Week 5 Lab: Pitch the Docketing Redesign

A mini-presentation lab — pitch a deadline-tracking system redesign to "the partners" (the rest of the class)

22 March 2027

Groups of three. You’re a small legal-practice team pitching a redesigned deadline-tracking (docketing) system to the partners — played by the rest of the lab — who are skeptical of spending money on “paperwork infrastructure” instead of billable work.

Before the lab#

Read week 5’s lecture and at least skim the malpractice study it cites. Your pitch needs a real failure mode to react to, and that study is full of them.

In the lab#

Five minutes per group, then two minutes of partner questions. A strong pitch names the exact way deadlines currently get missed (a single point of failure, no redundant check, dates buried in email) and proposes something structurally different, not just “try harder” — per the lecture’s own argument, trying harder is exactly the response that doesn’t work against a step-function failure.

Submitting#

The slide deck or one-pager used in the pitch, from the group, annotated afterwards with the two toughest partner questions you got and how you’d answer them with more time. Due Friday 26 March, 5pm.

Groups of three.