This is an excerpt from my ever unfolding conversation with Dominique Meert, Founder of The Visual Lawyer, on the abstract and application of Legal Design in the rapidly transforming transience of the legal world we have come to inhabit.
ABOUT DOMINIQUE
Our Attorney at Law hails from the capital of Europe, holds not one but three Master’s Degrees, has a cumulative work experience exceeding two decades before she founded her passion driven enterprise “The Visual Lawyer” where she provides legal information design services.
She once took a sabbatical for 3 months when she travelled, learned how to techno DJ, studied Lean, PMP and Arabic for fun. She is an ardent advocate and practitioner of integrating design thinking in the legal world to make law accessible to the people it is made for.
You can reach her here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thevisuallawyer
ABOUT THE VISUAL LAWYER
The Visual Lawyer, a Belgian legal design agency, founded in 2019 by Dominique Meert, uses legal design to help its clients create user-friendly legal documents that are easy to read and understand. Dominique combines legal expertise with information design, hands-on visual thinking and design thinking.
Learn more here: https://www.thevisuallawyer.be/home
THE DISCOURSE
Tell me a bit about your motivation to study and practice law, a brief background of your professional experience?
I have an academic background in economics and law, but studying law was more by chance than a conscious choice. Before becoming a lawyer, I worked in financial organizations for about 6 years. In private equity, I often had to negotiate shareholder agreements with lawyers. I felt frustrated that they knew more about it than I did, so I decided to improve my skills and go to law school. A choice I don’t regret.
Prior to founding The Visual Lawyer, I worked for more than fifteen years in various roles in Belgian and international law firms, and financial organisations.
How did you stumble upon the concept of legal design?
I’ve always been a visual thinker. During my law studies I worked in the tax practice of Allen & Overy Belgium. Not one day a week as many students do, but full time. Because of this, my time to study was limited so I often made visual wrap-ups of course material, summarizing the subject matter and combining it with visual elements. For me this was the most efficient way to process the course material. Years later, during a training session in London, I discovered that what I had been doing for years had a name: legal design.
Please help us understand it better?
Legal design is a relatively new discipline, so there are still a lot of misunderstandings about it, but in essence, it is the application of design thinking in the field of law. The next question then is: what is design thinking? Design thinking is a multidisciplinary way of thinking and acting that puts “users” in the centre of the innovation process. Innovation projects often fail because the end result (e.g. a product or service) is not what people really need or want, or what they are willing to pay for. This is where design thinking comes into play. By putting “the user” in the centre of your innovation process you increase your chances of success by creating a product (or service) that is more usable, user-friendly and useful.
Legal design is an umbrella term. The principles of design thinking can be applied to legal products, legal services, business models and even to legal communications. The Visual Lawyer focuses on communications. This is what we call “legal information design”. But to complicate things, “legal information design” is often referred to as “legal design”.
So don’t be tricked by the word ‘design’: legal design isn’t about making things look pretty. It’s about problem-solving. By following the principles of legal design, you can communicate complex information in a clear and user-friendly way. The result is clear, concise, well-structured documents that are easy to navigate, read and understand.
In practice, this means that we work in a structured way when redesigning documents. Our design process is based on the so-called “double diamond framework” which means:
- “Designing the right thing.” Here we focus on gathering insights and defining the main challenges and project outcomes. In other words, we will ask our clients lots of questions to make sure we are on the same page and are solving the right problems.
- “Designing the thing right.” Here the focus is on brainstorming, prototyping, testing and finally delivering design concepts. From making sketches to organising feedback sessions, we won’t rest until we are all happy with the final design.
We combine different methods and tools from various disciplines to move the project through all the steps. The specific process, tools and methods will depend on the context of the information being designed or redesigned.
How do you think it adds value or solves an industry problem?
Legal design is changing the perception of law as a discipline that’s stuck in the past and cares more about status and tradition than about the people who come into contact with it — a.k.a EVERYONE.
How? Primarily, by turning legal documents from impenetrable walls of text in legalese into documents designed and written for humans. Legal design helps build transparency, trust and respect, because people appreciate your effort to make documents simple and clear for them.
Legal design makes your business future-compatible by making it easier to deliver your messages in the digital world and giving your clients the experience they have come to expect: clear and modern documents that are easy to digest.
What are the major challenges that you face as a legal designer and how do you overcome them? What have been your learnings?
Legal design has become a buzz word. I see a lot of things sold as “legal design” that have nothing to do with it. Creating an infographic without involving your end-user(s) in any way (e.g. doing user research, asking feedback, etc.) is not legal design. This is what we “legal designers” call “visual law”.
From a business point of view, it is not difficult to convince people of the added value of legal design, especially if they have experienced it first hand, but it remains difficult to scale it up. If a standard contract or terms and conditions have to be translated in three languages, it is difficult to keep up the momentum and we are of course talking about completely different budgets than with a proof of concept.
For this reason, big is not always better. My initial focus was on large corporate clients because they are the only ones who can drive change in the market, but in practice the process is long and often complicated.
How do you educate colleagues and clients about legal design?
Legal design is best learned by doing. The Visual Lawyer offers training programmes to sharpen legal design skills. Our approach is structured, hands-on and action based. Besides learning new things and having fun, our participants walk away with their own stunning legal designs.
I also give guest lectures about legal design at the universities of Antwerp (Legal technology and legal innovation summer school), Ghent and Hasselt (LLM Master of Laws).
Are there any specific tools that you need to be able to provide legal design services?
Legal design combines legal expertise with information design, hands-on visual thinking and design thinking. Contrary to what you may think, you don’t need any specific tools to redesign documents, but it is crucial to have a deep understanding of what design thinking really is. The same goes for information design and visual design.
If you’re handy with graphic design tools like Adobe InDesign or Illustrator that’s a plus, but Word and PowerPoint will get you a long way. And for most clients, especially legal professionals, that works quite well.
What are the resources that you’d recommend to build a strong practical skill set in this domain?
The website of The Legal Design Law (Stanford Law School) and The Legal Design Book is a good starting point and I can also highly recommend the courses of The Interaction Design Foundation.
What’s the one advice you’d give to your law student version back in the day with all the wisdom your experience brought you today?
Stay curious. Keep on learning. Discover different possibilities. Your options are no longer limited to becoming a lawyer or in-house legal counsel. The list is endless (legal engineer, legal designer, legal project manager, legal operations consultant, …) and we’re just at the beginning of more exciting times with the application of AI in law.
Yet another Lawyer who happens to indulge in the gratification of reading and writing the Language of Law.
Yet another Lawyer who is trying to be better than yesterday.