Keoghs — Design from zero in legal tech

As the first (and sole) design hire, I built the design function from scratch inside a 200-person engineering organisation that had never had a designer. The core challenge: 1,800+ legal specialists were managing claims across 30 fragmented legacy systems — each with its own interface and logic — and many had lost trust in digital tools entirely. I embedded with solicitors and file handlers across offices to understand real workflows, then designed the unified platform that would replace those systems. That meant role-based dashboards that surfaced what mattered by user type, document handling that worked with 50k-page case files instead of against them, and progressive disclosure that respected how legal professionals actually think. In parallel, I established a design system used by 30+ engineering teams to ship consistently and created the processes, standards, and rituals that let design function as a discipline for the first time. The throughline: rebuilding trust in digital working — making the platform feel faster, calmer, and more reliable than the paper files people missed.