T-Mobile

T-Mobile

T-Mobile Legal Request System (LRS)

Designing a compliance-driven platform for managing high-volume law enforcement data requests

Project Overview

Role: Senior Product Designer
Timeline: 2020 – 2024
Platform: Web
Users: Law Enforcement, Internal Review Teams, Legal & Compliance
Scope: End-to-end product design, workflows, system definition

The Problem

T-Mobile needed a system to manage law enforcement requests for sensitive user data.

However, the existing experience was:

  • Difficult to use and fragmented

  • Built around complex legal and compliance requirements

  • Lacking clear workflows for submission, review, and tracking

  • Not widely adopted despite years of development

Why this mattered:

  • Requests involved high-risk, legally sensitive data

  • Errors could lead to compliance issues

  • Delays impacted both internal teams and external agencies

The Challenge

Design a system that could:

  • Handle hundreds of thousands of legal requests annually

  • Support multiple request types (subpoenas, warrants, emergency disclosures)

  • Translate complex legal requirements into usable workflows

  • Balance usability with strict compliance constraints

  • Enable adoption across both internal teams and external users

My Role

  • Led design of the Legal Request System from concept through launch

  • Partnered with stakeholders, legal teams, and decision-makers to define requirements

  • Collaborated with product managers to align with roadmap and Agile development

  • Defined workflows, system logic, and feature requirements

  • Led design execution across key features

  • Worked closely with engineering teams (U.S. + offshore) to ensure implementation

Understanding the Complexity

The system needed to support:

  • Multiple request types (subpoenas, warrants, emergency requests)

  • Complex data relationships:

    • Phone numbers

    • IP addresses

    • Device identifiers

    • Subscriber data

  • Multi-step workflows involving submission, review, and fulfillment

Structuring the Workflow

The core system needed to support:

  1. Request submission

  2. Internal review and validation

  3. Data retrieval and fulfillment

  4. Status tracking and updates

Product Decisions & Tradeoffs

Key decisions included:

  • Balancing usability vs legal accuracy

  • Designing flexible workflows that could support multiple request types

  • Prioritizing features that enabled adoption first

  • Structuring the system to scale with increasing request volume

The Solution

A centralized Legal Request System that:

  • Supports submission, review, and tracking of legal requests

  • Handles multiple request types within a unified workflow

  • Provides visibility into request status

  • Ensures compliance across all interactions

Key Features:

  • Request Submission (Structured forms for different legal request types)

  • Workflow Management (Clear steps for review and approval)

  • Status Tracking (Visibility into request progress)

Impact

  • Enabled adoption of a system that had previously struggled to launch

  • Improved efficiency in processing high-volume legal requests

  • Reduced confusion and errors in compliance-heavy workflows

  • Provided a scalable foundation for handling future request growth

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