Legal Design Podcast – Sivu 4 – In this podcast hosts Henna Tolvanen and Nina Toivonen discuss how to make law better for (real) humans with guests representing intriguing backgrounds and knowledge.

Episode 27: Merging Law, Design and Engineering with Lab de Diseño Para la Justicia

Laura Guzman-Abello, Santiago Pardo Rodríguez and Santiago De Francisco Vela.

We’ve discuss a lot about interdisciplinarity and team work in this podcast. Now it’s time to hear from from the experts how to merge design, legal and engineering expertise.

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.

Santiago De Francisco Vela is a designer and professor in the School of Design at the University of Los Andes in Bogotá Colombia. He has been working in emotions and positive design, fostering emotional experiences and positive behaviors through product design. His areas of interest involve design for well-being, financial and social innovation, and behavioral design. He is a member of the Design for Justice Lab.

Laura Guzman-Abello is an industrial engineer who works in research and consultancy in design, strategy and organizational management oriented towards the design of public policy. Her work focuses on decision-making processes and engineering designs with a systemic and participatory approach. She has worked with public sector entities, international organizations, and universities. She is a lecturer of the School of Engineering at Universidad de los Andes and a Design for Justice Lab member.

Santiago Pardo Rodríguez is a lawyer, with an LLM from the Universidad de los Andes, an MSc in Law, Anthropology and Society from the London School of Economics & Political Science, and a Master of the Science of Law from Stanford University. His research areas are Constitucional Law, Judicial Systems, Empirical Legal Studies, and Legal Design applied to justice. He is a founding member of the Design for Justice Lab.

The Design for Justice Lab (DJL) is a joint venture founded in 2019 between the Schools of Law, Design, and Engineering of Universidad de los Andes that integrates design thinking and systems thinking to law school curriculums to think in new ways to overcome access to justice barriers in Colombia. The projects go through a process of exploration, ideation and prototyping with the purpose of improving the judicial system.
https://labjusticia.uniandes.edu.co/

Episode 26: Proactive Legal Information Design with Helena Haapio and Rob Waller

20 lokakuun, 2021 legaldesignpodcast 0 Comments

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.

Research has shown that 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.

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!

Helena Haapio is a lawyer on a mission to change the way contracts and law are perceived, presented, and taught. She is a lawyer and contract strategist by day and a researcher, author, and editor by night. She has had the good fortune of working with information designers and plain language experts who have taught her a lot. She is a co-founder and co-creator of the WorldCC Contract Design Pattern Library and currently co-editing two books for Edward Elgar, one on Contract Design and the other on Legal Design.

Helena is an Associate Professor of Business Law at the University of Vaasa, Finland, and a Contract Strategist at Lexpert Ltd. In addition to her doctorate and LLM, she is proud to hold a Master of Quality degree. Like engineers, Helena wants everything she does to be functional, useful, and usable.

Rob Waller’s recent work is in the growing field of legal information design, working to improve consumer and business contracts through plain language, usable design and visualization. His other current focus is the Information Design Summer School, which introduces non-specialists to theories and techniques that help to simplify complex information.

Semi-retired from a career in research, teaching and consultancy, Rob has more time now for renovating a 200-year-old stone barn, gardening and playing sax – where no one can hear him. His 1987 PhD explored the relationship between language and design, and he continues to look for better ways to explain this and unify them in practice. Rob the current President of the International Institute for Information Design.

Link to the article mentioned in the episode: Robert Waller, Jenny Waller, Helena Haapio, Gary Crag & Sandi Morrisseau, Cooperation through Clarity: Designing Simplified Contracts. Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation, Vol. 2, Issue 1–2 (Special Issue: Contracting for Innovation and Innovating Contracts), 2016, pp. 48–68. Manuscript available at ResearchGate. ( Please note that this is a manuscript of an article accepted for publication in the Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation. To cite this article, please refer to the published version.)

Episode 25: Decoding Law with Neuroscience with Dominique Ashby

13 lokakuun, 2021 legaldesignpodcast 0 Comments

At first, neuroscience and law may seem an odd combination. Neuroscience examines the human nervous system and tries to explain human behavior. When using this understanding in law, it will help us create better law, legislation, and policy. And lead to situations where rights and obligations are understandable for everyone.

Profound understanding of human behavior is a key to success in legal design projects. Where 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 then have their own neuroscientist?

In this episode we discuss the possibilities of neuroscience in legal design with neuroscientist Dominique Ashby. 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!

Dominique Ashby is a former lawyer, who decided to bring her first passion, neuroscience, into the business world. In her own consultancy company, [email protected], Dominique advises organisations in change management using the power of neuroscience. She has also experience from working with legal design teams.

Following a successful first career as a lawyer in private practice, in-house and with alternative legal providers, Dominique decided to bring her first passion, neuroscience, into the business world. Dominique takes the headache out of change for organisations with strategies and toolkits based in neuroscience that reduce resistance and increase productivity during times of change. Using the power of neuroscience she helps us all reach our full potential at work.

