Plans & Pricing
About Gavel
Careers
Product Wishlist
Subdomain Log In
Manage Account
How to define the scope of a legal product or tech product by starting small, thinking big, and iterating quickly based on your learnings.
Easy intake and document automation to auto-populate your templates.
Before you begin building your legal product, several critical steps will help ensure its success. First, choose the right model and gather the necessary tools. Next, establish a structured approach to building, including user research, competitive analysis, and problem identification. Only after conducting thorough research should you create a prototype, followed by user feedback and iterative improvements until you have a product worth investing in.
After completing user research, define the scope of your product. For automated legal documents, this means deciding what to automate. The key is to start small, focusing only on essential features to develop an MVP—a functional product that attracts early users without unnecessary complexity.
Once you receive user feedback, iterate on your product, gradually adding features and expanding its scope (e.g., covering additional legal document types or jurisdictions). Using the right tools, such as Gavel, enables rapid prototyping, helping you refine your product efficiently while minimizing wasted time and resources.
Your research should drive decisions—avoid committing to specific product versions too early. Instead, validate your ideas with user feedback before finalizing the MVP.
Prioritizing Features: To build an effective MVP, prioritize features based on user needs. A useful method is lean prioritization, categorizing features into:
Additionally, tools like LucidChart can help visualize and refine your development process.
Once you have scoped out your project and estimated the necessary time and budget, stick to those estimates. Marty Cagan, in Inspired: How to Create Tech Products People Love, emphasizes making a "high-integrity commitment"—a disciplined approach to ensuring product viability and sustainability.
Throughout the process—before, during, and after building—conduct ongoing market research. Understand existing solutions and identify how your product provides a better alternative. Incorporate this insight into your MVP and all subsequent iterations.
To create a successful automated legal product, ensure it is financially sustainable for both your business and your users. Consider:
User financial due diligence, like market research, should be an ongoing process before, during, and after development.
Once you've followed these steps and are ready to build your MVP, the next phase will involve gathering further user feedback, refining your product, and planning for version 2.0. These next steps will be covered in the following article in this series.
AI is transforming how legal teams review NDAs, making the process faster, more accurate, and consistent across entire organizations. This article explores how in-house counsel, financial institutions, and law firms are using Gavel Exec in Microsoft Word to automate NDA redlining with customizable Playbooks and Projects. It also breaks down the 15 most important NDA clauses, including standard positions and fallback language lawyers rely on.
Real estate attorneys are increasingly turning to AI to streamline contract drafting, redlining, and negotiation, saving time while improving accuracy and consistency. This article explores how tools like Gavel Exec are helping lawyers automate lease reviews, purchase agreements, and loan documents, while enforcing firm playbooks and market standards. Learn how AI can enhance your practice from contract analysis, to drafting, to final redline.
Looking for the best Microsoft Word add-ins for lawyers? This roundup covers the top tools to supercharge your legal workflow, including Gavel Exec: the best AI tool for contract redlining, drafting, and analysis. Plus, discover four other essential Word add-ins that help with proofreading, citations, automation, and more.