From Drafting To Design: Lessons About Lawyers From Design Thinking

In case you weren't already aware, giving balanced, moderate feedback is a challenge for lawyers.

When we think of lawyer skills, we have rather set standards: reviewing, drafting, oral argument, analysis, and so on. But one skill we don’t associate with lawyers is design. I recently taught a class at UC Berkeley Law to about 40 LL.M. students from all over the world. The topic wasn’t substantive law or even industry knowledge, but it was something just as important: design thinking. Design thinking is a method for the practical, creative resolution of problems using the strategies that designers use during the process of designing. Trying to learn these skills meant that my students were largely outside of their comfort zones, which gave me valuable insights about lawyers.

Self-care is a challenge for lawyers

After defining the design-thinking framework, I asked my students: who do we design for? Clients, regulators, society, paralegals, colleagues, numerous other answers came up. But notably, one group never came up, no matter how many clues I shared: lawyers themselves. After all, don’t we tailor our work toward working with and across from other lawyers? But somehow as lawyers we are programmed to take care of others and completely ignore our own needs and events. I pitched that one vital reason is to redesign one’s practice is for ourselves. We should redesign our legal practices so that we look forward to getting up in the morning and go to work, so that we can bring our full selves to work.

Sketching is a challenge for lawyers

For many of the design-thinking exercises, I asked students to sketch solutions. But no matter how many times I emphasized “sketching,” I saw my students writing one word after another. I insisted that sketching was different from writing — no matter how messy your handwriting is, it doesn’t count as sketching. I explained that sketching is a rapidly executed freehand drawing that is not usually intended as a finished work. I also explained that despite its unpolished appearance, sketching is an amazing tool, as it allows designers to quickly visualize multiple design concepts. However, even after I explained that sketching is efficient, encourages creativity, and helps for building a prototype, the majority of students still continued writing.

Giving balanced, moderate feedback is a challenge for lawyers

While I provided a rubric and gave examples of constructive feedback, I found lawyers gave very direct and harsh feedback. When evaluating their fellow classmates, very few people attempted to discuss what their fellow students did well and how they inspired them to try something else. Remarkably, the majority of feedback focused on uncovering flaws and giving direct suggestions on how to improve. Although this is certainly an important aspect of feedback, I noted that feedback from lawyers is generally more direct and even somewhat harsh. In contrast, when I facilitate similar exercises with groups of more diverse backgrounds (i.e., not all lawyers) I find that the feedback is much more balanced and moderate. Perhaps being trained to issue-spot leads us to apply that thinking to our peers and colleagues as well.

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It was certainly an interesting challenge to introduce these law students to the principles of design thinking. But in the process, I realized some of the reasons these classes are so valuable in law schools. If all young lawyers are taught the same way and don’t experience and learn from other industries and professions, they will all share the same flaws and inefficiencies. Taking the time to consider other approaches is an important part of having a mindful legal practice. In the future, more law schools should add similar classes to their offerings — the future of the legal profession may depend on it.


Olga V. Mack is a blockchain strategist, public speaker, and adjunct professor at Berkeley Law. She is Vice President of Strategy at Quantstamp, the first decentralized security auditing blockchain platform. Most recently, she served as General Counsel at ClearSlide and she has held legal and operational roles at Visa, Zoosk, Pacific Art League, Wilson Sonsini, and Yahoo. Olga founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to serve on the corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. You can email Olga at olga@olgamack.com or follow her on Twitter @olgavmack.

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