Revolutionizing Law Through Legal Design: A Study on its Practical Implications

Author: Tejaswita Sahoo, Campus Law Centre, Faculty of Law, University of Delhi

ABSTRACT

The following research article explains how Legal Design can prove to be a game-changer in the legal field. This can be determined by the numerous practical implications that Legal Design has. Some practical implications include presenting visually appealing educational content for law students and beginners, providing visualized contracts that facilitate understanding of key terms by parties to the contract, and visualizing facts of the case and court findings, thus assisting in litigation.

There are many challenges involved in implementing legal designs in the legal field. Since it is a new and dynamic field, implementing it in the courts of law, law schools, and businesses would be difficult. Some might question the significance of using visuals and graphical images in the legal field, which is predominantly dominated by oratory skills during courts and businesses. But we must see that oral documents and contract negotiations need not be replaced by Legal Design. Legal Design will only play a significant role in facilitating the learning and understanding of the cases and contracts.

KEYWORDS

Legal Design, Courtrooms, Contracts, Legal Education, Visuals, Graphical Images

INTRODUCTION

Before delving deeper into Legal Design, it would be much better to understand Design – thinking. Design-thinking involves thinking creatively and coming up with unconventional solutions to practical problems. With the technological developments, design thinking came in the 1960s. Books emphasizing design – thinking came in the 1980s. But design – thinking came into the legal field around 2010. According to some scholars, the lag was because of the conservatism or traditional role played by legal institutions while some scholars argued that it didn’t take much time for design–thinking to come over to legal design. Nonetheless, we cannot deny the fact that it did take two-three decades to come to the legal sphere.

Legal Design involves creatively solving problems arising in the legal field. Legal Design is user-centric as it focuses on clients’ understanding, which aligns with the principle of design-thinking. This is a drift from the traditional role of focusing more importance on the lawyers and judges. Legal Design, being user-centric, has many real-world applications in the field of legal education (beneficial to students), regulations (beneficial to the public) and many more. The article will also cover the challenges in the implementation of Legal Design in various fields of law. It will also focus on legislative frameworks, judicial interpretations, case studies and the Future scope of Legal Design in India.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Review of the literature is an essential part of any research. In the context of this study, the review of the literature has been discussed under the following themes: -

The Need for Legal Design

Traditional legal systems involve a lot of complexity, which makes it impossible for people to understand their rights. This becomes a blockage in the way of seeking justice. This is where Legal Design comes into play. Legal Designs involve the culmination of the Legal System, Design and Technology. This means using technology to solve legal problems using creative skills.

Practical Implications of Legal Design

In Legal Design: New Thinking and New Challenges, 2019, the author explains how legal design can be useful in the legal field. A lawyer may not always include images and visuals, but it may also involve information layering, simply highlighting certain provisions or including statements in double-inverted commas. The ultimate aim is to facilitate the understanding of complex legal provisions.

Challenges and solutions to problems arising in Legal Design

Traditional legal systems, dominated by oratory skills for court presentations and contract negotiations, need some time to accommodate the features of Legal Design. Whether lawyers must learn legal design or we need to employ people who know Legal Design, is a matter of question.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This study adopts a qualitative research methodology that focuses on sources like - research articles, blogs, case studies, statutory provisions, legislative frameworks and judicial precedents. Additionally, we have also reviewed certain legal documents for a better understanding of pictorial and graphical representations.

UNDERSTANDING LEGAL DESIGN

Legal Design – the term describes how creatively we can solve legal problems through Design. The Stanford Law School introduced Legal Design by bringing three areas together - Legal System, Design and Technology.

With the coming of huge developments in technology, new fields started being recognised, one of them being design thinking. Developers of new products started using design thinking in the form of UX/UI design prototyping. This is now being gradually accepted by the legal communities in the form of Legal technology, that includes, Legal AI bots.

