Researching a Law Firm That Doesn't Talk About Itself Socially

When I started on Shibolet's internal community hub, the safe assumption was that lawyers want efficiency and nothing else. Research told a more interesting story. I spent my early weeks talking to people across the firm — partners, associates, support staff — about how they actually used the old internal site. The honest answer was: almost never. It held benefits info and course notices, so people opened it once and left. The real insight wasn't about features. It was about permission. Employees at a top legal practice carry a certain gravitas all day, and they weren't sure the firm wanted them to be social at work. Research surfaced that tension directly: people wanted events, interest-based connections, and community moments, but they wanted the platform to signal that this was sanctioned, not frivolous. For a PM, that reframes the roadmap. We weren't prioritizing a feature backlog; we were prioritizing a tone. I anchored every flow decision in research evidence rather than assumption, so when we debated what belonged on the homepage, we argued from what employees told us, not from taste. That alignment is what made the hub usable instead of ignored.