Open Law Lab
A colleague working on improving the legal system in New Zealand from a user-centered design perspective mentioned this phrase to me in a recent email: Simple at the…
Here is a small sketch I made while listening to talks at the Legal Service Corporation’s 40th Anniversary celebration in downtown San Francisco last month. It was from…
I’ve been thinking systematically over the past few months, as I’ve been looking back over design work and initiatives going on in the world of legal innovation, and…
I was excited to discover the OpenJustice Initiative, a move from the California DOJ to make its data more open, and provide a basis for more usable tools,…
Talking to Bonnie Hough of the California Judicial Council last week, she recommended checking out several great projects coming out of Canada — specifically British Columbia — for…
How can we develop new solutions in agile, responsive ways? So that if we see a problem or hear a user need — that we take action, try…
I’m excited to be speaking at the Code For America Summit this week in Oakland — and trying to make the bridge between the robust & big-energy civic…
How can we help people on-ramp into the legal system in much easier & accessible ways? This is the solution that’s been growing in my mind (but still…
Some notes on innovation in law firms, based on a talk by Prof. Jonathan Molot of Georgetown Law, from the Thomson Reuters Law Firm Financial Performance Forum.
This week I have been finishing up my research paper on what user-centered standards for better online legal help sites would be. I had surveyed lay adults about…
This school year, my priority is focusing on how to take the design process & adapt it to create research outcomes that are meaningful to the academic community…
I have been sketching out some possible templates for what a good one-pager worksheet would be, to guide a lay person through a legal process. Obviously the one-pager…
During my Spring 2015 class at Stanford d.school/Law School on Intro to Legal Design, we were lucky enough to have Sacha Steinberger visit us and present on her…
I was delighted that one of my favorite new podcasts, Reply All, spent an episode in August all about horrible government websites (see Sam.gov as prime example 1)…
A few weeks ago, when I logged into my browser, I got a notice from Google that they wanted to walk me through a Privacy Checkup of my…
The generational gap and the drive for change in the legal profession This past weekend I was at the Canadian Bar Association annual conference, where the theme was…
So many of my design projects are all coming back to the power of visuals to engage people on legal topics & to convey information effectively. Even if…
Over at the Legal Design Toolbox (that I have slowly been building out with materials that I’ve been finding, using, and recommending in my own work), I have…
Recently I was running a design workshop with several court administrators, including some who worked in it IT and others who oversaw more of the rule-making and administration…
What would a better legal brief look like? What would it be to submit writings for the judge’s consideration in ways that are more formally structured — so…
During the Legal Design Bootcamp that I was running last week, one of the participating groups came up with a very interesting concept that I wanted to share.…
Here is a legal visual that I had started to create a few years ago during a Legal Design Jam for Wikimedia’s trademark policy. Here I’ve made it…
What would a good management system look like, for courts to assess their workflows & performance? James McMillan, John Matthias, and Matt Kleiman of the National Center on…
The SF design & architecture consultancy Gensler has published its findings about the future of working in the legal world — specifically what the Legal Office of the…
I am working with a team at Carnegie Mellon to create more Usable Privacy Policies. One of the main deliverables we’re creating is a plugin for web browsers,…
Code for America has launched an awards program to recognize great tech-based projects going on in US government agencies. There are still a few days to submit your…
Inside Stanford Law School, the Stanford Securities Litigation Analytics project is gathering all kinds of data about securities litigation & then making it visual, interactive, and usable to…
I came across this blog piece by the Dutch group Am I a Designer, exploring the question of “Why change the design process?” They resist an overly formalized,…
Two weeks ago I attended a few days of the Gruter Institute’s session on Law & Behavioral Sciences in Tahoe. I was quite excited to find Joshua Fairfield…
Last week I heard a presentation from the K-12 Lab at Stanford’s d.school, all about how they are bringing in modes & mindsets of Hacking into elementary schools…
After a conversation with a legal colleague who’s working on a new software project to simplify how courts and lawyers communicate, I was inspired to sketch out some…
Last week, during my class Into to Legal Design Class, we had some guest designers from Intuit, who work on improving the user experience of their tax customers.…
I asked my Legal Design students what they think JD students should be learning right now in law schools, to prepare them for their future careers in the…
Rebecca Purdom of Vermont Law / Stanford Medical School examining factors of how law schools could be more innovative.
Some thoughts on a powerpoint from GWU Law Professor Susan Dudley.
One of the projects on my front-burner is getting a great legal navigator built, that takes a person step-by-detailed-step through a legal process. Here are some of the…
I am at the Gruter Institute, learning about innovation in different industries. Here’s an interesting thought from the world of AI: Can we help people deal w) complex…
Looking back through my iPad sketchbooks, I came across this sketch of what an online legal help portal might look like. It’s a topic I’ve been thinking about…
As I’ve presented design to lawyers over the past several years, one of the main points of value I’ve heard echoed back from lawyers is the mindset of…
A quick sketch of one of the key mindsets I’m trying to teach my students — and what design can offer to law. How do we think about…