Below are images of the first prototype for an actual end-user application I ever built.

When I founded my company, it was to make process flow software for attorneys. The product was called Hammurabi (and no, the Hammurabic code was not exceedingly complex compared to other law at the time, in fact it was a great simplification and clarification). The idea being that there is a limited amount of variation among most cases of the same type. The simplest example we used when the product was conceived was an eviction. There is a very deterministic set of things that happen in Georgia for an eviction to occur. We mapped them on a napkin.

The idea here was to provide a collaborative process flow for each type of case, in which the state of each case was defined in a map. Every stakeholder can monitor the progress of the case at all times, even clients. Once you initialized a case map for a new case, the maps automatically included template documents and forms for the next step in the case at each node, and could be modified to account for variations between cases. Each node in the map contained notes, documents (evidence, briefs, motions, etc.). MS Word is embedded in the UI, the documents are arranged the way attorneys think, the system tracks the work state and progress on each document, and times you as you work, so that we could take the guess work (fudging) out of legal billing.

The diamonds with ?'s in them are decision points, and clicking on them pulls up expert legal advice on what to do, etc. Again, editable. The nodes change color to indicate completion as you navigate the case map and approach resolution, which is indicated (if I remember correctly) by an emboldened outline to a node. The system was also to manage deadlines, contacts, calls, etc. Way too ambitious for a startup (me) without a track record, because it would have taken alot of people to get built. I also had no clue about writing a business plan at the time, so there was no way anyone would give me any money.

The system was supposed to make legal work more efficient, so that you could handle more clients and charge less. Whats more, billing would be more annotated, because what documents and phases of the case were worked on would be automatically in the bill. In retrospect, some unrealistic idealism was going on there.

There are several reasons the system would make lawyers more efficient. The first is that it takes time to recollect what state a particular case is in, because one attorney often handles dozens of cases, and even more that are dormant (and these would take even longer to remember). Whats more, one attorney is not the only person working on any given case. The state map and annotations allow each person working on the case to keep up to date with its progress, even if they haven't thought about it for weeks, months, years. The map presents a user with the most important thing to know: what to do next. ... [ Read More (0.6k in body) ]