Design–thinking is based on three methods as per Roman Yankovskiy’s article on Legal Design:

Clients Interaction (Empathy): Since design thinking’s focus is on making the lives of clients’ easier, the designs are formulated as per the needs of the clients. This basically means before designing, the designers have to be empathetic towards the clients’ requirements and think pieces of stuff from the clients’ perspectives.
Visualisation: Using infographics and images can help break down complex information.
Simplification: This can be done by breaking down complex subjects into short bullet points for easier comprehension. The more clarity, the easier it is to understand.

Similarly, Legal Design, being a specialised area of design thinking, encompasses the following principles:-

User-centric approach: This is similar to principle one. Legal Designs must be created, keeping in mind the needs of the user. For example, a legal professor or an esteemed judge, thinking about writing a book, must write the book given their knowledge and their experiences but keeping it easy to make the content more digestible for readers like students.

Visual communication: This involves the use of visuals, images, pictures and legal infographics to assist in a better understanding of complex legal information. For example, legal textbooks are just filled up with text of case laws and judicial interpretations – these huge piles of information cannot be retained by our memories. If writers visualise the legal concepts and write information, students read the information by visualising them in their mind, why not use visuals and infographics to add value to the text and make it easier for memory retention.

Legal Solutions: Legal Design must serve its ultimate aim of solving problems arising out of the legal landscape. For example, it may help the readers’ get information which was not mentioned in any other books or may help people obey driving or traffic rules.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS OF LEGAL DESIGN

It is surprising to know that the traditional and conservative models of legal institutions are becoming more open towards accepting the new evolving technologies and inculcating design-thinking into the systems. It is more surprising to know about the real-world applications involving design thinking in the legal landscape.

Legal Education

The Legal Design can be used in the legal education world in the following ways: -

Professors can teach law students using presentations. Technologies like Microsoft PowerPoint coupled with ChatGPT can assist in making presentations. This will help students to get more clarity on subjects.
Legal textbooks, case materials and books by prominent authors can use visuals for better comprehension. Using visuals will also help the readers remain engaged throughout the reading of the book.
Animated videos, although difficult to be made, can be used for topics demanding high competency. It will help viewers to study video lectures and grasp difficult concepts faster. Quimbee is one such legal education platform that has made videos on many case laws and many legal concepts.

Legal Documents and Contracts

The contracts, petitions and appeal filings have many complex terminologies that make it difficult for the common man to understand the intricacies. For example, Airbnb has already started using visual contracts making it easier for clients to understand the terms and conditions well. This reduces unnecessary misunderstandings that could have led to litigation costs.

Access to Justice

Common people may not know whether their voices are being addressed or not, given the complex language used in cases and orders. There is a need to imbibe certain elements in drafts so that clients might know whether their voices are actually being heard or not. Also, there is a need to present court orders with certain visuals in order to highlight the decisions of courts.

MiddleMen is a good example of providing free AI tools to bridge the gap between clients and lawyers, thus simplifying access to justice.

Awareness for Regulations

Many public places have put up signs of ‘no smoking’, which makes the people passing by aware of not smoking at the requisite place. But if the signboard, instead of showing symbolic representation, would have shown the text only, no one might have followed the instructions. Thus, visual representation of important regulations makes the public follow the instructions.

Designing Legislative Acts and Their Provisions

The statutory provisions or the bills passed by the government like the Economic Budget Survey are so difficult to be understood without any visual representation.

Personal Branding

Many people on LinkedIn provide personal branding services to legal professionals. Legal Design can help provide customized carousels, and legal infographics for the text content. This will add value to the daily posts made by legal professionals. Even Instagram users upload many videos that post legal content, focusing on solving issues faced by people in general. This design – thinking inculcation actually helps in giving awareness of the services provided.

Legal Content Writing

Legal Blogs and research articles have so much lengthy and complex content. In order to keep it engaging, bloggers and writers may provide visual representation in between the paragraphs. Also, necessary portions may be highlighted for better focus on key points.

STATUTORY PROVISIONS

The various intellectual property laws and contract act provisions would be used to protect legal designs.

