This document is a sample rebuilt from a work design report we actually delivered. The chapter structure, diagnostic criteria, tables, roadmap and measurement indicators are the same as the delivered report. Anything that could identify a specific client — firm name, individuals, delivery date, circumstances particular to that office — has been removed. The industry is kept as a law firm because work design only holds up on top of how a specific profession actually works.
Work process · Information structure · Collaboration · System adoption · Automation plan
1. Executive Summary
The core problem found in this diagnosis is not the volume of work itself, but an operating structure in which work and information are not sufficiently connected around the matter. Case work is being carried out, but individual tasks, consultations, files, emails, work requests, revision requests and decisions are not linked into a single matter history. As a result, people spend time finding, asking for, reorganising and relaying information that already exists. Information that could be read from a system and matters that genuinely require the principal attorney’s professional judgement also arrive at the principal together.
The priority of this work design is therefore not to automate individual tasks, but to build a matter-centred operating system and connect work with information.
1.1 Key diagnosis
| Area | Key diagnosis |
|---|---|
| Matter management | Work is partly managed as individual tasks rather than by matter, so overall progress and history are not linked |
| Work sharing | Messenger and meetings are separated from the actual work record |
| Dependence on the principal | Information available from a system and matters requiring professional judgement both concentrate on the principal |
| Information management | Consultations, tasks, files, emails and decisions are not sufficiently connected to the matter context |
| Administrative work | Work recurs to re-check, reorganise and relay information that already exists |
| Consultation | Consultation information needs to be connected consistently to matters and follow-up work |
| Scalability | As matters and headcount grow, the load of checking information and communicating is likely to grow with them |
1.2 Priority actions
| No. | Action | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Build matter-centred management | Customer → Project/Matter → Task |
| 2 | Connect work and information | Link consultations, files, emails, decisions and billing to the matter |
| 3 | Unify work communication | Handle requests, review, revision and completion inside the Task |
| 4 | Reduce information dependence on the principal | Read status and context from the system; escalate only professional judgement |
| 5 | Connect consultation to follow-up work | Consultation → decisions and action items → Task |
| 6 | Minimise progress reporting | Read normal progress from the system; keep meetings for problems, delays and judgement |
| 7 | Standardise repeated work | Turn recurring matter types and tasks into workflows and templates |
| 8 | Automate only what needs it | After the system is in use, measure frequency and time spent, and build only where ROI is clear |
1.3 How the improvement is made
- Improve the way work is done — remove work that can be dropped and cut unnecessary reporting, checking, reorganising and approval.
- Adopt the system — connect customers, matters, tasks, consultations, files, emails, decisions and billing so that less has to be remembered and relayed by people. The first step is to put already-built features into real operation, not to develop new ones.
- Custom automation — measure what people still repeat after the first two steps, and build separately only where the need and the ROI are confirmed.
1.4 Target operating structure
Customer → Project / Matter → Task
Around the matter project, connect consultations, tasks, files, emails, schedules, decisions, review and revision, client communication, billing and matter history. The goal is to move from a structure where work continues only because people remember matters and explain them to each other, to one where work and information accumulate on the matter and the necessary context reaches the person who needs it. Attorneys concentrate on professional work — legal judgement, matter strategy and client consultation — while staff can clearly see the work they have to do and the information it requires.
2. Observation Overview
2.1 Scope of observation
We observed how the principal attorney and staff actually carry out their work: work communication, handling of matter information, client consultation, work confirmation and administrative work. Material provided in advance was used to supplement on-site observation, and its contents were judged separately from facts observed directly on site.
