Increasing Online Engagement
Between the Public and the Legal
Profession
StephanieKimbro,M.A.,J.D.
Fellow,StanfordLaw
CenterfortheLegalProfession
DATA2JRoundtable
UniversityofSouthCarolinaLawSchool
March,2015

Overview
• What is effective online engagement?
• Positive engagement with gamification
• A look at the science behind the art
• Game Mechanics and motivators
• Examples of gamification, games and simulations
for legal services
Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015

Online Legal Conversations
Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015
Where are the lawyers?
Consumers
LegalZoom
Rocket Lawyer
Pearl.com
Other Branded Networks
Press
Bloggers

Engagement Comes First
What is engagement?
• Experiential marketing
• A sense of an actual relationship with a brand,
rather than a one-off purchase
• Emotional involvement or commitment
Methods of initial engagement?
• Educational, self-help resources available online
• Web advisors, web calculators
• Expert systems, checklists
• Document Automation and Assembly
• Free legal forms with instructions
• Video tutorials
• Online tri-age methods to identify the existence of a legal need
• Matching legal need of consumer with appropriate service – whether that’s the
law firm, unbundled, self-help, legal aid, etc.
Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015

Traditional Online Engagement Methods Failing
• $4.5 billion was invested in social media in 2011, yet
84% of those customers never saw the company’s
Facebook update
• Companies spent $3 billion on user generated content
and other web-based communities but 70% of
consumers never logged into those resources.
• Companies that depend on the Internet to reach
consumers have seen a decrease in community
adoption, inactivity in loyalty programs, a decrease in
their ability to motivate consumers based on their
brand, and lower conversation rates
Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015

Who are we engaging?
• Why their mindset matters
• What happens when personal pride comes into online
decision making?
• What happens when a civil justice situation is embarrassing
for a person and that impacts their online decision making
around getting help?
• How do feelings of shame or guilt impact decision making?
• Providing experiences that take this mindset into
consideration
• Consider research about transference of empowerment and
mindset from online to FtF communication (Proteus Effect)
• This research needs to be connected to these statistics so
that the legal profession can get a better handle on how to
create online engagement methods that will be the most
effective.
Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015

Why Gamification?
• Positive, longer-term ENGAGEMENT
• There is solid science behind the art.
• Gartner Inc. reported 70% of Global 2000
organizations by 2015 would have at least 1
application that was gamified.
• By 2015 25% of workplace processes that have
been redesigned will have some form of
gamification.
• Market for gamification is expected to grow to
over $2.8 billion by 2016.
• Number of employees who grew up as digital
natives is increasing. They are used to receiving
real-time feedback and online communication.
They are also used to more engaging methods of
communication, most of which already
incorporate game mechanics.
Copyright 2014 (c) Stephanie Kimbro

Science Behind the Art
• Behavioral science
• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Education/How we learn
• Marketing
• Game Design & Development
• Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015

Heuristics to Understand Online Engagement
Four Types to help narrow down decision-making online:
• Recognition-based heuristics (“the most recognizable
or familiar website is the best” or “the first resource
that comes to mind is the best”)
• One-reason heuristic (choosing one lawyer over
another because he or she graduated from x law
school, but ignoring all other data related to selection
including those that might be equally or more
informative)
• Trade-off heuristics (all of the factors in a decision are
given equal weight and the choice with the most “cues”
or pieces of information wins)
• Social heuristics (imitating someone else’s decision
making online that has been successful for that person
to achieve their goals).
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Flow
“the satisfying, exhilarating feeling of
creative accomplishment and
heightened functioning”
•Csikszentmihalyi
His TED talk
Copyright 2014 (c) Stephanie Kimbro

Fiero
• Primal craving for challenge, to explore, and to
conquer and succeed
• A neuro chemical high
• Dopamine
• increases focus and the ability to learn
• feels good = a reward system, a positive mental state
• Designing failure so that it rewards
Copyright 2014 (c) Stephanie Kimbro

4 Essential Human Cravings
As defined by Jane McGonigal in Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and
How They Can Change the World
Desires:
• satisfying work,
• hope or experience of achieving something - success,
• connecting socially, and
• meaningful work that allows us to be a part of something
larger than ourselves.
• When is addressed in business workflow, employees
show
• increased motivation to engage in the process
• do the work at a level that fulfills their maximum potential.
Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015
When tapped into people become more
engaged and can actually have fun
accomplishing work.

