Product
legalPA
Category
Legal technology · AI
AI-assissted legal research, document analysis, and anonymization
LegalPA is an AI-powered legal assistant and workflow platform designed to support legal professionals in their daily work. Its design presented a challenge beyond conventional interfaces: translating complex legal workflows into intuitive, conversational interactions. The goal was to explore how natural language could simplify interaction with software while preserving the structure, context, and control essential to legal work.
Rethinking interaction beyond traditional interfaces
Traditional software relies heavily on predefined interactions: users navigate menus, select options, complete forms and follow workflows established by the interface. Conversational AI introduces a different model, allowing users to express their objectives directly and letting the system interpret the request. For a legal platform, however, conversation alone is not enough. Users still need access to documents, case context, previous interactions and the information supporting the AI's responses. My design work focused on bringing these interaction models together. Rather than treating chat as a replacement for the interface, I approached it as another way to interact with the product—one that needed to coexist with structured navigation, contextual tools and conventional controls. The objective was to make AI capabilities accessible without compromising the clarity and predictability expected in professional software.
Establishing consistency in an evolving AI product
As the platform developed, maintaining a coherent experience required more than designing individual features. Conversational interfaces introduce interaction patterns that conventional design systems do not always account for, including message composition, contextual actions, response presentation and transitions between user-directed and AI-assisted workflows. I established and maintained a design system to support consistency across the platform and improve collaboration with engineering. Reusable components and shared interaction patterns provided a foundation for extending the product while reducing the need to solve recurring interface problems independently. This helped the team maintain a more coherent user experience as the product's capabilities evolved.
Connecting emerging technology with practical workflows
Designing an AI-powered product requires understanding both what the technology can enable and what users are trying to accomplish. In legal workflows, the value of an interaction is not determined solely by how quickly a system produces a response, but also by whether the user can understand it, evaluate its relevance and continue working with confidence. I worked closely with engineers, product managers and stakeholders to connect design decisions with the platform's technical capabilities and business objectives. This collaboration informed how AI functionality was presented within the broader workflow, balancing the flexibility of natural-language interaction with the need for clear system behavior and user control. Impact: - Established and maintained a reusable design system supporting consistent product development; - Helped align emerging conversational interactions with the practical requirements of professional legal workflows through cross-functional collaboration.