2.2 How evidence is classified
This report does not give every sentence the same weight. For each item it marks where direct observation ends and our interpretation begins.
| Class | Meaning | How it is treated |
|---|---|---|
| Observed | Confirmed directly on site | Observed fact |
| Documented | Confirmed in material provided by the client | Fact based on documents |
| Reported | Described by the principal or staff | Interview content |
| Analysis | Judgement drawn from observation and documents | Diagnostic opinion |
| To Verify | Cannot be established on current evidence | To be confirmed |
2.3 Work environment confirmed
| Area | What was confirmed | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Matter management | Work arising during a matter is partly handled as separate individual tasks | Observed |
| Work communication | Work sharing, confirmation and revision requests occur through messenger and meetings | Observed |
| Work sharing | Staff sometimes have to check each other’s progress separately | Observed |
| Dependence on the principal | Work information exists that staff can only obtain by asking the principal directly | Observed |
| Client consultation | The principal takes calls, and work exists to check matter details before and after them | Observed |
| Work review | Email and work content are reviewed by organising them with an AI tool | Observed |
| Consultation records | Information arising in consultation needs consistent links to client, matter and follow-up work | Observed |
| Administrative work | Work exists to check court information and reorganise it again for sharing | Observed |
| Record review and drafting | The client also sees this as a major time cost | Documented |
| Consultation automation | The client also lists post-consultation organisation and follow-up as an improvement target | Documented |
The material provided in advance framed the bottlenecks as drafting, record review, client handling and business development, and office administration. This report does not adopt that list as automation targets. Combined with on-site observation, each was re-examined to decide whether it is a problem of how work is done, a problem of operating structure, or a problem that needs a system or automation.
3. Current Operating System Diagnosis
3.1 Business Value
A law firm’s core client value arises from professional legal judgement, handling matters, drafting legal documents and client consultation. Work should therefore not be judged inefficient merely because it takes a long time. By contrast, the searching, checking, reorganising and relaying that surrounds professional work is not directly connected to client value, yet consumes expert time.
| Work | Judgement | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Client consultation by the principal | Core professional work | Keep |
| Legal judgement and matter strategy | Core professional work | Keep |
| Grasping matter details before consultation | Necessary, but the approach can improve | Simplify |
| Organising notes after consultation | Needed for records, sharing and follow-up | Standardise and systematise |
| Reorganising matter progress information | Repeated processing of existing information | Reduce |
| Staff checking each other’s progress | Arises to compensate for missing information | Reduce |
| The principal checking simple status | Context gathering, not professional judgement | Reduce |
The point is not to reduce the attorney’s professional work, but to reduce the non-value-adding work that occurs around it.
To verify — revenue and profitability by matter type, average time invested, and owner and duration by work type cannot be established from current material. These will be analysed once real operating data is available.
3.2 Workflow
Simplified, the observed flow runs: client or matter arises → individual task arises → assignee carries it out → confirmation or sharing through messenger and meetings → the principal checks and judges → revision or additional work → the next individual task.
| Item | Current state | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Basic unit of management | Partly centred on individual tasks | Matter-centred |
| Whole-matter workflow | Weak links between tasks | Project structure |
| Work requests | External messenger | Task-centred |
| Review and revision | Conversation and meetings separated from the work record | Task history |
| Progress sharing | Requires separate communication | Read from the system |
| Follow-up after consultation | Consultation information converted into work again | Consultation → Task |
The point is to make the matter function as the higher unit that holds all of the work. After the change, every task shows which matter it arose from, how it relates to earlier work, and what it leads to next.
3.3 People & Decision
Concentration on the principal must be split in two. Information dependency is having to ask the principal in order to obtain information. Decision dependency is genuinely needing the principal’s professional judgement or authority. At present these two kinds of request are not sufficiently separated and arrive together.
| Type | Content | Target handling |
|---|---|---|
| Information | Checking matter information | Read from the system |
| Status | Checking progress | Project/Task |
| Context | Checking earlier consultations and decisions | Project history |
| Approval | Approving a deliverable or the next step | Defined review and approval criteria |
| Professional Decision | Legal judgement and matter strategy | Attorney’s judgement |
| Exception | Situations outside the standard criteria | Owner’s judgement |
The goal is not to reduce every question that reaches the principal, but to ensure that questions not requiring the principal’s professional judgement never reach the principal.