Intrinsic Motivation
Behaviors as defined by Dr. Amy Jo Kim
Behaviors that may be used for intrinsic motivation:
• self-expression or the desire to show off their creativity
and express who they really are,
• competition (both with others and to improve yourself
through mastery),
• exploration (this can include anything such as content,
tools, people, worlds, etc. as long as they are
accumulating access and knowledge to new stimulus),
and
• collaboration (which includes socialization and being a
part of a team or collective)
Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015

4 Methods of FunAs defined by Nicole Lazzaro, Game Designer and President of XEO Designs, Inc.
The four types of fun:
• Hard fun
• Easy fun
• Serious fun
• People fun
• Lazzaro’s research focuses on finding ways to create the emotions
involved in fun without having to build an entire storyline as one would
have to in a video game.
• There are multiple methods of playing.
• The same emotions and behavior changes that are involved in playing
can be experienced by having at least 3 out of the 4 methods of fun and
allowing the player to switch between them at any time.
Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015

Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology
Four types of gamers:
1) achievers
2) explorers
3) socializers
4) killers
• Most players embody more than one.
• Match the player type with the intrinsic motivation.
Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015

Game Mechanics
• Achievements, such as badges, certificates, awards, scores
• Social mechanics, such as comments, ratings, review, followers
• Disincentives, such as losing points for behavior that the firm wants to
discourage
• Progress bars to indicate progression through a process or task
• Programming rewards such as giving a specifically named reward for a desired
action when it is taken within a specific amount of time
• Countdowns
• Lotteries
• Productivity, such as adding elements into a work process that would make the
players happy to be playing a game because it means they are being productive
at the same time
• Modifiers, such as making it so that accomplishing one task will add points to
the next task or multiple the score
• Adding significance to the accomplishment of the task so that the player feels
the result is important
Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015

Sample Motivators
Good games have more than one:
• Collecting
• Creating and exploring custom
worlds or environments
• Exploring or experiencing
beauty or art
• Social interacting
• Feeling accomplished after
completing something
• Random discoveries
• Organizing or creating order out
of a mess
• Role playing
Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015
• Becoming the king of the hill
• Being involved in a mystery
• Relaxation or mindfulness
• Learning a new skill
• Competing with others
• Bettering society
• Self-improvement or doing
things for one’s family
• Taking care or helping others
• Laughing or engaging in the
absurd
• Being scared

Games for Social Good
• Free Rice
• Half the Sky
• Data Dealer
• iCivics
• NuLawLab
Simulation
• My game dev
experiments &
Lessons Learned
Copyright 2014 (c) Stephanie Kimbro

Copyright 2014 (c) Stephanie Kimbro

Copyright 2014 (c) Stephanie Kimbro

Copyright 2014 (c) Stephanie Kimbro

Copyright 2014 (c) Stephanie Kimbro

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Online Simulation for Self-
Represented Parties
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Photo courtesy of Dan Jackson
Executive Director – NuLawLab
Northeastern University School of Law

Copyright 2014 (c) Stephanie Kimbro
Experiments in Legal
Games for Access:
Illinois Legal Aid Online
Game Project

Draft Menu
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Estate Quest
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Copyright 2014 (c) Stephanie Kimbro

Copyright 2014 (c) Stephanie Kimbro

Copyright 2014 (c) Stephanie Kimbro

Conclusions
• Gamification as a strategy for online engagement may be
more cost-effective than developing games related to
specific legal services.
• Game mechanics may be imbedded into existing legal
services resources to increase engagement and improve
learning and outcomes from these resources. Some of the
same psychological benefits found in full games can be
designed into the tech with appropriate game mechanics.
• Games may be better for preventive/educational purposes.
• Simulations can be useful for self-represented individuals.
Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015

Looking forward
• Gamification in legal services
website and mobile applications
• Increase in social media interaction tied with
gamification strategies
• Preventive legal games
• Gamification for self-represented to assist with
completion of legal forms, process
• Simulations for self-represented litigants to transfer
to real-world experience
Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015

Other Resources
• Increasing Online Engagement between the Public and the Legal Profession
with Gamification:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2586150
• Gamification in Law Firms draft working paper on SSRN with bibliography:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2578110
• 2014 LSC Report of the Summit on the Use of Technology to Expand Access to
Justice mentions games and gamification
• “Accessing Justice in the Contemporary USA: Findings from the Community Needs and
Services Study” by Rebecca Sandefur, American Bar Foundation; University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign - Department of Sociology; University of Illinois College of Law, August 8,
2014 at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2478040
• My books
• Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online, ABA/LPD (2010, 2nd
edition 2015)
• Limited Scope Legal Services: Unbundling and the Self-Help Client,
ABA/LPD (2012)
• Consumer Law Revolution: Lawyer’s Guide to the Online Legal Marketplace,
ABA/LPD, (2013)
• Online Legal Services for the Client-Centric Law Firm, Managing Partner, Ark
Group Publishing, 2013
Stephanie L. Kimbro - Copyright (c) 2015