Legal Design

Abstract

Legal Design is a movement to make the legal system work better for people. It has been developed out of work in human-centered and visual design, civic technology, and participatory policy-making. It regards the improvement of the legal system on multiple fronts: making it more accessible to lay people who must use it to resolve problems with money, housing, health and family; corporate professionals who use it to contract, litigate, and conduct business; and policy-makers and government officials who use it to set standards, hold powerful interests accountable, and enforce rights and obligations. The purpose of Legal Design is to develop a human-centered, participatory approach to reforming the legal system, that recognizes the importance of new technology but that does not privilege tech-driven solutions above all others; and that recognizes the value of interdisciplinary, inclusive groups building and testing new improvements to the system. This vision of Legal Design is to launch new policy reforms, technology interventions, and service and visual designs that can improve the legal system, through a commitment to a wider participatory public involvement, more focus on people’s experiences and outcomes, greater experimentation with technology and design, and gradual refinement of new solutions that pairs creative innovation theory with evidence-based policymaking. In addition to laying out what the impact of Legal Design can be, this theory of change provides the base architecture for methods that can be used.

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