I fell into legal the way most non-lawyers do – sideways, and by accident. Shearman & Sterling, now A&O Shearman, was my first job in the legal industry.
That was more than 20 years ago. I worked primarily in print design then, with some digital. This was long before responsive websites, and longer still before AI started changing how we work.
Then, in April 2009, I founded Knox Design Strategy.
Seventeen years later: rebrands and websites, client portals and intranets, matter intake and knowledge bases, mediation presentations and trial graphics. Different firms, different user problems. Whatever the project, the strategy underneath it was key. What made the firm distinct. What problem a new technology solution actually needed to solve. What a judge or mediator needed to understand.
Two decades in, I still love this work. What’s changed is how I want to spend my time, and where I can provide the most value to my law firm clients.
I’m putting my energy and two decades of law firm experience into the strategy that comes before the brand, the build, or the technology. Defining the actual problem. Getting the people who have to agree into the same conversation. Building the kind of consensus that holds after my work is done.
That’s the work I’m best at, and it’s the work I’ve missed most. That, and working directly with clients.
Engagements are principal-led – I run them from the first conversation through the final recommendation. There are four practices, each grounded in discovery and built for how law firms actually work. Very few engagements ever fit into a neat tidy little bucket, so most will draw on more than one.
AI Strategy + Workflow Design. Mapping existing workflows and data sources, then designing the agent-first version: what an agent handles on its own, where a person stays in the loop. It’s very similar to our digital design process, with a few key distinctions.
Brand Strategy. Positioning, messaging, and voice for a rebrand or a new firm launch, or for when the firm’s positioning has drifted and nobody can quite say what it stands for.
Legal Tech Consulting + Strategy. Defining the problem, aligning stakeholders, and building the requirements and roadmap a firm needs before it decides what to build or buy.
Trial Graphics + Presentation Strategy. Exhibits, demonstratives, and the presentation strategy behind them, built to land in seconds and hold up under cross-examination.
Law firms rarely need more ideas. They need clarity on which ideas are worth pursuing, how they fit within the realities of the firm, and how to move them forward.
Knox Design Strategy partners with law firms – newly formed, boutique, regional, and Am Law 200. The work is with the people who own the firm’s initiatives and build attorney consensus – marketing, business development, knowledge management, innovation, IT – and with the litigators leading the cases.
Two decades in legal buys something straightforward: Knox Design Strategy already speaks the firm’s language. That fluency is the difference between strategy that lands and strategy that gets lost in translation.
I’d love to hear from you.
