Rinci & Associates, a firm known for its precision and humanity offline, had a digital presence that didn’t reflect either. The site was competent, but cold. Informative, but labyrinthine. And in an industry where trust is everything, the firm knew it wasn’t enough to say they were reliable. The interface had to feel that way.

So we began not by designing, but by listening. I joined as both researcher and product designer — part strategist, part translator — helping the firm understand what their clients actually experienced when they sought legal help. For many, it was anxiety. A Google search followed by a dozen open tabs. Legalese that made them feel small. Contact forms that led nowhere. When we asked people what they wanted from a legal site, the answers weren’t revolutionary. They wanted clarity. Reassurance. A sense that they weren’t alone in a system built to overwhelm.

Over the course of several months, we ran qualitative interviews with recent clients and potential users. We created detailed journey maps tracing not just steps, but emotional states. We sketched out service blueprints that exposed the cracks — especially between digital touchpoints and real human interactions. We ran surveys and card sorts. We built personas based on actual anxieties: the newly self-employed freelancer afraid of missing a tax deadline; the single parent navigating a custody issue for the first time. These weren’t edge cases. They were the core.

What emerged from the research was a central insight: trust is not just built through credentials or testimonials. It’s built through the small details of how someone is treated when they don’t know where to begin. The layout of a landing page. The tone of a headline. Whether or not a button says “submit.” The way a form responds when you make a mistake.

Our design decisions followed this insight closely. We stripped back the visual identity to its essentials — generous white space, a warm but restrained colour palette, and a new typography system that prioritised readability without sacrificing personality. Every icon was reconsidered. Every pattern was tested. The site’s structure was rebuilt from the ground up: not around practice areas, but around user questions. Instead of saying “Corporate Law,” we asked, “Starting a business?” Instead of listing services, we listed concerns.

We introduced a legal glossary written in plain language — not as an afterthought, but as a central tool. Users could highlight difficult terms and get contextual definitions in real-time, like footnotes in a novel. This feature alone, based on feedback sessions, became a turning point in user trust.

Every week, we ran usability sessions. We watched users navigate early wireframes. We watched where they clicked, where they hesitated, where they gave up. We redesigned based on every round of feedback. One session led us to completely rethink the form logic. Another revealed how overwhelming it was to be presented with all possible services — so we built an intake assistant, a branching set of questions that quietly guided users toward what they actually needed.

We also wrote. Not just interface copy, but microcopy — the text inside buttons, the error messages, the confirmation screens. We replaced “Form submitted” with “Thank you. You’ll hear from us within 24 hours.” We avoided empty reassurances and chose words that mirrored how the firm speaks in person: kind, direct, specific. UX writing became part of the design system — a tone that scaled, not a patch applied at the end.

But none of this happened in isolation. One of the most challenging parts of the process — and the most rewarding — was aligning stakeholders across legal, design, operations, and business development. We ran workshops not to present findings, but to build shared understanding. We role-played client journeys, tested assumptions, prioritised features together. It wasn’t always easy. Legal professionals are trained to avoid ambiguity. Designers are trained to explore it. But over time, a shared language emerged: one grounded in service, not aesthetics alone.

We worked lean. Resource constraints meant we couldn’t build every idea. So we focused on the ones with the highest emotional impact. Improving the “Contact Us” experience became a priority: a redesigned form, fewer fields, smarter defaults, better confirmation UX. We added a library of downloadable guides, each designed to answer real user questions with clear visual hierarchy and accessible language. We rebuilt the CMS from a template mess into a structured system with reusable components and predefined layout rules — not just easier for users, but for the internal team as well.

Twelve months in, the results began to show. Online enquiries rose by 60 percent — not through aggressive marketing, but because users finally understood what to do. Navigation time dropped by more than a third. Clients spent less time looking for information, and more time engaging with it. Satisfaction surveys highlighted the clarity of language and simplicity of interaction — two things you don’t often hear about law firms.

One client wrote, “I finally understand the steps I need to take. I didn’t feel stupid for asking.” Another said, “I expected this process to feel cold and mechanical. It didn’t. It felt like someone thought this through for someone like me.”

That was always the goal: to make something complex feel not just usable, but humane.

There were challenges we didn’t solve. Some parts of the platform still depend on manual processes. The financial model for digital legal services remains unstable. We had to shelve features that required third-party integrations or regulatory clearance. But these became constraints that sharpened our creativity, not limits to it.

What we learned, above all, is that design in conservative sectors doesn’t need to be conservative. It needs to be careful. Considerate. Collaborative. The aesthetics matter, yes — but not in the sense of “good taste.” They matter because they signal care. They communicate intentionality. They let users know: someone made this for you, not for themselves.

We’re not finished. The next phase includes personalisation tools that adapt content based on the user’s situation. SEO-optimised content hubs that let people self-educate before booking a call. Webinars. Client onboarding dashboards. There’s always more to build. But we’re moving forward with the same principles that brought us here: clarity over cleverness, trust over noise, simplicity over scale.

In a field where complexity is currency, we chose to design for understanding. And in doing so, we helped a law firm become not just more modern, but more human — one interface at a time.