3.4 Information
Matter information arises at many touchpoints: consultation, messenger, email, individual tasks, files, court information and meetings. Using several channels is not itself the problem. What matters is whether the important information created in each channel ends up connected to the matter context.
| Information | Target connection |
|---|---|
| Client information | Customer |
| Matter information | Project |
| Work information | Project → Task |
| Consultation information | Customer + Project |
| Project / Task | |
| Files | Project / Task |
| Decisions | Project / Task history |
| Schedules | Project / Task |
| Billing information | Customer + Project |
| Court matter information | Project history / schedule / Task |
The information structure is simplified to three levels: Customer — whose work is this / Project — which matter is it / Task — what has to be done now. The same information is recorded once where possible, and important decisions are written into the matter or task history so they do not disappear when the conversation ends. The point is to stop human memory from serving as the system of record.
3.5 Technology
The significant problem in the current technical environment is not a lack of new technology, but that work and information are split across several tools and people are connecting them by hand.
| Tool / system | Current use | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Messenger | Work requests, sharing, confirmation | Connect communication to the actual work |
| External and internal communication | Connect to matters and tasks | |
| AI tools | Reviewing email and work content | Provide only what is needed, on top of structured work information |
| Court systems | Source information on matters | Connect the necessary parts to internal matter records |
| Work management system | Basis for unified work management | Apply a matter-centred operating system |
3.6 Waste & Automation
Before deciding whether to automate anything, every task is examined in this order: Eliminate → Simplify → Standardise → Integrate → Automate. Skipping the order and starting with automation only means repeating removable work faster.
| Work | Class | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Client calls | Keep | Keep |
| Checking matter details before a call | Simplify / Integrate | Provide the context needed |
| Organising notes after a call | Standardise / Integrate | Use the consultation feature |
| Creating follow-up work after consultation | Integrate / Automate | Action item → Task |
| Checking matter progress | Simplify / Integrate | Check from the project |
| Simple information questions to the principal | Eliminate / Integrate | Read from the system |
| Work requests by messenger | Integrate | Task-centred |
| Confirmation and revision by messenger | Standardise / Integrate | Task history |
| Progress-sharing meetings | Simplify | Problems, exceptions and judgement |
| Re-summarising email and work content | Simplify / Automate | Daily review |
| Reorganising court information | Simplify / Standardise | Link only what is needed to the project |
| Billing-related work | Standardise / Integrate | Link customer, project and billing |
| Repeated document drafting | Standardise / Automate | Context-based drafts and templates |
Court matter information — external integration through an official API was confirmed to be unavailable. It is therefore excluded from custom automation at this stage. The matter information needed for work is entered or uploaded to the project and linked to history, schedules and tasks. Designing as if the integration existed, and watching it collapse later, is worse than writing down what is not possible and designing on top of that.
3.7 Scalability
If matters and staff increase under the current structure, it is not only professional legal work that grows. Checking information, explaining situations, sharing progress and requesting confirmation grow with it.
| What the principal should own | What the operating system should own |
|---|---|
| Legal judgement | Current work status |
| Matter strategy | Assignees |
| Important client communication | Schedules |
| Important approvals | Previous consultation content |
| Judging exceptions | Work history |
| Professional review | Files and earlier decisions |
| Completion status and follow-up work |
This is not about delegating the principal’s work to someone else. It is about having the system own the operating information that the principal should not need to remember or explain.
4. Key Operating Problems
Grouping the findings from the seven diagnostic areas by shared cause gives five core operating problems.
| ID | Core operating problem | Areas | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| OP-01 | Lack of a matter-centred operating system | Workflow / Information / Technology | P1 |
| OP-02 | Work, information and communication dispersed | Workflow / Information / Technology | P1 |
| OP-03 | Information dependence and decision dependence on the principal are mixed | People & Decision / Scalability | P1 |
| OP-04 | Context rebuilt repeatedly before work starts | Business Value / Information / Waste | P1 |
| OP-05 | Hand-offs between work, including consultation and external information | Workflow / Information / Waste | P2 |
These share two higher causes: the lack of a matter-centred structure, and weak links between work and information. The result is a repeating loop — matter context disperses → people search for the information again → they check with a colleague or the principal → more communication follows → decisions and revisions end up separated from the work itself → the next task starts by rebuilding context again. Changing the higher operating structure therefore comes before automating each symptom.
