Legal Design Podcast

We are living very exceptional times to work as a lawyer. The innovation game is on in the legal industry, and law firms are not excluded from it. New legal roles are created and the dominant players are yet to emerge. Working as today’s lawyer differs greatly from the era of our grandparents, although it might be overwhelming to figure out what still has to change and what can remain. Should law firms of the day be like software houses and start selling legal design services?

In this episode we are joined by Marco Imperiale to discuss legal innovation, and its do’s and don'ts. Marco is an innovation and design thinking veteran in the legal industry and has years of experience in hands-on innovation work. Marco shares his thoughts and ideas about how to start the innovation work in law firms and what to focus on. For lawyers who are not that keen on the change, the good news is that there will always be a need for traditional legal expertise too. But to make the most of it for the clients, it’s good to start working in multidisciplinary teams and try to be at least a bit more innovative than the competitors. We also discuss why selling legal design services is so difficult, but why buying them is a good idea for any company that seeks for positive transformation. At the end of the episode Marco, who is also a trained mindfulness trainer, shares his tips for calming the mind in the midst of the busiest season.

This week we discuss the role of interdisciplinarity, human emotions and engineering skills in legal design. We hear what lawyers, engineers and designers could learn from each other, and how to combine these three fields of expertise into one when designing better access to justice solutions. We also hear what positive design is and why lawyers should care more about emotions. But why would engineers already make great legal innovators? And what explains the popularity of legal design in Colombia?

Our guests in this episode lead The Design for Justice Lab, Lab de Diseño Para la Justicia, a joint venture founded in 2019 between the law, design and engineering schools in Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. The Lab integrates design thinking and systems thinking into law school curriculums with the purpose to improve the judicial system. Santiago Pardo Rodríguez is a lawyer and the founding member of the Lab, Laura Guzman-Abello is an industrial engineer engaged in policy design, and Santiago De Francisco Vela is a designer specialised in emotions and positive design. Together with their students this brilliant trio is on a mission to improve the future of law in Colombia. Tune in to hear how it is about to happen.

Making legal information more comprehensible and easier to use is a central theme in legal design. It is also a topic that has recently gained increasing research interest, sparking new ideas on how to enhance the usability of contracts and other legal documents in practice. After all, as research has shown, understanding what a document says is all about human metacognition. If users are enabled to connect the content of a legal document with ideas that are meaningful to them, it can help avoid “cognitive accidents” and work as a proactive method to promote legal wellbeing of the users and other parties. When users can understand what is expected of them, legal conflicts and misbehavior due to misunderstandings are less likely to occur.

In this episode we have the honor to interview two pioneering experts in the field of legal information design, Helena Haapio and Rob Waller. Helena Haapio is a lawyer and a contract strategist at Lexpert Ltd, and an associate professor of business law in the University of Vaasa, Finland. Rob Waller is an experienced information designer, researcher, consultant and a teacher, and the current President of the International Institute for Information Design. Rob and Helena share insights from their various projects and collaborations, like the contract simplification project with an energy industry facility and Canadian aboriginals. We also hear what proactive law is, and practical tips about how to improve the usability of legal documents. If you want to know what makes a good (legal) document, tune in!

Profound understanding of human behavior is a key to success in legal design. Yet legal design doesn’t necessarily aim to nudge people to certain choices, it still seeks to influence people’s behavior in a positive way. When people’s cognitive and emotional needs are being met and they can truly understand what is expected of them, they are more likely to make choices that support the legal wellbeing of themselves and others. Should every legal design team have their own neuroscientist then? Perhaps. At least they should hear what our guest in this episode has to say.

In this episode we discuss the possibilities of neuroscience in legal design with neuroscientist Dominique Ashby. Dominique is a former lawyer, who decided to bring her first passion, neuroscience, into the business world. In her own consultancy company, Neuro@Work, Dominique advises organizations in change management using the power of neuroscience. She has also experience from working with legal design teams and explaining lawyers how brains work. Dominique tells us how neuroscience can help law to achieve it’s missions, and on the other hand, what are the perils of behavioral influencing. We also discuss the importance of brain health in work life. If you still brag with your working hours instead of your sleeping hours - this episode is for you!

Museums and exhibitions are special venues for learning. Museums can use techniques and tools that create immersive, sensory experiences, evoking human emotions and thoughts unlike any other forms of communication. This way museums can effectively promote positive change through learning. Maybe there is something legal designers could learn from museums and their curators?

Our guest in this episode is Dina Bailey, the CEO of her own consulting company Mountain Top Vision. Dina has a long working history from creating museum experiences especially related to civil and human rights. She has worked as the inaugural Director of Museum Experiences at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, and as the Director of Museum Experiences at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. Dina tells us how human rights exhibitions differ from other kinds of museum experiences, and we discuss what role museums play in making society a better place. Nina also shares her own experiences from a visit to the Civil and Human Rights Center in Atlanta.

