Legal design – the application of design principles to legal services – has evolved from an altruistic law school-led initiative into a global movement for change.
The Legal Design Summit (LDS) welcomed 500 attendees from 30 countries to Helsinki’s City Hall. LDS is owned by non-profit association Legal Design Finland and run by volunteers. Its ethos is to create a diverse and inclusive community for change, so it was free to attend. Co-founder and CEO Pilvi Alopaeus – whose day job is at Google – explained that although LDS needed to raise sponsorship to cover its running expenses, it did not accept more than €4,000 from each sponsor to avoid any commercial organisation driving the content. All attendees – including speakers – covered their own expenses. There were no vendor stands, sponsored lanyards, conference swag or media passes. And you had to get your own coffee and lunch!
What is legal design?
What is legal design and why has it become such a hot topic? Legal design is the application of design thinking and principles to practice of law. Its purpose is to “make law better” through human-centered services. It is about helping people understand their legal rights and broadening access to legal services. On the commercial side, it is about changing attitudes and culture, challenging lawyers and law firms to look beyond the legalese, through what Mira Klemola of legal design agency Observ described as a “systemic creative approach [that] results in creative, yet commercially powerful solutions.”
LDS was part of Helsinki Design week, and there was an art school vibe. There were several side events, including Brainfactory, a three-day hands-on legal design workshop that attracted participants from all over the world, and Finnish law firm Castrén & Snellman’s debate on AI and data privacy.
At social impact start-up SIS Ventures’ side event, Satu Elu and Hannele Korhonen (who is also co-founder of legaltech start-up ContractMill) created a world of rainbows, singers, and clowns to accompany presentations on how legal design supports sustainable development goals from contract innovator Helena Haapio, mediator Petra Hietanen-Kunwald, and Jarmo Sareva, Ambassador for Innovation at the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
Notwithstanding the festival feeling, LDS has a serious mission – to change the practice of law by making it understandable and accessible via digital platforms. The creativity at the core of legal design is about creating better systems.
From art school to law school
LDS attracted high-profile presenters, including US legal design pioneers: Dan Jackson from NuLawLab, Northeastern University School of Law, Stanford Law’s Margaret Hagan, and Vanderbilt Law School’s Caitlin (Cat) Moon.
Jackson’s opening keynote speech outlined the history of legal design, its growth into a global movement, it’s impact, and its potential. He reminded us that law itself is a creative medium. “Law is founded on history and precedent and we forget that once upon a time it was a radical and creative idea,” he said.
Hagan focused on turning ideas into action by creating strategic blueprints to boost access to legal services across different specialisms and facilitating peer learning. Moon produced some sobering statistics on the scale of the “unlawyered” in the U.S. and beyond, and urged the legal (design) community to pull together to close the (access to) justice gap.
From the UK, Michael Doherty of the University of Central Lancashire discussed overcoming the culture clash between law and design.
Creating better systems
Global corporates are also buying into design thinking. Microsoft’s European heads of legal demonstrated Seeing AI, a free app for the visually impaired, reminded us that Microsoft is about a lot more than the Office applications that lawyers are so familiar with – raising a few eyebrows among the data privacy and facial recognition experts in the room. Sebastian Hartmann from KPMG flagged up the opportunities for positive change across the professional services ecosystem and the value of rethinking what (and who) matters.
There were practical use cases from A2J initiatives, notably Hallie Jay Pope’s brave and creative Graphic Advocacy Project, which is tackling challenging and meaningful legal issues in several US states; and the application of legal design to court processes, showcasing the work of Stacy Butler at the University of Arizona, Santiago Pardo Rodriguez at the University of Andes in Colombia, and Andrea Lindblom and Ylva Norling Jonsson at Helsingborg District Court in Denmark.
However, we saw only a few commercial legal design solutions. Amurabi co-founders Marie Potel-Saville and Elisabeth Talbourdet set up their business specifically to apply design thinking to compliance, anti-money laundering, and anti-corruption. Their start-up was inspired by the first LDS in 2017.
Can design thinking really change the practice of law?
Alopaeus wrote on Instagram the day after LDS: “No one believes that we actually built the Legal Design Summit and Brainfactory purely as volunteers and for the community… Well yes… we actually did that. When you work for the community everyone wins.”
At Sis Ventures, Helena Haapio optimistically quoted Margaret Mead “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
