Revamping an AI-assisted eDiscovery platform for legal professionals

Client
MitiCorp
Time

18 Months
(6 phases,
3 months each)

Platform
Web Application
My Role
Lead UX Product Design

Redesigned the platform to help legal professionals access all data in one AI base, making complex workflows faster and easier

Through this eDiscovery tool, MitiCorp helps legal firms in uncovering critical information within unstructured data and streamlining the document review process.

Key Outcome:
  • Search Improvement:
70% Increase search efficiency
  • User Satisfaction: Increased from 50→80%
THE PROBLEM

Thousands of unstructured files, tight legal deadlines, and no clear way to find critical evidence or work as a team.

A major law firm faced a high-stakes corruption case with 17,000+ multilingual emails under a fixed deadline, but the platform slowed them down with fragmented workflows and poor coordination.

Existing Search Page

1

Search was siloed

Search was separate from documents, forcing users to restart their workflow every time they needed to cross-reference attachments.
2

Tagging, filters invisible under pressure

Filters were hard to find and slowed down high-volume review.
3

No structure for team-based review

This wasn’t a one-person job, but the tool had no way to assign, track, or coordinate document review, forcing teams to manage everything externally.

Design Process

Every project requires different tweaks.
For this project, I adopted the Lean Inception design process at the client’s request.

Cross-Functional Alignment Through Lean Inception

At the start of every phase, we used Lean Inception sessions to get everyone aligned and focused. During this time I understood the key features and users for the product by collaborating with product owners, stakeholders, managers, and development leads and created a canvas to formulate the characteristics of a Minimum Viable Product.

DESIGN APPROACH

Incremental Revamp in 6 Phases

I led the design strategy and execution across each phase, focusing on progressive improvement, user validation, and close collaboration with cross-functional teams.

Phase 1: Foundation – Research & UI Tweaks

Worked on the existing design to identify areas where minor tweaks could make the interface more intuitive without requiring heavy development. Enhanced layout spacing, adjusted typography, improved button visibility, and cleaned up visual clutter.

Phase 2: Search Functionality

Redesigned the core search experience to support faster discovery and better control. Introduced a flexible filter system (by keyword, tag, custodian, date), clearer search result hierarchy, and improved metadata visibility. The new search flow allowed users to pinpoint documents more accurately and reduced search time during case preparation.

Phase 3: Timeline & Document Reading Pane

Designed an interactive timeline view to help users understand document flow and key case events at a glance. Simultaneously refined the document reading pane, offering adjustable layout, better document context, and easier navigation. These improvements helped legal teams maintain reading focus while gaining a clearer narrative of case progression.

Phase 4: Document Review Experience

Led the end-to-end design of a new document review experience.
Designed from scratch to support both automatically and manually assigned documents. Conducted usability testing to validate key workflows, iterated based on feedback.

Phase 5: Refining Review & Building Concepts

Continued improving the document review experience based on usability testing insights. Simultaneously designed the “Concepts” feature to help lawyers group related documents, enabling more strategic preparation for legal cases.

Phase 6: Building Admin Interface & Upload System

Extended the platform by designing admin workflows and interfaces for internal teams. Simplified backend upload flows, clarified permission settings, and mapped out a modular UI for case configuration. These updates made internal operations more efficient and reduced the need for manual support interventions.

ALIGNING PROJECT AND BUSINESS GOALS

Project Goal

Design an intuitive, user-friendly eDiscovery web application that simplifies legal document review, enhances efficiency, and minimizes cognitive load for lawyers, enabling them to quickly extract insights and streamline their workflow.

Business Goals

  • Reduce document review time with advanced tools to speed up the legal process.
  • Design a user-friendly interface to increase adoption and retention.
  • Differentiate through innovative features to attract new clients.
USER RESEARCH

Diving deep to find problems

Heuristic/Accessibility Evaluation

I assessed the existing application against Jakob Nielsen’s heuristics and WCAG accessibility guidelines, screen by screen. Worked closely with the software team to understand the system’s underlying structure.
Findings were compiled into a detailed report shared with the company, giving everyone a validated evidence base to align on before any design decisions were made.

Journey Mapping and Site Map Analysis

Mapped how legal professionals move through a case from start to finish, then audited the existing IA against that flow.

