Legal / Enterprise · 2025
Leading UX Strategy Across a Legal Product Portfolio
Shaping UX Strategy, prioritization, and design governance across 8 legacy legal applications.
Overview
The Legal domain consisted of eight legacy applications built on Appian, supporting various legal operations across the organization. As the platform evolved, the business objective was to modernize these applications and align them with newer Appian versions while continuing to support ongoing delivery commitments.
I was brought in to lead UX across the domain and establish a scalable way of working across multiple products. My role was not to execute design or research directly, but to provide strategic direction, manage a distributed UX team, drive prioritization, and create alignment between UX, Product, Business, and Engineering teams.
The portfolio included:
- Legal Hiring Request (LHR)
- Legal Service Request (LSR)
- Law Firm Management (LFM)
- Netting Opinion
- Legal Settlement Payments Tracker
- Global Attestations
- Immigration Tracking
- Power of Attorney (POA) Exceptions
My Role
As UX Lead, I was responsible for:
- Leading a UX Researcher and UX Designer based in the US.
- Defining UX strategy and engagement models across the portfolio.
- Prioritizing work across multiple concurrent initiatives.
- Participating in roadmap and planning discussions with Product teams.
- Reviewing research and design outputs.
- Managing stakeholder relationships and delivery expectations.
- Resolving UX-related delivery challenges and team blockers.
The Challenge
While the initial ask was application modernization, the larger challenge was operational.
The portfolio was growing, business demand was increasing, and new requirements frequently emerged after work had already been reviewed and approved.
At the same time, UX was still establishing its role within the domain.
One of the biggest challenges involved stakeholder alignment. The Product Owner preferred to be heavily involved in user and stakeholder conversations, leaving limited room for UX to lead discovery activities or introduce a structured UX approach. Combined with multiple products competing for attention and a small distributed team, there was a risk that UX would become reactive rather than strategic.
My Approach
Rather than focusing solely on delivery, I focused on creating the conditions for the team to succeed.
Building Trust Before Process
Instead of pushing for immediate ownership of research and discovery activities, I chose to build trust with stakeholders first.
My team collaborated closely with the Product Owner before user and stakeholder sessions to align on objectives, expected outcomes, and discussion areas. This allowed UX goals to be incorporated into conversations while gradually demonstrating the value of the UX process.
Over time, this helped establish credibility, increased stakeholder confidence in UX, and enabled the team to take a more active role in discovery and design activities.
Establishing Portfolio Prioritization
As more initiatives entered the pipeline, I introduced a prioritization model based on:
- Business criticality
- Delivery timelines
- Product readiness
- Team capacity
- UX effort required
This helped ensure that limited UX capacity was focused on the highest-value initiatives while improving planning predictability across the portfolio.
Creating Scalable Foundations
To support consistency across products, I sponsored the creation of reusable Appian-aligned design foundations that could be leveraged across future initiatives. This reduced duplication of effort, accelerated onboarding, and improved collaboration between design and development teams.
Outcomes
- Established a scalable UX operating model across eight legal products.
- Improved planning and prioritization across multiple concurrent initiatives.
- Increased stakeholder trust and confidence in UX-led activities.
- Enabled greater autonomy and ownership within the UX team.
- Reduced design effort through reusable Appian-aligned foundations.
- Improved delivery predictability through structured prioritization and governance.
Reflection
This experience reinforced that leadership is not just about driving delivery—it is about creating alignment, building trust, and enabling teams to operate effectively within complex environments.
By focusing on relationships, prioritization, and scalable ways of working, UX evolved from a supporting function into a strategic partner across the Legal portfolio.