1. What is legal design?
When was the last time you logged into a website and accepted the privacy policy and actually read the entire document? If you didn't read that it was too dry and boring, welcome 🎉 you're in the right place.
The official definition of legal design is as follows: “Legal design is an innovative approach that combines law and design principles to create more user-friendly, accessible and effective legal solutions and processes”. But it's about making the law easier to understand and more accessible! Legal design is like giving the law a makeover, making it simpler and easier to use. It's not just for lawyers, but for everyone involved with the law.
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Legal design is about focusing on the end user and ensuring that their needs are met. This can be another lawyer, a judge, but often also for laymen. The law can be confusing, scary, and downright unfriendly. But with legal design, there is an opportunity for empathy and understanding. By making legal matters simple and understandable, everyone is helped.
Legal design can also encourage creativity. By thinking outside the box and coming up with fun and innovative ways to make the law more interesting and accessible. With legal design, you can create endless things. From crystal clear visuals to interactive tools. A good example is the Maryland Court' App, an application that helps people navigate through the courts. It's not just about flashy contracts.
2. So what is “no” legal design?
Merely improving the aesthetics of contracts with decorative icons and trendy fonts does not provide an effective “legal design product.” Adding informative icons and readable typography and hierarchy is a good first step, but that's part of the finish of the product. Applying these design principles is ineffective without applying the core rule of legal design: putting the end user at the center of the design process.
In the example above, the difference is crystal clear. Above is an example of a bank's general terms and conditions. These are hard to read, boring, full of legal jargon, and created to cover the bank's legal team, not the user. Below is a statement of intent that explains in simple and clear terms what is expected of the user and what the user can expect in return. Both are legal documents, but only one was created with the end user in mind.
3. Introductory material about legal design
The term “legal design” is getting more and more attention, and more and more people are becoming aware of its efficiency in communication in the legal context. But to really understand legal design, you need to understand how it relates to design thinking, user experience design, research skills, and even some communication/graphic design skills.
For those who love creative problem solving and creating remarkable legal products, legal design, design thinking and communication design are worth investigating. With these skills, justice can be made easy and stimulating, and maybe even fun.
For those who want to get started right away, here's a list of design thinking blogs:
- Design Thinking Videos
- Interaction Design Foundation's Definition of Design Thinking
- Nielsen & Norman's definition of design thinking
4. Essential publications to better understand legal design
Here are some of the most essential publications to better understand legal design and its principles:
- Law By Design. This is one of the best-known sources for legal designers. Understanding the core concept of legal design is very important for what you want to achieve in the context of legal design.
- Legal Communication Design. This website is managed by Stanford Legal Design Lab, and is good for understanding communicative legal design.
This is just the beginning of a journey. The next chapter is about the world of design thinking. It is a good introduction to the fundamentals of legal design.
Next chapter of this Beginner's Guide: Design thinking for Legal Design.
