---
title: "Getting lawyers past the blank prompt"
author: Dan Birman
url: https://dbirman.com/ruli
updated: 2026-11-09
summary: "I led design for Ruli’s AI legal assistant, from research to shipped UI."
---

# Getting lawyers past the blank prompt

Case study · Design Lead · 5 min

I led design for Ruli’s AI legal assistant, from research to shipped UI. I replaced its empty chat box with a composer that helps lawyers ask a good question, and that pattern became the base for the rest of the product.

Role
:   Design Lead, fractional

Team
:   Worked directly with Ruli’s co-founders

Timeline
:   May to October 2024

Outcome
:   Shipped the hybrid composer, which became the base for the rest of the Assistant

## The short version

1. **Problem.** Lawyers stalled at an empty chat box, and vague questions got vague answers that turned into support tickets.
2. **Hard call.** Structure or freedom. Structure forced every question into a fixed shape, and freedom let output quality drift, so the composer takes free-form intent and offers structured choices at the moment they matter.
3. **Result.** The hybrid composer shipped as the way into Ruli Assistant, and the rest of the Assistant was built on its pattern.

## Context

Ruli is AI-native legal research and contract intelligence for in-house legal teams. I led design across the Assistant, DataGrid, Knowledge, and the brand.

## The problem

Ruli launched as a text-only chat. In testing, lawyers kept stalling at the empty input. They knew what they needed but not how to phrase it for an AI, and a vague question got a vague answer. Those answers turned into support tickets and manual requests to Ruli’s legal desk.

[Image: The original Legal Desk: a linear chat, with no visible sources and no sign of how confident the answer was]

## What research showed

We interviewed lawyers and watched session recordings. Lawyers who opened the chat often gave up quickly.

We mapped six kinds of conversations people have with AI, from one-off searches to long back-and-forth sessions. Lawyers sit at the long end. They narrow a broad question down to a specific one, then refine the answer until they can use it. A chat box built for one-shot questions worked against that.

> “I trust the AI to find things. I don’t trust it to tell me what they mean.”Senior counsel at a Series C SaaS company, discovery interview

## The hard call: structure or freedom

Killed: **Point-and-click wizard.** Slow, and people misread the “compare” control. They had to learn our framework before they could ask anything.

Killed: **Wizard in its own tab.** Easier to find, and just as rigid.

Killed: **Free-form only.** People liked the simplicity, but without guardrails it took too long to get to a narrow, accurate answer.

Shipped: **Hybrid composer.** Type when you know what you want. When you don’t, tap structured suggestions that build the request with you.

## Designing for model behavior

### The rules we gave the model

We set three rules for how the AI behaves.

- **Clarity.** Show what the AI is doing and why. Cite sources, and show confidence when the model has it.
- **Control.** Every AI action can be undone, and people can edit the input or the output at any point.
- **Feedback.** Anyone can flag or correct an answer, which improves the system over time.

[Image: Deep Legal Research: the sources it searched, the references it used, and the primary text behind each one]

## The work

[Image: The wizard in its own tab, as tested. Easier to find, and the request still had to fit its shape.]

[Image: Free-form only, as tested. People liked typing in plain English, and output quality drifted.]

[Image: The hybrid I shipped. Ruli reads the request and offers two structured paths inline, a default analysis or a custom one.]

## Try it

A working version of the idea, rebuilt for this page. Type, tap, or both.

[Interactive demo. Switch to the human view to try it.]

A reconstruction, not Ruli’s production code.

## What I got wrong

I spent weeks on the dedicated tab because it solved discoverability. It didn’t solve the right problem: people could find the tool, but they still had to force their question into a fixed shape. The hybrid only got built once I let the tab go. Discoverability is necessary, and it isn’t enough. Letting go of weeks of work cost less than shipping the wrong answer.

## Results

The hybrid composer shipped as the way into Ruli Assistant. The idea behind it, free-form intent with structured choices at the moment they matter, became the pattern the rest of the Assistant was built on.