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Shibolet & Co.

An employee portal designed for Shibolet, a leading law firm that prioritizes its organizational culture and employee well-being.

Type

B2B

Role

Lead Product Designer

Scope

  • End-to-End Product Design
  • Information Architecture
  • Visual System
  • ~10 User Flows

Shibolet & Co. is one of Israel's leading law firms. Like most firms of its size, it had an internal employee site - but the existing experience was minimal: a basic page offering benefits information and notices about enrichment courses, with no real connective tissue between the people working there. The platform serves as a digital community hub, balancing essential professional tools with a deep focus on internal engagement and social connectivity.

01 · Section

The challenge

Designing community products is its own discipline. Designing a community product for a leading corporate law firm is something else entirely. The core challenge was finding the balance between two opposing tones: a serious corporate environment with all the conservatism that comes with a leading legal firm, and a dynamic, social platform that needed to feel inviting enough to actually use. Too corporate, and employees wouldn't engage. Too playful, and the platform would feel out of place inside a firm whose brand stands for precision and gravitas. Everything - the visual language, the interaction patterns, the tone of voice, the hierarchy of content - had to operate inside that tension.

02 · Section

Approach & collaboration

I worked solo on design, directly with the client lead from the firm. The engagement ran four months end to end, from initial discovery through final design handoff, and produced approximately ten distinct user flows covering the platform's full experience. The design process focused on building a visual and interaction system that could carry the firm's brand authority while opening up genuine space for social interaction. Every design decision was tested against the question: does this feel like Shibolet, and does it invite participation?

03 · Section

What the platform does

The platform serves as a digital community hub. It encourages employees to connect across enrichment courses, company events, and collaborative activities. Beyond surfacing what's available to participate in, it makes participation itself feel like a shared experience rather than an HR transaction. The information architecture was built so that essential professional tools (benefits, courses, internal notices) sit naturally alongside the more social layers (events, interest-based connections, community activities) - without one side eclipsing the other.

04 · Section

Outcome

Before this platform, employees at the firm had a minimal website that mainly offered benefits and information about enrichment courses. The new platform introduced a significant shift in the company's internal social structure. It created a completely new kind of social experience inside the firm - enabling the formation of new circles of friendship, connections built around shared interests, and a stronger sense of community across departments and seniority levels. For an organization built around individual professional excellence, the platform added a layer the firm had never had before: a shared digital space where people meet people.

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Insights

More on Shibolet & Co..

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Shibolet & Co.
Engineering LeadersProject-Specific Data Visualization

Visualizing a Community, Not a Dashboard

Say data visualization to engineers and they picture analytics dashboards. Shibolet's internal community hub needed the opposite. It was a community hub for a law firm, not an admin reporting tool. The job was making events, courses, benefits, and interest groups scannable and inviting, with light cues like who's attending or active. No charting engine, no KPI grid. Project-specific data viz means the representation answers this domain's real question. Here it was always: what's happening in my community, and what's for me?

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Shibolet & Co.
Project Managers

Running a Digital Project in a Legal Organization: How Do You Hit Deadlines When Partners' Time Is Worth Gold?

Project Managers in legal organizations — your biggest pain point is the billable hours of your partners. On the Shibolet & Co. project we developed a "Batched Approvals" method paired with Figma prototypes: every decision is presented with 3 clear alternatives, and a partner can sign off in 15 minutes instead of an hour. That's how you protect the Gantt and the budget.

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Shibolet & Co.
Product ManagersTypography & Visual Hierarchy

Typography as Triage: Ordering a Legal Community Hub

PMs keep asking: how do users know what matters when one screen does five jobs? On Shibolet's internal hub, a single view carried a compliance notice, a new course, a firm event, and a community invite. I didn't solve that with more tabs. I solved it with typography. A deliberate type ramp let official items read with authority and social content stay warm, in the same layout. Visual hierarchy is product triage made visible. Get the type ramp right and you stop negotiating screen real estate per stakeholder.

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Shibolet & Co.
Product ManagersUser Research

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

On Shibolet's internal hub, the old site held benefits and course notices — and almost nobody used it. Research showed the blocker wasn't features. It was permission: employees at a top law firm weren't sure being social at work was sanctioned. The product question stopped being "what do we build" and became "what tone signals that community is welcome here." The best research doesn't hand you a feature list. It reframes the question you're actually answering.

