Course · Interpersonal Skills
Process Mapping and Decision Design
See a legal process, find what is wrong with it, write its rules as logic you can test, and design a better one.
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Every piece of legal work that repeats is a process, and most legal processes are slower, more error-prone and more frustrating than they need to be. This is the second course of the Legal Engineer Program. It teaches the core craft of redesigning legal work: how to see a process and draw it honestly, how to find the waiting, rework and handoff losses that hide in it, how to read a rule as logic and write it as a decision tree or table that can be tested, how to handle exceptions and conflicts between rules, and how to design the better process in the right order. It comes with a Decision Tree Builder and Tester that checks your logic and lists every path as a test case, and it ends with a capstone in which you redesign client onboarding at an invented firm.
The Curriculum
Seeing the process: what a legal process is, why map it and how much detail to draw→
What counts as a process, the five-part frame, three levels of detail and how to find out what really happens. Practice: Is It a Process? and How Much Detail?
Drawing the map: steps, people, decisions, handoffs and waiting→
The building blocks of a map, swimlanes, naming steps, decisions and exceptions, and the two clocks: working time and waiting time. Practice: Work, Wait or Check? and Spot the Flaw.
Finding the problems: bottlenecks, rework, waiting and root causes→
Six kinds of waste, the bottleneck, rework loops, the five whys and counting causes. Practice: Name the Waste and Find the Root Cause.
From rules to decisions: reading a rule as logic→
Facts, conditions and outcomes; and, or and unless; vague terms and what stays human. Practice: Rule or Judgement?, Find the Ambiguity and the Decision Tree tool.
Building and testing decision trees: completeness, paths and test cases→
The text format, four structural checks, paths as a test plan, boundary tests and tree size. Practice: Which Test? and the Decision Tree tool with a broken tree.
Decision tables, exceptions and precedence: when rules collide→
Decision tables, completeness and consistency, exceptions, defaults, precedence and traceability. Practice: Complete or Conflicting? and a larger rule set in the Decision Tree tool.
Designing the new process: intake, triage, routing, visibility and service levels→
Eliminate, simplify, standardise; intake design, triage and routing, service levels, visibility and pilots. Practice: Redesign the Intake and Order the Steps.
Capstone: Capstone: redesign client onboarding at a small firm→
From as-is data to a tested rule tree and a one-page design. The second piece of your portfolio.
What It Covers
“You will learn to see why legal work is slow, to say exactly what its rules are and to prove that your redesign works.”
- Seven modules and a capstone that follow a real project: map, diagnose, write the rules, test them, redesign.
- Written for lawyers and for people entering legal technology: no code, no special software and no unexplained jargon.
- A working tool you keep using: the Decision Tree Builder and Tester finds dead ends, loops and unreachable outcomes and turns every route into a test case.
- The second piece of your portfolio: a tested rule tree and a one-page process design with the numbers behind it.
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Or give this as a giftOther Scrolls in This Chamber
Across the Table$15 →Interests, walk-away numbers, offers, trades, pressure tactics and professional limits, with practice rooms and calculators.
Cooling the Room$15 →How conflict escalates, mapping a dispute, de-escalation, hard conversations, choosing a process, mediation, power, culture and ethics, with practice mediations.
The Client Conversation$15 →Trust, the first meeting, fees and scope, updates in plain words, advice and decisions, bad news, boundaries and ethics, with practice meetings.Part of a program
Step 2 of 8 in the Legal Engineer Program
Learn to design, automate and measure legal work, and finish with a portfolio you can show. Each course is sold on its own; the whole program is $69 once and unlocks every course in it.
See the whole programModule 1 is free to try. Sign in, pass each module quiz and the course average, and your Certificate of Completion is emailed to you automatically. This course teaches method and technique with invented people and figures; it is general education, not legal advice, and professional rules differ from country to country.
Common questions
- Do I need Legal Engineering Foundations first?
- It helps, because it introduces the vocabulary and the habit of measuring. But this course stands on its own, and a motivated beginner can start here.
- Do I need to be able to code?
- No. Decision trees and tables are written in plain text and are the logic behind every legal automation tool. You will learn the thinking that makes the tools work.
- Is it tied to a particular software product?
- No. The methods work with a whiteboard or with any workflow or automation product. The tool in the course lets you practise the logic without installing anything.
- Is this the Legal Engineer Program?
- It is the second course. The whole program is sold as a bundle at a lower price than buying each course, and this course can also be bought on its own.
- How do I get the Certificate of Completion?
- Sign in, pass each module quiz and keep a course average of at least 75. The certificate is then issued and emailed to you automatically.
- Is any of it legal advice?
- No. It is general education using invented organisations, policies and figures. Real rules must be read against their source, with a lawyer.
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