“I strongly believe that lawyers who get their heads around automation will deliver better products, have happier clients, and make more money.”– Fiona McLay, McLay Legal
Josef’s Designer & Builder Program is a free online course for lawyers and legal professionals seeking a practical introduction to legal tech, legal design, and useful innovation skills.
Earlier this year, we launched the program and were excited that hundreds of legal innovators signed up, built bots on our platform, and completed the course (gaining a certification in the process!).
Our next program starts on 10 August 2020, so register now to secure your place.
We think the program is pretty cool, but don’t take our word for it – hear from three newly-certified Josef bot builders who completed it!
I signed up to see what it would be like to build one of my own bots. I’d seen a demo of Josef’s platform, but I thought maybe it was one of those things that seemed simple but was really complicated. Once I realised how easy to use the platform was, I was relieved!
Through the program, I learnt to build a self-service product which tells you whether a claim for misleading and deceptive conduct in financial services is apportionable. It solves a problem I’ve encountered at work which requires analysing a combination of different statutory provisions and case law – every time it comes up it is time consuming to work through the requirements again. It helps determine potential exposure in a dispute so a quick and reliable answer is useful.
I would definitely recommend Josef’s Designer & Builder program. I really enjoyed it. It not only taught you how to use the product – which is excellent, by the way – but it also empowered you to solve other problems you encounter in your daily life as a lawyer. You start thinking from a legal design point of view, about how you can efficiently deliver legal services to help the maximum number of people.
“I strongly believe that lawyers who get their heads around automation will deliver better products, have happier clients, and make more money.”– Fiona McLay, McLay Legal
I strongly believe that lawyers who get their heads around automation will deliver better products, have happier clients, and make more money. Through better services and products, we can also deliver significant benefits to the communities we serve.
What I learned through the legal design and design thinking modules were truly useful business skills. It’s also a life skill, and it’s a skill for the future. Doing this course is something that will help not just for the next week, but for the next ten, twenty years.
I’m interested in legal tech, and wanted to try out Josef’s platform, so I signed up to build an idea I had.
I’m in the workplace team and we do a lot of industrial relations work. Through the Designer & Builder Program, I’m investigating bot solutions to streamline the enterprise agreement voting system. The idea I’m working with is digital, which is extremely helpful during COVID-19. It’s transparent and recordable, which is great for employees and unions. There are existing services that do something similar but from what I’ve seen they can be quite expensive and less transparent. So, my thinking is, if we could offer it in-house, it’d be impactful across the firm.
I really liked the flexibility of the program. I found the timeline encouraging but not rigid – I could manage it in parts when I had time during the week, rather than classes with fixed times. The program is a great way to learn new skills. The content was accessible, and you don’t need to be especially tech-savvy. It was a mixture between practical training and getting people into a design-thinking headspace.
As a graduate, I see patterns in the way we work and I think it’s healthy to question why we do things a certain way – Why are we still writing that letter? Why does human error still result in costly delays?
“When you start the program, you don’t necessarily know anything. By the end you have an official certification, knowledge of how to work with the platform, and the tools to use it.”– Adam Connolly, MinterEllison
When you start the program, you don’t necessarily know anything. By the end you have an official certification, knowledge of how to work with the platform, and the tools to use it. You learn a real and immediately useful skill that can be applied to different types of legal problems.
I would happily recommend the Designer & Builder program, especially to graduates, research clerks, paralegals, human resources, and legal support professionals.
I first became interested in the program when a colleague sent it to me. I work at Justice Connect, where we are increasingly focused on using digital strategies to scale the impact of our programs. The course was appealing as it provided me with an opportunity to experience product development from start to finish in a discrete period of time.
I really enjoyed the style of teaching in the program. There was a good mix of engaging video tutorials, written content, and practical exercises. The exercises really helped to cement what you’d learned through the lessons.
The modules on conditional logic and user experience were the highlights for me. It was revealing to break down some processes that I regularly use within my team but don’t necessarily think about or document. By stepping back and looking at things from the perspective of the user, I was able to see processes in my day to day work differently.
It was surprising how easy and intuitive it was to build bots without any prior experience. I thought of a process that was slowing down my team, and through the course designed and built a bot that could in theory improve our working practices. My bot was designed to make the specific process of writing and delivering closure letters easier for our team. It was helpful to go through this exercise, and I’m now able to think about how I can implement something like the bot in my team’s processes.
I’d definitely recommend this course, not only to people who will develop bots, but to everyone who uses and provides products and services. I’d encourage anyone who’s thinking about signing up or waiting to do something like this, to just jump in and do it!