5. Solution Design
5.1 Criteria for designing solutions
| Step | Approach | Criterion |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Improve how work is done | Can it be solved by removing or simplifying? |
| 2 | Adopt the system | Can the needed work and information be connected in one operating system? |
| 3 | Custom automation | Do people still have to repeat it after the first two steps? |
5.2 Building a matter-centred operating system
Before matter work is managed as an independent task, it is defined by which client and which matter it arose from. The basic structure is Customer → Project (Matter) → Task. Consultations, tasks, files, emails, schedules, decisions, review history and billing are linked to the project, so the project becomes the reference point for the matter’s current state and full history.
5.3 Connecting work and communication
Important communication about requests, review, revision and completion is handled on the task. There is no need to restrict messenger as an everyday channel, but work results and important decisions must not live only in messenger. Request → execution → review → revision → completion is connected as one task history.
5.4 Reducing information and decision dependence
Requests reaching the principal are classified as Information / Status / Context / Approval / Professional Decision / Exception. The first three are read from projects and tasks; only items the principal must act on or judge are raised as items requiring attention. The aim is to reduce the traffic that seeks the principal for simple information, without forcing decision authority to be dispersed.
5.5 Minimising context rebuilding
Staff are not required to hold the full state of every matter in their heads. Starting a task requires three things: the information that task needs, the important changes that happened recently, and the items they must judge or act on. Project context, attention items and the daily review provide the right information at the right moment.
5.6 Connecting consultation to follow-up work
Consultation should not end as a separate record-keeping task; it is part of the matter workflow. The flow is consultation → organise notes → link to customer → link to project → record key facts and decisions → define action items → create and link tasks. The operating goal is not recording the consultation itself, but having its outcome carry into the next piece of work without a break.
5.7 Handling external matter information
Work is not designed on the assumption of automatic court data integration. Only the information needed for internal work is selected, recorded on the relevant project and, where necessary, linked to a schedule or task. The point is not to rewrite the external record in full, but to structure the information and follow-up actions that internal work requires.
5.8 Improving how progress is shared
Work that is progressing normally is read from the system, and communication between people concentrates on problems, delays, risks, exceptions, judgement and decisions.
6. To-Be Operating System
6.1 Target operating system
| Information area | Connected to |
|---|---|
| Client information | Customer + consultation |
| Matter information | Project |
| Consultation records | Customer + Project |
| Individual tasks | Project + Task |
| Work communication | Task |
| Email, files, schedules | Project / Task |
| Decisions | Project / Task |
| Review and revision history | Task |
| Billing | Customer + Project |
| Court information and progress history | Project |
6.2 How staff work
Staff do not need to keep track of every matter in the firm. They concentrate on the work they have to do now, the matter context that work requires, deadlines and priorities, earlier decisions, and anything needing review or confirmation. When work is finished, the result and its record stay on the task and the project, so the next piece of work continues on the same context.
6.3 How the principal attorney works
Information given to the principal is split into three: Action Required (work the principal must do), Decision Required (work needing professional judgement or approval), and Attention Required (delays, risks, important client issues). Work that is progressing normally and needs no judgement is not delivered with the same weight.
6.4 How consultation is run
Client consultation → organise notes → record key facts and decisions → confirm client requests → define action items → assign owner and deadline → create task → link customer and project. This keeps consultation information and follow-up work from being separated.
