Current State Assessment

SITUATION

LegalZoom makes it easy for non-professionals to create simple legal documents quickly and inexpensively using online tools.  The LegalZoom services have been very popular, so the company needed to create a scalability plan so that its ecommerce website and supporting business processes could meet the company’s plans for rapid growth.

To get an expert view on the underlying technical and operational issues behind scalability, LegalZoom hired Digital Foundry to benchmark the site against industry best practices and competitive web sites.  Digital Foundry was tasked with producing a Current State Assessment and Gap Analysis to provide insights on the site’s strengths and weaknesses and make key architectural recommendations.

SOLUTION

Our team of architects and consultants began with a technical and operational deep dive to review the current state of the website and it’s supporting operations. The LegalZoom analysis was based on extensive interviews with key stakeholders and a thorough review of the site’s source code. This depth of insight ensured that project analysis and resulting ratings and recommendations were keyed to the growth and efficiency objectives core to all aspects of the business.

After a comprehensive series of fact-finding interviews, we provided a detailed description of the site’s technical infrastructure, security, and capacity to support additional products and users.  The depth of analysis provided in a Current State Assessment and Gap Analysis ensured that Digital Foundry findings and recommendations not only identified the symptoms of misalignment but also made suggestions for a proposed course of remediation where necessary.

RESULTS

Upon completion of the analysis and recommendations, Digital Foundry delivered a Report of Findings that helped LegalZoom:

• Benchmark the current site against industry best practices and future goals: Digital Foundry architects and consultants evaluated security, scalability, efficiency, and performance in terms of industry best practice and the company’s goals
• Identify areas of risk for immediate attention: Digital Foundry’s review of the site code uncovered security vulnerabilities as well as opportunities to increase efficiency.
• Provide both short-term and long-term recommendations: Where applicable, both short-term and long-term technology fixes were suggested.