Service Designer

London, England, United Kingdom

4/14/2025

Description

Service Designer

About Ashurst Advance

Ashurst Advance is Ashurst's NewLaw division that utilises market-leading technology, refined processes, and subject matter expertise in a wide array of technology-enabled legal and eDiscovery services that works alongside Ashurst's legal experts to solve our clients' business problems through optimal efficiency, cost effectiveness and digitally innovative legal service delivery. Our market leading offering has been globally recognised including:

• Band 1 ranking for Law Firm LPO, Alternative Legal Service Providers (Chambers Global, 2021, 2022 and 2023), the only Law Firm in Australia to have this ranking.
• Most Innovative Law Firm, APAC & Europe (FT Innovative Lawyer Awards 2023).
• Most Innovative Firm Headquartered outside Asia-Pacific (Financial Times APAC Innovative Law Awards, 2022 and 2024).
• Innovation in the Business of Law: New Solutions (Financial Times APAC Innovative Law Awards, 2022).
  
  

To find out more please visit our website.

About The Role

We are recruiting for a Service Designer, to join the digital team within Ashurst Advance to work on strategic digital initiatives. The digital team is responsible for the articulation and implementation of the firm's digital strategy and has digital experience at the heart of its approach.

Division: Ashurst Advance

Practice Group: Ashurst Advance Digital (AAD)

Team: Digital Experience (DX)

Role: Service Designer

Title: Senior Manager - Digital Experience

Location: UK - open to either London or Glasgow

Ashurst Advance Digital (AAD) is the firm's technology and experience powerhouse. We work with our New Law business to develop differentiated services for our clients, whilst embedding digital as a competency for the whole firm through developing and enabling future-fit tools, capabilities and mindsets. DX is the community within AAD responsible for providing digital experience expertise and methodologies on digital strategic initiatives, legal service transformation capability to support practice and function innovation and digital change management and engagement to support the adoption and embedding of digital change initiatives.

Recent work has included envisioning the future digital workplace at Ashurst, designing and implementing numerous AI Trials for large swathes of the organisation, designing and delivering the global rollout of a third party generative AI solution, developing the firm's AI strategy, reimaging a suite of core services to embed GenAI within them and designing client facing digital products. We believe the role offers the right candidate a chance to join a team at an exciting stage of expansion, to see initiatives through from idea to implementation and to shape and drive transformation in a firm committed to outpacing change.

What Will You Be Doing?

Day-to-day, you'll collaborate with cross functional teams, influence decision making and drive transformation in legal service delivery. Your responsibilities will include, but are not limited, to:

Understanding the User

Carrying out user research activities including:

• Designing and conducting user research, testing and workshops with users, internal and external, to elicit pain points, needs, requirements and understand behaviours.
• Analysing, translating and synthesising often complex and sometimes legally intricate user experience insights into actionable design and strategic recommendations and bringing user research insights to life through visual and storytelling techniques so that they can be understood and appreciated by a wider audience.
  
  

Designing And Delivering Digital Experiences And Engagement Activities

• Leading on end-to-end service design including the selection and use of appropriate service design tools, methodologies and approaches that support the objectives and goals of the work and the people, problems and processes that are being tackled.
• Designing and facilitating in-person and remote experiences and touchpoints to engage, inform and educate.
• Creating wireframes, prototypes, visuals, storyboards and interactive high-fidelity mock-ups that bring product, service and solution ideas to life so that concepts can be communicated, tested and iterated and monitoring the impact of design work and iterate as needed.
• Driving and managing cross functional teams to deliver complex digital initiatives including to deliver top quality strategic and creative outputs
  
  

Creating the Conditions and Setting the Standard

• Championing user experience evidence-based decision making across the firm and instilling an experience-led culture.
• Driving organisational change by advocating for service design best practices.
• Developing and maintaining resources, templates and standards for use by the team, function, division and firm and coaching and upskilling others in the field (including more junior team members), ethos and culture of service design and cultivating a culture of experimentation and continuous improvement within the team, practice, division and firm.
  
  

Driving the Strategy and Roadmap of the Digital Office

• Through the application of your skillset and experience supporting wider digital projects and initiatives where relevant including, but not limited, to producing visually compelling and insightful reflections thought leadership and content for both internal and external audiences; and informing and influencing investment, prioritisation and sequencing decisions based on the DX team's research and insights.
  
  

About You

• Confident and Diplomatic Communicators: Collaborative, direct yet diplomatic, and inspiring visual communicators, mediators and storytellers who can articulate their work and concepts in a way that suits the audience and can translate between technical and non-technical.
• Realistic Reality Makers: Pragmatic and resourceful reality makers that can translate ideas into reality through prototyping and experimentation bringing the future alive whilst mindful of the constraints of today.
• Agile Adapters: Ability to use skillsets and superpowers in a malleable way. Agile, adaptable, and open to learning with the ability to harness ambiguity to shape new opportunities and approaches.
• Creative and Visual Thinkers and Do-ers: Visually creative and daring do-ers and thinkers that can inspire whilst being willing to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in.
• Collaborative Co-creators: Human and team centred focused on creating and maintaining inclusive, safe, and inspiring spaces and places to work, share and co-create.
  
  

Capabilities/Skills We Look For

Must Have:

• A degree in design, law, business or a related field.
• 5-8 years' experience in a service design, user research or user experience design related role either in-house or agency.
• Experience of managing a team.
• Experience of working in a professional services environment.
• A strong portfolio that showcases your capability and experience and different facets of your service design toolkit and their practical application.
• Enthusiasm and excitement for innovation, digital transformation and continual learning.
• Strong communication, facilitation, collaboration and stakeholder management skills.
  
  

Should Have:

• Knowledge and interest in the evolution and transformation of the legal industry.
• Ability to absorb large amounts of information and create sense and simplicity.
• Confidence and fluency in the language and tools of agile, lean and design (including the use of Miro and Figma).
• Expertise and interest in generative AI and the risks and opportunities it presents.
• Demonstrable experience of driving change within organisations and working alongside change management and comms experts.
• Strong critical thinking and creative skills with a passion for problem solving.
  
  

Could Have:

• Interest or experience in content design and/or legal design.
• Prior experience of setting up and embedding a service design capability in an organisation.
  
  

Won't Have:

• An aversion to getting hands dirty and training up others in your discipline!
  
  

Accessibility

We are committed to making all stages of our recruitment process accessible to candidates with disabilities or long-term health conditions. If you consider yourself to have a disability or a long-term health condition, please feel able to be open about this at any point during the recruitment process. If you are not sure what adjustments you require, we will work with you to establish the most suitable adjustments at each stage of the recruitment process. Please note that our online application form includes a section which allows you to advise us of any extenuating circumstances that are relevant for us to consider when reviewing your application form. Any information disclosed on your disability will remain strictly confidential and please contact us if you have any questions.

Background Checks

To comply with regulatory and client requirements, Ashurst will undertake appropriate vetting of staff. When applicants accept a job offer, Ashurst, alongside a specialist provider, will undertake professional verification and background checks. These checks are only undertaken with consent, and in accordance with our legal and regulatory obligations.