Dungeons & Depositions: If Your Law Firm Were a Fantasy Party

5 min read

Here’s what your law firm could look like in a game of Dungeons & Dragons.

In the early 1970s, American game designer Gary Gygax channeled his love of games and fantasy literature into a career. Having been laid off from his job at an insurance company, and with a growing family to feed, he bet big on himself, creating a game design company oriented around historical war-themed games like Chainmail and Alexander the Great. In 1973, Gygax and his collaborators Don Kaye and Brian Blume developed a new role-playing game with an extensive set of rules, one powered by the players’ imaginations: Dungeons & Dragons. The game quickly sold out its initial run of 1,000 copies, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

In 2024, Dungeons & Dragons celebrated its 50th anniversary. Now managed by Wizards of the Coast, the game involves players developing character sheets with statistics like vitality, agility, and intelligence, and then using those characters to play through campaigns – effectively, elaborate fantasy stories involving battles, treasure hunts, and ample adventure. D&D games often consist of a variety of character types, like paladins, rogues, wizards, barbarians, bards, druids, monks, and rangers, among others. Each class has its own strengths and specialties, with some using brute force to achieve their objectives, others leveraging powerful magics, and others approaching challenges with stealth and agility.

In sum, D&D classes are diverse, just as your employees’ skills and talents are diverse. And just as a law firm’s employees must work together to achieve common objectives and goals, so, too, must D&D parties cooperate in their quests. One could reason that law firms are much like D&D parties; but if your law firm is a fantasy party, who fills which role? Here’s our guide to your firm’s D&D roles and what your firm could look like in a game of Dungeons & Dragons.

Paralegals & Law Clerks: Your Law Firm’s Administrative Clerics

In a game of Dungeons & Dragons, the cleric class specializes in healing magic, and holds power over life and death, with some cleric subclasses able to command the undead. Clerics are the backbone of the D&D party – they’re dependable, organized, and quietly essential. Clerics keep the wheels turning, consistently healing injured party members so that the other heroes can live to fight another day.

Clerics’ work is much like the core work of paralegals and law clerks: detail-heavy, rule-bound, and often thankless. But without their input, the party collapses and the game ends. Paralegals and law clerks are of the Lawful Good alignment; they use their organizational skills for the benefit of the entire firm, whether that means assembling closing binders or keeping track of deadlines across multiple files. Their weapons are checklists and calendars, and their special abilities include “Summon records” and “Divine due diligence”.

Junior Associates: The Shadowy Rogues

Your junior associates typically follow the Chaotic Good alignment – while everything they do is for the good of your firm, they’re not afraid to bend the rules (AKA: deviate from established processes) to get things done. The junior associate is the Rogue of your party, the scrappy adventurer that everyone underestimates.

But too often, these rogues are left alone to fend for themselves. Without clear processes or mentorship, they can burn out, or worse, develop bad habits that follow them throughout their career. To make the most of your rogues’ speed and accuracy, you’ll want to create a corporate structure that supports autonomy while providing guidance.

Senior Associates: The Watchful Wizards

Every party needs a wizard: The one who’s mastered the arcane arts of legal research and precedent drafting, and can make it look like magic. These senior associates know the rules inside out, wield footnotes like fireballs, and can conjure a flawless document out of thin air.

The only problem? They spend too much of their time rifling through dusty old tomes. Their brilliance gets buried under hours of administrative tasks. 

Wizards thrive when they have powerful magic scrolls (read: centralized document management and smart templates) that enable them to unleash their spellcasting prowess.

Partners: The Paladins of Practice

Your firm’s partners are its paladins: Sworn commanders and moral compasses who uphold the rules and drive the firm’s mission forward. Paladins are the ones with the long-term vision, the code of honour known as a business development plan, and a +10 bonus to persuasive speech. Paladins fight their battles with tried and tested precedents, case law, and unshakeable confidence that comes from experience.

But even the strongest paladin can be weighed down by old-world armor. Legacy systems, inefficient workflows, and manual processes that were once part and parcel of legal practice are too heavy for modern paladins to carry; today’s paladins know that fighting smarter, not harder, is the key to survival.

A true paladin automates that which doesn’t require human judgment, freeing up the entire team for higher-value quests.

Support Staff: The Business Bards

In Dungeons & Dragons, the party’s bard leverages the power of music to induce magical effects. Capable of both magic and combat, bards excel at supporting other players through buffs and enchantments. But bards don’t just play music – they’re also effective diplomats and problem-solvers. At your firm, the bard is the person who ensures every team member feels heard, understood, and guided every step of the way. This means your bards would be your HR, accounting, and other support employees.

The role of the bard is part psychology, part communication, and part logistics – and it’s increasingly vital.

Paper Processes are the Dungeon Boss

Every D&D party needs a dungeon boss to fight. At a law firm, that role is played by paper processes. Paper processes are of the Chaotic Evil alignment. They actively work against your firm in the most random ways possible. They lurk in legacy systems, haunt your closing books, and show up uninvited during various tasks. They eat your time, spit out errors, and taunt your team with demoralizing and tedious errands.

That’s why it’s critical that you slay this boss. Your law firm party can leverage digital solutions like Appara to kill paper processes for good, replacing them with a living, breathing digital system that grows with your firm. With emerging legaltech software like Appara, you can digitize your records, automate document creation, accelerate your workflows, and finally ram a stake through your paper records’ heart.

One key element of every Dungeons & Dragons campaign is the level-up. It’s the part of the game where you gain experience points, boost your stats, and unlock new abilities. At a law firm, one of the best ways to level up is to incorporate legal technology into your practice. With emerging legaltech solutions, you can accelerate the pace of work, reduce errors, cut costs, and improve client satisfaction – all without having to roll dice to see if you succeed.

Are you ready to complete more quests (law firm tasks) in less time and with fewer errors? Appara can help. Contact us today to book a demo and discover how emerging legaltech can help your entire firm automate its work across multiple practice areas.