6.5 Review and decision-making
| Type | How it is handled |
|---|---|
| Simple completion | Assignee marks it complete |
| Meeting defined criteria | Handled against a checklist or criteria |
| Deliverable review | Checked by the designated reviewer |
| Important client send-outs | Approved where necessary |
| Legal judgement | Confirmed by an attorney |
| Change of matter strategy | Decided by the responsible attorney |
| Exceptions | Judged by the owner |
Separating professional judgement from simple confirmation keeps the control that is needed while cutting unnecessary waiting for approval.
6.6 How meetings are run
Meetings that read out progress already recorded in the system are minimised. Meetings prioritise matters where a problem has arisen, delayed work, exceptional situations, important client issues, legal or operational judgement, and problems where the way of working itself needs to change. Decisions made in a meeting are recorded on the relevant project or task.
7. Implementation Roadmap
7.1 Phase 1 — Settle the way of working
Before any system configuration, the new operating principles are fixed.
| Item | Content |
|---|---|
| Matter management rule | Manage matters as projects |
| Task creation rule | Link matter-related work to its project |
| Communication rule | Requests, revisions and review are task-centred |
| Consultation record rule | Structure consultation information and follow-up work |
| Confirmation rule | Separate information checks, approvals and professional judgement |
| Meeting rule | Problems and judgement rather than progress reporting |
| Information rule | Fix where matter information lives and how it is recorded |
7.2 Phase 2 — Build the operating system
| Item | What is applied |
|---|---|
| Customer | Organise existing client information |
| Project | Create and link matters in progress |
| Task | Link current work to its project |
| Files and email | Link on a matter and task basis |
| Consultation | Link consultation information, decisions and follow-up work |
| Billing | Link to customer and project |
| Attention items | Run around what the principal genuinely has to check |
| Daily review | Review key changes, work and attention items |
| Permissions | Set access and handling rights by role |
| Templates | Build in stages once recurring matter types are identified |
The goal of Phase 2 is a state where the current status of key matters and their related work and information can be read from the system, and neither messenger nor human memory is needed to assign work and track progress.
7.3 Phase 3 — Operate and stabilise
This phase checks whether the structure actually works in daily practice. The main checks are:
- Work still handled outside the system
- Work that drifts back to messenger
- Information staff keep asking the principal for
- Information that is hard to find in the project
- Unnecessary input and excessive steps
- Features that go unused
- Consultation information that gets missed
- Unnecessary approvals
- Newly discovered repetitive work
Problems found are not written off as users failing to adapt. The cause is examined on both sides — work design and system design — and corrected.
7.4 Phase 4 — Review further automation
Where people still handle repetitive work after the operating system has stabilised, the need for automation is assessed against these criteria.
| Criterion | What is checked |
|---|---|
| Frequency | How many times a month does it occur? |
| Total time | How many hours a month does it consume? |
| Labour cost impact | What does it actually cost in people’s time? |
| Regularity | Can the handling rules be defined? |
| Error risk | What happens if the automation gets it wrong? |
| Technical feasibility | Is the required data and system access available? |
| Build cost | What does it cost to build and maintain? |
| Payback | Can the build cost be recovered from the saving? |
8. Measurement & Follow-up
8.1 Measurement principles
The effect of work design is not judged on “it feels easier”. Working time, information checking, communication, missed work and processing speed are measured before and after, as far as they can be. Where accurate before-data does not exist, a baseline is established during the early operating period first.