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Shibolet & Co.
FoundersFrom MVP to Full Version

The Notice Board Was Our MVP

Your MVP usually proves people will tolerate something. The full version is where you say what it's actually for. At Shibolet, the 'MVP' was an old internal notice board — benefits, course notices, unloved but functional. The full hub kept that reliable utility and built community around it: events, connections, firm life. The leap wasn't more features. It was a bigger purpose. Founders: don't confuse 'people use it' with 'this is what it's for.'

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Shibolet & Co.
Founders

Cracking a Conservative Market: How Does Modern Product Design Open Up the LegalTech Market?

Founders in LegalTech, your market is conservative for good reason — attorneys are handling their clients' confidentiality and money. Your startups look like a Gen Z app? You've lost the market. At Shibolet & Co. we designed a platform that "speaks" like a digital legal partner, not like a startup. A visual language of trust = an open market.

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Shibolet & Co.
CEOsSpecific Feature ROI

What the Events Feed Actually Returned

The fair CEO question about any internal feature: what did it return? For Shibolet's community hub, my answer is the events feed. The old site was a notice board people were told to check. The feed made firm life visible and joinable — so people could open it by choice. In a firm where talent IS the product, that shift from obligation to belonging is the ROI. Don't measure internal tools by clicks. Measure them by whether people show up without being asked.

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Shibolet & Co.
Product Managers

Designing a Role-Based Internal Portal: How Do You Balance Professionalism with Community?

Product Managers, an internal portal doesn't have to be a boring intranet. At Shibolet & Co. we designed a platform that blends critical legal information with a welcoming community layer. The secret? A Role-Based UX content architecture that shows each persona exactly what's relevant to them — professional and social at once.

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Shibolet & Co.
Project ManagersUsability Testing

Testing Whether Warmth Survives Contact With Real Users

On the Shibolet hub, usability testing had two pass/fail bars, not one: can people complete the task, AND does it feel right for a serious law firm that's also trying to be social? Lean too playful, people hesitated. Lean too formal, community features felt dead. From a delivery view, testing's real gift is turning a subjective fight ("warm but serious") into observable behavior you can actually fix — which is how you keep scope from drifting.

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Shibolet & Co.
FoundersColor & Psychology

The Color of Trust and Belonging at a Law Firm

Shibolet & Co. is a top Israeli law firm, and its internal community hub had to feel like that instantly. But impressive isn't enough. People had to want to be there. Color did a lot of that quiet work. Credible, steady tones for the institution. Warmer accents for the social layer of events and community. The discipline was restraint: too warm and a law firm looks unserious, too cold and it's the old notice board nobody opened. The brand bet every founder makes: trusted and wanted at once.

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Shibolet & Co.
Engineering Leaders

Permissions, Confidentiality, and UI Simplification: How Do You Design a Legal Portal with a Complex Permissions Mechanism?

Engineering Leaders (CTOs), complex permissions systems can turn any UI into a nightmare. In Shibolet & Co.'s legal portal we built a Permission Inheritance architecture that derives permissions automatically from role. No administrator "defines them manually" — and the CTO gets a simple exception-management interface instead of configuring hundreds of permissions.

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Shibolet & Co.
FoundersAI Strategy in the Product

Why I Didn't Reach for AI Here

Founder confession: on a project everyone expects an AI story for, my strategy was restraint. Shibolet's hub needed warmth and reasons to show up — not an algorithm guessing who you should befriend. In a law firm, that reads as the opposite of warm. The disciplined version of an AI strategy is knowing where intelligence serves the user and where it erodes the trust the product runs on. Earn engagement with human-centered design first. Let AI earn its way in later.

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Shibolet & Co.
Engineering LeadersR&D Collaboration

Designing a Community Hub With R&D, Not Over the Wall

Solo designer on Shibolet's internal hub, my best decision was treating R&D as a thinking partner from the first flow, not a recipient of finished screens. Events, connections, notices, courses — they look like separate features but share a data model and a component set. I'd rather adjust a layout to fit a sane architecture than ask engineering to contort the stack for a flourish. Designing with the constraints, not against them, is what kept one coherent system instead of two.