SME and Stakeholder Interview

Given that lawyers have busy schedules and generating requirements quickly was a challenge, I streamlined the process by creating user and business questionnaires. These documents helped me gather valuable insights efficiently within a short time frame.
Additionally, I outlined key focus areas and documented the findings to ensure a smooth & effective process.

Personas

Synthesising insights from user interviews and usability sessions, I documented how legal professionals actually move through their work day and translated those observations into a persona. This gave the team a shared reference point for every design decision, keeping user needs visible throughout all 6 phases rather than getting lost in delivery pressure.

Usability Testing

Few tasks given to the participants:

  1. Search for the documents: Gave problem statement and keywords to start search with
  2. Apply filters for file type
  3. View documents
  4. Add label on documents: Important, Relevant, Not required
SME Questionnaire
Heuristic Evaluation
EXISTING DESIGN

What are the Issues/What if(s)

Goal:

Peter (new user) need to go through thousands of documents to discover key information

Issues/Scenario/What if(s):
  1. The heading ‘view documents’ does not communicate that it contains All documents.
  2. If user is in ‘View Documents’ page, there is no search available. Every time user have to go ‘Search’ page.
  3. What if user find interesting document in ‘search’ page and want to locate same document in ‘view documents’ page, how user will find it?
Proposed Solution:
  1. Clearly call out name for Tab.
  2. A global search option, accessible from any tab
  3. Combining pages and a common search.
Solution
Goal:

Peter (existing user) wants to go through emails and emails with attachments

Issues/Scenario/What if(s):
  1. There is less visibility for the filters and it shows only count for the selected file types.
  2. Difficulty to find email file types and distinguish between with attachment or not
  3. No heading for each column (File name, file type, file path, date etc.) Information related to file type, path, date is not in logical order, was difficult to understand.
Proposed Solution:
  1. Provide a sorted view for file type, date, tags. ex. date can be keep on right side of table so that user can easily view one by one date in a column.
  2. Provide icons for file types to understand information in natural order.
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USABILITY TESTING INSIGHTS

How will we measure the success?

Time on Task

Avg. time to locate a relevant document was ~ 35+ mins
Users were unable to locate the target document within the session.

User Satisfaction

Current satisfaction score measured was 50% covering ease of use, task confidence, and overall experience

Few More Existing Screens

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

What guided every call I made

Simplicity and Efficiency
  • Design a clean, intuitive interface that allows users to navigate large datasets and complete tasks quickly with minimal steps.
  • Prioritize powerful search tools and customizable views to streamline workflows.
Intuitive Navigation and Error Prevention
  • Ensure a logical, familiar interface that helps users easily locate and manage documents without a steep learning curve.
  • Minimize user errors through smart design, offering clear guidance and actionable feedback.
DESIGN – TEST – ITERATE – TEST…

Initial Explorations

FINAL MOCKUPS

Few Hi-fidelity Screens

Discover insights in your data

Search your case using single words or phrases, with results ranked by relevance and key documents highlighted using tags for easy identification.

Organize documents by importance and download them directly from your dataset.

Document Review

It helps users filter out irrelevant information and prioritize key evidence, enabling them to discover insights more quickly and meet tight deadlines with integrated features that streamline the review process.

Concept-based Search

Concept-based search offers deeper insights into the reviewed data, enabling lawyers to spot trends and patterns relevant to the case.

Create Timeline

Build a timeline to visualize trends and events, allowing you to explore when a concept or combination of concepts emerges in the data.

Reading pane

Quick access to all original documents, files, and emails resulting from your combined concept searches.

Users can perform actions such as annotating, highlighting text, tagging for relevance, filtering results, adding comments, and sharing insights within their team.

BUSINESS KPI

Project Outcome

Time on Task

70

Increase in search efficiency

User Satisfaction

30

Score increased from 50% → 80%

“The new feature to delegate review, allows me to easily assign documents to team members with specific context from the tool. It’s also great to see real-time updates on how many documents are reviewed.”

Senior Legal Professional

“Tagging is faster and easier and reading document is much smoother now.”

Senior Associate

Mayuri is a skilled UI/UX designer. Her contributions to our product have been instrumental. I especially want to highlight her ability to quickly adapt to changes in requirements and her work ethic and enthusiasm.

Asgeir BlaksethCSM and Product Owner