8.2 Key KPIs
| KPI | How it is measured | Target |
|---|---|---|
| Time to grasp matter context | Time spent checking information before consultation or work | Decrease |
| Simple information questions to the principal | Number of information/status questions | Decrease |
| Work requests by messenger | Number of work-related instructions | Decrease |
| Progress-checking communication | Number of separate questions and reports | Decrease |
| Time to organise after consultation | Consultation ends → record complete | Decrease |
| Time to create follow-up work | Consultation ends → follow-up task created | Decrease |
| Re-entry of information | Number of times the same information is entered again | Decrease |
| Approval waiting time | Review requested → decision | Decrease |
| Missed work | Number of missed deadlines and follow-ups | Decrease |
| Delayed work | Share of work past its deadline | Decrease |
| Work history coverage | Recording of key matter activity | Increase |
| Work handled outside the system | Share of work handled only in external channels | Decrease |
| Principal’s professional work share | Share of the principal’s total time spent on professional work | Increase |
8.3 Data still to be gathered
| Data | Use |
|---|---|
| Main working hours per staff member | Labour cost by type of work |
| Average handling time by matter type | Effect of workflow improvement |
| Revenue by matter type | Profitability analysis |
| Frequency of repetitive administrative work | Automation ROI |
| Principal’s time spent checking information | Improvement in the value of the principal’s time |
| Number of consultations and time to organise them | Effect of the consultation feature |
| Monthly workload | Throughput before and after |
Until quantitative data is available, no time or cost saving rate is asserted. That is why there is no “30% saved” in this report. Writing down a figure that has not been measured means being assessed on that figure — and from then on the work stops being improvement and becomes hitting a number.
8.4 30-day review
Early on, the check is not feature usage but whether the new way of working is actually being followed.
| Check | What is confirmed |
|---|---|
| Matters as projects | Are matters in progress managed as projects? |
| Task linkage | Is individual work linked to its matter? |
| Messenger dependence | Do work requests and confirmations still happen outside? |
| Finding information | Can the needed information be found in the project? |
| Questions to the principal | Are staff still asking the principal what the system shows? |
| Consultation | Is consultation information linked to follow-up tasks? |
| Daily review | Is genuinely useful information being delivered? |
| Missed work | Is follow-up work being dropped? |
| User friction | Is there unnecessary input or an unnecessary step? |
8.5 90-day review
At 90 days, real operating data is used to assess operating effect (time to grasp context, information questions to the principal, work handled in messenger, time to organise after consultation, missed and delayed work, progress-reporting effort), operating structure (workflow standardisation by matter type, unnecessary approvals, role adjustments, additional SOPs, steps that go unused), and further improvement (automation ROI based on the frequency, time and cost of remaining manual work).
8.6 Continuous improvement
Work design is not built once and finished. New bottlenecks are found in real operation and the cycle repeats: Observe → Measure → Eliminate → Simplify → Standardise → Integrate → Automate → Measure again. The final goal is not a larger number of automations, but an operating system in which only necessary work remains, the necessary information is connected, and people can concentrate on what they have to judge and do.
9. Conclusion
What this diagnosis found is that there is more room for improvement in how work is connected than in the volume of work itself. In a law firm, client consultation, matter review, drafting, legal judgement, filing, scheduling, client updates and billing all run around a single matter. In the observed environment, however, the information and decisions created along the way do not accumulate into one matter history, so whoever needs them next has to find, ask for, reorganise and relay them again.
Most of the problems found therefore reduce to one structural problem. Because work and information are not sufficiently connected around the matter, people are repeatedly making that connection by hand.
The purpose of this work design is not to add more features or to automate every repetitive task. Matters are first defined as projects, and clients, tasks, consultations, files, emails, schedules, decisions, review and revision, client communication, billing and history are connected inside them. Staff should be able to see the work they have to do now and the context it requires, instead of remembering every matter.
If, after the system is introduced, work is still assigned by messenger, progress is still reported separately and only results are entered into the system, the system simply becomes another data-entry task. What matters is not adding one more tool but converting the existing way of working into a matter-centred operating system. Custom automation follows only where repetitive work remains after that structure is genuinely in use, and where need and ROI are confirmed.
In one sentence: the aim is not to reduce the attorney’s work, but to redesign the operating work around the attorney so that the attorney can concentrate on being an attorney.
What this is ultimately aiming at is not a fully automated organisation. Work is connected around the matter, information can be checked at the moment it is needed, repetitive operating work is supported by the system, staff concentrate on the work they have to do, and attorneys spend more of their time on professional judgement and on creating client value. That is what this report recommends as the final goal of the project.