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Shibolet & Co.
Product ManagersMicro-interactions & Animation

Small Motions, Serious Hub: Animation Without the Fluff

Micro-interactions are usually first to get cut when timelines tighten. On Shibolet's internal hub I argued they stay, because motion had a job. Subtle transitions confirmed an RSVP landed or a group join worked. They guided attention between serious content and the social layer. What I cut was the opposite: bouncy animation that would undercut a law firm's gravitas, and instant dead states that felt like the old site. The PM test for any micro-interaction: does it lower doubt, or just add seconds?

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Shibolet & Co.
Product ManagersFirst-Run Onboarding

The First Login Problem at Shibolet

The riskiest screen at Shibolet was the first one an employee saw on first login. We were replacing a bare internal site people opened only when forced, and asking them to treat the new hub as a community. First-run onboarding was where that expectation was set or lost. It had to say two things fast: this is your firm, serious and credible, and this is also for you, social and welcoming. The line I walked was warmth without overwhelm. Activation isn't a tutorial. It's the first impression of a new way of working.

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Shibolet & Co.
Engineering LeadersIndustry-Specific Accessibility

Accessibility With the Gravitas Intact

In a law firm, accessibility isn't a nice-to-have — it's continuous with how the place defines itself: standards, compliance, credibility. Shibolet's hub blended formal notices with warm social content, and WCAG had to hold across both. The real tension: a friendly aesthetic wants soft contrast and flourish; accessibility wants legible contrast, clear focus, clean structure. A community hub that excludes a colleague contradicts the inclusiveness it's selling. Make accessibility the precondition for the warmth — not a layer on top.

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Shibolet & Co.
Project ManagersDelivery & Handoff to Development

Handing Off Ten Flows Without Losing the Balance

On the Shibolet hub, the hardest thing to hand off wasn't a screen — it was the balance between law-firm gravitas and social warmth, repeated across ~10 flows. A handoff that ships the layout but loses that calibration ships the wrong product. So I handed off intent, not just specs: why each interaction sat where it did, where warmth was deliberate, where restraint was. Ambiguity at handoff is where timelines slip. Encode the reasoning, and the build moves predictably.

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Shibolet & Co.
CEOs

Digital as a Tool for Strengthening Organizational Culture: How Do You Raise the Retention of Knowledge Workers?

CEOs, hiring a new senior attorney costs you hundreds of thousands of shekels. Retaining the ones you have is far more profitable. At Shibolet & Co. we designed an internal portal that became the employees' digital home — not "just another system." A sense of belonging = retention. Investing in the UX of the employee experience is the highest-ROI investment there is.

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Shibolet & Co.
Engineering LeadersDesign Systems

One Design System, Two Personalities: Building Shibolet's Community Hub

Building Shibolet's internal community hub solo, the hardest engineering ask wasn't a feature. It was consistency across ten flows with no designer guarding every screen. The answer was a Design System that encoded our core tension: legal gravitas next to social warmth. Same tokens, two emphasis modes. Components carried the tone decision so engineers never re-argued it in CSS. A good Design System isn't a UI kit. It's the contract that lets a small team ship coherent work fast.

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Shibolet & Co.
Studio & Agency

A Legal Enterprise Project: A Senior Designer as a Plug-and-Play Solution for a Studio Under Pressure

Studio leaders, you won a tender for a law firm and your team has no experience in the legal world? Don't hire a permanent employee for a single project. My experience on the Shibolet & Co. platform lets me step in as a Senior Contractor — communicating directly with the partners on the studio's behalf, and delivering enterprise-grade output from day one.

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Shibolet & Co.
Engineering LeadersInternationalization (i18n)

Hebrew-First, Built to Bend

i18n isn't a translation pass — it's a structural posture. For Shibolet's internal hub, Hebrew was the native experience, so RTL had to be first-class, not a mirrored afterthought. The hard part: a feed mixing warm social posts with formal firm notices, plus inline English terms, all reading naturally in both directions. Localize the structure, not just the strings. Then the foundation bends instead of breaking when scope grows.

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Shibolet & Co.
Project ManagersDocumentation & Organizational Handoff

Documenting So the Firm Could Own the Hub After Me

Four months, solo on design, on Shibolet's internal community hub. The quiet failure mode: it launches beautifully, then drifts as the firm adds events and notices without anyone guarding the balance. So I documented the logic, not the layout — the content hierarchy and the principles behind it, so the next person doesn't re-derive the tension I spent months resolving. An organizational handoff isn't done when the files change hands. It's done when the team can extend the product correctly without you.

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