It's no news that the world is changing rapidly. Lawyers are facing new challenges because of the increasing regulation, digitalization and the fact that consumers as end-users are demanding for more understandable and accessible legal services (and rightly so!). Doing law in the 21st Century with the 18th Century mindsets, traditions and tools isn't working any more. But how to change things?

In this episode we are joined by Legal Design icons Astrid Kohlmeier and Meera Klemola. Astrid and Meera share their insights about the core elements of doing law in our time and the reasons why this era is all about transformation. As recently published authors, they also share the story of their book " The Legal Design Book - Doing Law in the 21st Century". In addition to discussing about making law better, we also talk about making legal publishing better. 

Tune in to hear what would Astrid and Meera do! 

Astrid Kohlmeier is a lawyer and internationally renowned legal design pioneer. She has been combining law and design for more than 15 years. She develops user-centric legal solutions with a focus on innovation and digital transformation. Astrid is a member and lecturer of the Executive Faculty at the Bucerius Center on the Legal Profession, co-founder of the non-profit organization “Liquid Legal Institute e.V.”, speaker at relevant conferences worldwide and works with a global network of legal designers.

Meera Klemola is globally recognised as one of the pioneering voices in Human Centred Design for legal professionals and legal business. Dubbed by The Legal Forecast as one of the first ‘Legal Designers’ and the host of the world’s first Legal Design Summit, Meera continues to lead and actively contribute to the discourse on the evolving role of design in law as well as corporate learning and development.

There is increasing interest and demand towards contract design. While contract design might be a daily activity in some of the organizations, others might need more prove of why it is important and what's the impact of contract design. When the impact of design can be scientifically measured, it will make the use of design methods in legal context more appealing as the positive effects for the business can be seen clearly.

But how to measure the impact? This week we are joined by Katri Nousiainen who is conducting her PhD study that focuses on the total impact of design in the framework of commercial contracts. Katri tells us about her reasearch work and explains why research is essential to understand the big picture of contracting. 

Tune in to hear more about Katri's research. 

Katri Nousiainen is a lawyer and professional in legal education. She is conducting  pioneering empirical research on impact in Legal Design and Ethics in Commercial Contracts  with a twist of Law and Economics. She gives expert legal lectures on various practice areas  of Commercial Law, Legal Design and Law & Technology. She is an invited keynote speaker  at conferences and seminars across Europe. Currently she is conducting her research at the Harvard Law School, in the Center for Legal Profession (US) and at the University of  Cambridge (UK).

Mediation is often seen as an alternative dispute resolution method to more traditional court proceedings, as the disputing parties are expected to participate more actively in the process. What is common to both, however, is that both proceedings are often led by trained legal professionals, who tend to put their legal knowledge and legal practices at the center. In such circumstances the genuine interests of the parties - such as sustaining good business relations and processing hurt feelings - may remain secondary. Design thinking and methods, however, can help lawyers bring clarity, transparency and empathy to the complex and often negatively perceived dispute resolution processes.

Our special guest in this episode is Pierangelo Bonanno, who is an experienced and acknowledged international mediator and a member of the Charter Institute of Arbitration (CIArb). His proposal “Mediation by Design”, also published as an article in the Resolver magazine, has received international interest and praise. We discuss why alternative dispute resolution methods have suddenly become so trendy, but yet not so much used in reality, and why dispute resolution has such a negative image in general. Isn't the idea to resolve the problems, not to create new ones? 

All of the companies write policies and tick the boxes to demonstrate their compliance and business ethics. But it's really the corporate culture that defines how compliant and ethical the organization actually is. Cultural beliefs and manners determine what is right and acceptable in organizations and whether or not we speak up if there is something unlawful or unethical going on. 

For us humans it is quite challenging to become aware of our own behavioral patterns, yet realize we’re being part of and contributing to a “culture”, especially in the working life. Understanding the corporate culture and how it reflects the organizational values is vital but we also need to understand whether or not the employee experience matches with our desired culture. 

Culture eats strategy for breakfast and culture either makes or breaks your organization but it's good to understand that it can be designed and re-designed. Tune in to our episode with Niina Ratsula.

Niina Ratsula is an ethics, compliance and governance professional, with a strong focus on corporate cultures and internal control. Niina is known for “translating codes of conduct from paper into daily actions and decision making”.

We kick off the new season with Jim Chiang, the CEO and Founder of My Legal Einstein.

Jim is an AI pioneer with over 20 years of experience in big data analytics and AI algorithm development. He walks us through how the Legal Industry could benefit from AI and how it will make law better for lawyers and the end-users of law. His examples are so practical that AI finally makes sense!

But do us lawyers have to set our alarm clocks on for tomorrow or are the robots going to take over our jobs overnight? And what about legal designers, will AI and new technologies steal jobs from legal designers too?