Défends Tes Droits is a legaltech startup aiming to connect French law students, individuals, and businesses with the more traditional world of law firms.

Helping a startup scale is one thing, but building one from a mere idea is a totally different game.

In order to start efficiently, we had to set a few discovery sessions with our client to really get the key essence of their idea, and its intended users. This way, we could better help them derive their brand identity, their executions and, ultimately, their business.

We worked in close collaboration with the founder, who assisted in providing us with key contacts, potential users of both side of the marketplace: lawyers, and people in need of legal services.

However, working from scratch implies a lack of actual data to measure. This made measuring success a challenge. Ultimately, we determined together that we would measure success by the ability of the startup to conduct a proper pre-seed investment once the product would be finalized, as well as its ability to acquire qualified leads/sales.

The Research

Several research documents and processes were carried out to identify what factors would have the most impact on Défends Tes Droits' business:

• A Competitive Analysis
• A careful scrutiny of the problem space before addressing the solution space
• The definition of what the Product-Market Fit area would look like and what it implied for the business
• The establishment of Personas for both sides of the marketplace (lawyers and people in need of legal services)
• User journey and user interviews for validation
• An empathy map to empathize and understand the users' needs.

User Data

Building a digital product from the ground up implies a subtle balance between respecting the founders' vision and the users' needs. In order to weigh those needs, we conducted interviews with potential users from both sides of the marketplace (lawyers and people in need of legal services). This allowed us to draft some personas using two fundamental questions:

1. What are the categories of people who have significantly different motivations for using this product?
2. What are the different groups inside this audience that have different needs? (age, gender, location, occupation, mobility...)

‍

Once the personas defined, we needed to know what our personas would seek to do on the website.

In order to figure it out, we drafted user stories. 

Our methodology was to place a careful scrutiny on the problem space, identifying what the user would seek to do, before diving into how to permit the user to do it effortlessly.

Brand Identity

Once the initial phase of research over, we were ready to begin working on the Brand Identity.

After a deep dive into the competitive analysis and our user interviews notes, we developed the brand Défends Tes Droits in a 60-page iterative style guide. Our objective was to visually reflect the values the users had empathized with during our interviews.

From the logo to the tone of voice, or buttons and fonts used, we crafted Défends Tes Droits' brand by seeing what value resonated with the users in the competition, and pushing that to the max!

We wanted the brand to create two fundamental values, essential to the proper conducting of legal business: Trust & Authority.

We worked closely with Défends Tes Droits in creating a cohesive brand identity that stayed consistent across all touch points, including social media, website, and other marketing efforts.

Website

From here-on, we applied our previous UX Research and Branding to fuel the creative process of the website. We kept in mind the idea that the users wanted an easy and trustworthy way to contact human assistance, and the need for Défends Tes Droits to inspire their users to subscribe to their insurance products.

Thus, we built the website in 3 iterations:

1. A first prototype in mid-fidelity, validated by user testing.
2. A second prototype in high-fidelity, invalidated by user testing.
3. A final prototype in high-fidelity, validated by user testing.

A key takeaway from the second prototype invalidation was that the "bilateral" aspect of the marketplace was not properly deserved. In essence, the version was validated by the people in need of legal services, but the lawyers could not navigate the version adequately to find what they wanted. Our final prototype addressed this by making sure to distinctively integrate a section for lawyers, directly on the homepage.

Long-term Involvement

After the success of our project together, Défends Tes Droits was able to successfully raise €70,000 in pre-seed investment. Their customer growth acquisition went up by 350x and their Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) by 12x. They are currently in the process of hiring new talents for their business.

After our results with them, Défends Tes Droits has solicited us to continue working on their UX on a monthly basis.