Visual contracts and digital contracts, utilising design elements, will be protected under Indian Contract Act, 1872 provisions.
Legal Technology, which facilitates Legal Design or is facilitated by Legal Design, would be protected by the Patents Act, 1970.
Visuals and infographics can be protected under Copyright Act, 1957 and Designs Act, 2000.
Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 will help protect data that gets shared with legal tools or legal bots.

LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORKS

In India, there is, as such, no direct reference to legislative frameworks promoting Legal Design. But the core principles of Legal Design are being recognised.

Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy released its “Saral Report”, aiming to provide a drafting manual for laws in plain language for easy comprehension. This highlights the principle of Legal Design of presenting information in an easy and digestible manner.
Lawtoons is a project that focuses on promoting legal education among young generations using graphical and animated representations.

Outside India, some countries are starting to take a role in promoting Legal Design through their legislative frameworks.

The Canadian Bar Association has already recognised the immense role of innovation in the legal profession. In its report, it said that educational institutions must be imbibed with facilities that will make young lawyers gain entrepreneurial and innovative skills.
The European Union’s Design for All (ICT) initiative focuses on promoting universal design in computer-related technologies and the legal framework associated with it.

JUDICIAL PRECEDENTS

There are, as such, no judicial precedents in India and globally that have interpreted Legal Design. It might be because they are protected like other writings or presentations are protected under Section 13 of the Copyright Act, 1957.

V.T. Thomas v. Malayala Manorama, AIR 1989 KER 49 was the first case in India that said fictional characters are copyrighted. So, the characters we may use in legal design would also be protected under copyright law.

In Star Athletica, LLC v. Varsity Brands, Inc., 580 U.S. 405 (2017), the US Supreme Court said the aesthetic design elements on clothing brands would be copyrightable if they are separately identifiable and the elements are copyrightable. This shows that design elements we use in legal documents or books are copyrightable.

CHALLENGES IN IMPLEMENTING LEGAL DESIGN

Opposition due to conservatism – Traditional legal institutions and legal professionals with conservative mindsets may not realise the very objective of implementing Legal Design in the legal landscape.
High Costs – If a distinguished jurist or esteemed advocate wants to publish their book with visuals, they might have to employ people with knowledge about legal design. This shows the high costs involved in implementing Legal Designs.
Time-consumption – Implementing Legal Design in educational institutions will consume a lot of time as almost a new discipline is being introduced to the legal landscape.
Standardisation issue – Many legislative frameworks would be introduced to implement uniformly throughout the legal institutions.

Even when there are many challenges involved in its execution, we cannot deny the future prospects Legal Design holds.

FUTURE PROSPECTS OF LEGAL DESIGN

It is a matter of surprise to us about how much the future holds for Legal Design thinking.

Emerging AI tools can make Legal Design easier to be implemented and even cut costs involved.
High skills need to be used to direct AI on how to work and produce customized Legal Designs. This creates a possibility of introducing a new job for people interested in Legal Designing.
Legal animated videos like Quimbee can be made by Indian video makers and graphical designers who have substantial legal knowledge. This creates a job market in the field of legal educational animations.
Legal Design can help in formulation of smart contracts and great policy decision making.

CONCLUSION

Thus, it must be noted that Legal Design means using creativity and unconventional models to solve legal issues. It would never mean to displace traditional models of oral argumentation and contract negotiation. It will only assist in delivering the information in a comprehensible manner. Also, Legal Design Thinking is not just an intersection of 3 areas – technology, design and law, it is more than that. Technology facilitates design thinking, which facilitates the growth of Legal AI bots. Rather than just intersecting, these fields are interrelated with each other.

The practical implications of Legal Design range from books to videos, legal education to legal awareness, from contracts to court orders, and from businesses to courtrooms. Being a new field, it is difficult to implement Legal Design but the future prospects are much better, bringing huge benefits to the legal world. Overcoming the challenges and keeping in mind the future prospects, we have to strive towards building a legal community that will help us realise the benefits of Legal Design. By true hard work and dedication, we would be able to revolutionise the Legal Field by implementing Legal Design.