines, invoices, discovery documents, motions, correspondence. Even if we unified it, the density risked overwhelming users unless it was designed and presented strategically.
From this, two design challenges became apparent:
What users needed wasn’t rigid process, but it also wasn’t minimalist oversimplification. They needed a system that could (1) enforce enough consistency to reduce errors while leaving space for the nuance/variability of real legal work, and (2) make dense case information easy to navigate without being overwhelming.
We focused the MVP around the parts of the workflow that broke down the most often: tracking case- and client-specific data, managing tasks and deadlines, and producing reliable reports.
Case detail
Instead of scattering case information across dozens of places, Litigo condenses it into one view with key details all surfaced together. It’s the anchor of the product, flexing with custom fields and a phase stepper that shows exactly where a case stands.
User dashboard
To provide the user with a snapshot of the most important information they need to start the day and stay oriented, we designed the dashboard that surfaces upcoming tasks, events, billable hours.
Tasks and events
Tasks and events are designed to operate on two levels: the user-level, where individuals manage their own workload, and the case-level, where teams track shared obligations tied to specific matters. Daily agendas, calendars, and lightweight task updates keep individuals on track, while case-level ta and Outlook sync ensure teams never lose sight of deadlines.
Reporting
Reporting had consistently surfaced as one of the most painful, time-consuming parts of casework. Every client wanted something different, and every team hacked together their own version. The matter query builder reframed that workflow: advanced filters shape data into the precise segment needed, saved views make it repeatable, and exports turn it into a client-ready report in minutes. What had been manual, bespoke, and fragile became consistent and reliable across the firm.
Litigo replaced more than six legacy tools with one platform serving as the single system of record for thousands of attorneys and staff firm-wide – to enthusiastic reviews by early beta users. Across the firm, it’s already driving measurable gains: faster reporting cycles, fewer errors, improved deadline compliance, and greater oversight for partners.
Faster client reporting cycles by standardizing intake fields, embedding PowerBI dashboards, and automating diary, bordereau, and loss run reports
Reduces reporting errors and inconsistencies through structured data capture and custom fields that accounted for client-specific requirements
Improves deadline compliance and visibility across teams with automated task creation from client rules and seamless Outlook/eDockets integration
Increases partner oversight into budgets and case progress through structured task assignments, audit trails, and real-time performance reporting
Designing Litigo pushed me to go beyond reacting to feature requests and pull the threads of the problems beneath them. Having direct access to attorneys, paralegals, and secretaries meant I could listen closely, trace how issues showed up across different roles, and design solutions users themselves might not have imagined – like automated task creation tied to client rules, or reporting templates that collapse days of manual work into minutes.
The process also demanded clear storytelling. I regularly demoed work to the client side, using those sessions to frame the tradeoffs we were making – what to automate, what to standardize, what to leave flexible. Those conversations became a way to surface assumptions early, invite feedback, and keep key stakeholders aligned around solutions.
Finally, the pace of the work reinforced the value of designing at multiple altitudes. Some weeks I was sketching 0→1 flows for entirely new features; other weeks I was iterating quickly on beta feedback to refine what was already in use. That mix taught me how to balance speed and rigor, and how to keep design grounded in our users' real, day-to-day reality.