We The Action

A marketplace for nonprofits to find pro bono lawyers

Project Details:

My Roles: Product Designer, Product Strategy
Team: Product Manager, 2-4 Engineers
Time Frame: 4 years, 2019 - 2022
Project Stage: Ongoing Feature Development and Iteration

The Challenge

In 2018, We The Action, a legal nonprofit, launched a marketplace that connects progressive lawyers with nonprofits looking for legal volunteers to work on some of the most pressing issues facing the nation.

In the beginning, the platform was set up to match just a few lawyers at a time to specific projects that were posted by a nonprofit.

As the needs of the country evolved during Donald Trump’s first term, the platform needed to adapt.

2019

Mass Mobilization

Opportunity: Over and over, in the wake of big news events, We The Action would have hundreds of interested lawyers wanting to contribute, flooding the nonprofits before they had time to get organized.

Challenge: The way that lawyers could help in these instances varied: did lawyers need to sign up for shifts? Individual cases? Specific types of work? Often, the answers to these questions came after the influx of legal volunteers

Solution: We simplified all of this complexity into a highly adaptable project template, using the flexible structure of “groups” that could be added to a project after launch, and and allow lawyers to sort themselves into ways they could work best.

Outcome: This feature was used to successfully organize lawyers during the 2020 Election Recount in Georgia, ensuring that legal representation appeared at each county election office.

2020

Adding Law Students

Opportunity: Allowing law students onto the platform would grow the numbers of volunteers available to meet the demand of nonprofits.

Challenge: Though law students would create accounts and sign up for projects in the same way as our current lawyers, they were only eligible for certain projects, may require supervision by a credentialed lawyer, and would require additional levels of transparency so nonprofits knew who they were working with.

Learnings: This seemingly simple expansion to our volunteer pool required changes in nearly all areas of our initial product, and design needed to think about systems as much as flows.

2021

Adding Pro Bono Coordinators

Opportunity: Many lawyers at firms and large corporate organizations use in-house Pro Bono coordinators to access volunteer opportunities.

Challenge: Pro Bono coordinators could act on behalf of lawyers on their team, or may just want to oversee what the lawyers at their firm are working on. This new user type would need a new level of permissions and a dashboard to track this information. Again, their participation would impact all areas of the product.

Learnings: As our number of volunteer types grew, we began thinking of volunteer types as templates as well, opening the door for easier future iteration.