Allegory

Disrupting litigation by design

Allegory is a legal tech platform created by visionary lawyer Alma Asay, who saw an opportunity to modernize litigation: an antiquated, inefficient and paper-dependent process. When Alma came to Openbox, her beta product was missing deep user-centered feedback to push it forward. She engaged us to not only improve the product but make it more appealing for investors as well. Ultimately, her goal was to articulate a value so clear that Allegory would be quickly acquired—and with our help, that’s exactly what happened.

Openbox gave Allegory a thorough transformation: we refreshed the Allegory brand, redesigned the digital tool, and reimagined the sales process and business design of the organization.

Litigation often relies on a highly paper-dependent process.

How we did it

  • Immersing ourselves in the legal field by interviewing and shadowing lawyers, in-house counsel and court clerks. We learned that Allegory actually had many different users with different needs within the platform.
  • Identification of six clear user types, and for each we rapidly prototyped different approaches to learn what worked best for each one.
  • Developed a modular user interface system that allowed users to customize their dashboard with the tools they needed most, and to allow the system to easily scale as new tools were developed over time.
  • Designed a suite of sales pitches that the sales team could adapt for the diverse user groups they typically talk to within a single law firm. We shifted the Allegory pitch from a features demo into a customizable conversation to address specific customer needs.
  • Delivered a complete brand activation guide that included a new logo and identity, messaging guidelines, pitch decks and other assets, as well as Allegory user stories and strategies.
(1/5) We redesigned Allegory to make it easier to find the functionality needed.
(2/5) We shadowed lawyers, in-house counsel, and court clerks at work to understand the different needs of each from the platform.
(3/5) We created a fresh brand identity for the redesigned platform.
(4/5) We delivered all our materials to the Allegory team as physical artifacts.
(5/5) Persona cards are a tool we developed to help the Allegory team quickly identify the challenges, goals, behaviors, and attitudes of each of their users.

Outcomes

By partnering with Openbox, Allegory’s founder now had a user-tested, user-verified product—along with the right pitch to sell it. One month after working with Openbox, Alma became the first woman in the legal tech space to have her company acquired by a global legal services provider.

Facilitating complex team work

Because legal teams often work asynchronously, we designed product features to help facilitate seamless knowledge transfer between teammates, including clear task lists, a progress bar that tracks multiple deadlines, ways to surface evolving case themes, and tools to track changes in real time.