A Client-Driven Path to Transformation:
Introducing Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) as a Foundation for Legal Experience Transformation
Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) is a user-centered framework, first conceptualized by Tony Ulwick and later adapted by Jim Kalbach, that helps organizations understand what their customers actually need before building a solution. A “job” is a goal or outcome that a client, attorney, or legal firm staff wants to achieve. The core premise is straightforward: legal firms succeed by understanding client needs and motivations, or their clients’ “jobs to be done.” The framework identifies and defines outcomes in a human-centered, solution-agnostic way, creating a stable behavioral foundation for strategic decisions regardless of how fast the technology landscape shifts.
In our expanded application of JTBD, we identify jobs to be done inside the firm and the internal “job performers” who support client needs and outcomes across the lifecycle of a matter experience. These job performers include attorneys, paralegals, and legal firm staff responsible for completing specific jobs. Figure A illustrates this in practice: the sample JTBD maps client jobs to be done and the corresponding legal firm jobs across the client matter experience lifecycle. The result is a job map that gives the firm an internal view on what it needs to deliver great client outcomes. When we created a job map for a legal firm, we identified approximately 300 internal jobs to be done across the client and legal firm lifecycle, most with digital technology implications, including AI and agentic opportunities.
Figure A
This example JTBD ecosystem is for the legal industry. The JTBD map includes client and correlating legal firm 'Jobs To Be Done' across the matter lifecycle.
