This is where Agile comes in. Agile development principles—focused on iteration, collaboration, and continuous improvement—are a natural fit for citizen developers. By working in short cycles, gathering feedback early, and adapting quickly, legal teams can build impactful self-service tools that evolve with their needs. The result? A more empowered, efficient, and innovative legal practice.
Why Agile for Legal Self-Service Applications?
It’s 8:00 AM, and a new client intake improvement process has just landed on your desk—one that needs to be streamlined and rolled out by the end of the week. In the past, this might have meant weeks (or months) of work, a flurry of emails, countless spreadsheets, and a great deal of manual follow-up; all of which, let’s be honest, wouldn’t count toward your billable time targets. But today, you take a different approach.
You open a low-code platform, something like Power Apps or Power Automate and begin mapping out a simple, user-friendly solution using Agile development principles. You’re not a developer by trade, but you are a legal professional who understands the workflow inside and out. You know what works, what doesn’t, and you already have a few ideas for how to improve the process; just like your colleagues, who’ve voiced similar frustrations and process challenges. That makes you the perfect person to build it.
With Agile, you don't have to build the perfect tool all at once. You start small—build a little, test it, get feedback, and improve. These quick review loops help you catch what's working (and what's not) early, so you're not stuck redoing everything later. And the best part? You're not doing it in a vacuum. You can pull in a few attorneys, show them a rough version, and ask, “Would you actually use this?” Their collaborative input shapes the next iteration, so the final product isn't just functional, it's actually useful. By mid-morning, you've created a working prototype that's already making life easier for the practice teams. No IT backlog. No six-month development cycle. Just a practical, effective solution—built by someone who knows the problem best.
This is the power of citizen development, especially when paired with Agile principles. Agile provides the structure, short, focused development cycles, continuous feedback, and room to adapt. Low-code tools offer accessibility, and legal professionals deliver the expertise and initiative for meaningful change.
You don't need to be a software engineer to innovate. You just need the right tools, a collaborative mindset, and a willingness to experiment. That’s how transformative solutions are born—right from within the legal team. Agile keeps users front and center from day one, so the end result actually works the way people want it to work.
Core Agile Principles Applied
1. Iterative Development
By working in short, iterative cycles—called sprints—teams can deliver incremental improvements, gather feedback early, and pivot quickly when priorities shift. This is especially valuable in legal settings, where the ability to adapt to new compliance requirements or client needs can make or break a solution’s success.
- Agile development is built for responsiveness.
- Break down features into manageable sprints.
- Deliver MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) early to gather feedback.
- Example: A document automation tool that starts with basic templates and evolves based on user input.
2. User Feedback Loops
- Engage legal professionals regularly to validate features.
- Use feedback to refine workflows, UI/UX, and integrations.
- Highlight tools like usability testing, surveys, and pilot groups.
3. Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Involve legal experts, developers, UX designers, and compliance officers.
- Foster shared understanding of legal workflows and constraints.
- Agile ceremonies (e.g., stand-ups, retrospectives) help maintain alignment.
4. What is MVP? Rapid Development – What is the Outcome?
- Deliver Value Early: The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) focuses on solving the most immediate problem first, getting a working version into users’ hands quickly to generate real impact.
- Iterate and Evolve: Continuous testing and short sprints allow teams to adapt swiftly, improving functionality with every cycle instead of waiting for a “final” launch.
- Achieve Rapid Development: Breaking large goals into smaller, testable parts accelerates delivery, reduces risk, and ensures each version moves closer to a truly effective, user-driven solution.
Best Practices for Agile in Legal Tech
- Sprint cycle and sprint planning: Set short, focused sprints with clear goals that deliver incremental value. Regular planning ensures alignment between legal teams and developers for steady, visible progress.
- Start with user stories: Define user stories from actual use cases. Create sub-level tasks under the stories to accomplish the story. User story should be the action user will be performing in the application.
- Prioritize accessibility and compliance from the beginning: Bake accessibility and compliance into each sprint to avoid costly rework later. Legal tech must meet high standards of usability, privacy, and trust.
- Use Agile metrics (velocity, burndown charts) to track progress and adjust scope: Monitor progress with simple metrics to stay transparent and adaptable. Generate delivery reports and queries to give visibility to teams to adjust priorities and maintain delivery momentum.
- Maintain a product backlog: Keep the backlog living and dynamic, regularly refine it to reflect new client demands, regulatory updates, and workflow improvements.
Key Benefits
- Faster time-to-value: Agile enables quick delivery of usable features, allowing legal teams to see real impact and improvement within weeks—not months.
- Higher adoption rates: Solutions shaped by user feedback are more intuitive and relevant, driving stronger engagement and consistent use across teams.
- Scalability: Agile frameworks make it easy to expand and refine applications over time, keeping pace with evolving legal and client needs.
- Risk mitigation: Frequent testing and feedback cycles catch issues early, reducing deployment risks and ensuring smoother rollouts.
- Rapid Development: Iterative sprints turn ideas into working solutions quickly, empowering legal innovators to deliver faster without sacrificing quality.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, Agile isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a practical, flexible way to build tools that actually work for legal professionals. When paired with low-code platforms and the insight of people who live and breathe the work every day, it becomes a powerful engine for innovation. You don’t need to be a developer. You just need to know your process, be open to feedback, and take it one iteration at a time. The result? Smarter tools, faster delivery, and fewer headaches for everyone involved. And let’s be honest—anything that helps us spend less time chasing down spreadsheets and more time delivering real value to our clients for better outcomes is a win.
Agile development principles offer a flexible, iterative approach that aligns perfectly with the evolving needs of legal professionals. By keeping users involved from the start and adapting quickly to feedback, Agile ensures that self-service applications are not only effective but truly user-centered. Through feedback loops and cross-functional collaboration, Agile helps legal teams build tools that are intuitive, responsive, and ready to evolve with changing needs and client demands. It’s not about building the perfect solution on the first try—it’s about building the right solution over time. When implemented well, Agile can lead to faster time-to-value, higher adoption rates, and lower deployment risks. The result? A better user experience, more efficient operations, and a legal team that’s empowered to innovate from within.