Episode 24: Rights at the Museum with Dina Bailey

5 lokakuun, 2021 legaldesignpodcast 0 Comments

In this podcast series we have learned that law and lawyers look back way too much when solving problems. And we have also learned that design thinking encourages us to look ahead to the future when solving problems. So now you might be wondering if Henna and Nina are going back to traditional way of doing law by bringing up museums. Not to worry though, in this episode with Dina Bailey we learn what designers and lawyers could learn from museums and their curators!

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.

Museums play a key role in enhancing the public’s understanding of human rights and promoting respect to others. Using different tools and techniques, such as storytelling, photos, and interactive displays, museums help us examine the past violations of human rights and remember those who were affected. Exhibitions will leave visitors with more knowledge but also evoke empathy. And empathy plays a key role in preventing future injustices.

Dina Bailey is the CEO of Mountain Top Vision, a consulting company that works with organizations on trainings and strategic initiatives that support more inclusive communities. She has been the Director of Methodology and Practice for the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, the inaugural Director of Educational Strategies at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, and the Director of Museum Experiences at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and a high school English teacher at Pike High School.

Dina holds a Bachelors in Middle and Secondary Education, a Masters in Anthropology of Development and Social Transformation, and a graduate certificate in Museum Studies. She has been an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University and at George Washington University; and, she has been published in both the formal education and museum fields. Dina is proud to be the Secretary of the American Association for State and Local History, the DEAI Committee Co-Chair on the board of the American Alliance of Museums, and the Chair of the American Alliance of Museums’ Education Committee.

Episode 23: Doing Law in the 21st Century with Astrid Kohlmeier and Meera Klemola

29 syyskuun, 2021 legaldesignpodcast 0 Comments

Meera Klemola (left) and Astrid Kohlmeier.

Access to justice, digitalization, billable hours, burning the midnight oil, comprehensibility, working culture… Those are the topics that often come up when discussing what needs to change in the legal industry. How to do law in the 21st Century with the tools and mindsets from the 18th Century? What would Astrid and Meera do?

In this episode we are joined by the legal design legends and leading global experts Astrid Kohlmeier and Meera Klemola. Astrid and Meera are also published authors, their book ”The Legal Design Book – Doing Law in the 21st Century” was published earlier this fall.

Astrid and Meera tell us about the book project (and give valuable tips for the legal publishing industry!). They also share their insights about the core elements of doing law in our era and why we are going through transformation as an industry exactly now. They both have tremendous experience on Legal Design projects and working with different clients and they help us imagine what can be legal designed with sharing some examples on those projects.

We are certain that after listening to this episode, everyone will see the benefits of Legal Design so clearly that it will definitely become the mainstream way of doing law in the 21st Century!

Astrid Kohlmeier is a lawyer and internationally
renowned legal design pioneer. She has been
combining law and design for more than 15 years, with senior roles in the insurance, litigation, finance, and service design industries. The legal design expert advises legal inhouse departments and law firms such as Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Airbus, SAP, NetApp and many more. Winner of several design awards as well as honoured as “woman of legal tech”, 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. She is actively engaged at the intersection of education and method development to establish the profession of “ legal designers” worldwide.

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. Meera is a trusted advisor to some of the largest brands, corporations, law firms and in-house legal teams. She also co-teaches with professors at law schools, is a frequently requested keynote speaker at global innovation conferences
and company retreats and is a contributing author to various platforms on the topics of design in law, modern work and leadership. She holds multidisciplinary qualifications in law, design management and business.

Episode 22: Measuring the Impact of Contract Design with Katri Nousiainen

22 syyskuun, 2021 legaldesignpodcast 0 Comments

“I personally believe that we need law and economics, and economic theory of legal design. We need to have these to do the scientific measurement, which is necessary for legal design to be seen as a state of a science – and this will naturally facilitate further its use.” says Katri Nousiainen.

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.

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).

Episode 21: Bringing Structure and Empathy to Mediation with Pierangelo Bonanno

15 syyskuun, 2021 legaldesignpodcast 0 Comments

Mediation is part of the alternative dispute resolution. It would be easy to think that mediation already is human-centric enough comparing to the court procedures but that is not the whole truth. Pierangelo Bonanno is an experienced and acknowledged international mediator and he joined us to explaing that there is a powerful synergy between legal design and mediation.

Mediation is often seen as an alternative dispute resolution method to more traditional court proceedings, because 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 design methods can help lawyers bring clarity, transparency and empathy to the complex and often negatively perceived dispute resolution processes.

Tune in to hear more how mediators can uncover the real needs of humans and resolve their conflicts in a human-centric way.

Pierangelo Bonanno is an international mediator and a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitration (CIArb). He has been listed as a “recommended” mediator in the WhosWhoLegal Italy 2021 Guide on Mediation. Pierangelo has worked as a judge for numerous competitions on mediation between international universities. The ICC International Mediation Competition 2021 has chosen him as one of the competition’s 100 international judges. Pierangelo is also a mediator at e-POM – Specialized European Network in disputes between online commercial platforms and their commercial suppliers. Pierangelo introduced his proposal “Mediation by Design” in the CIArb’s Mediation Symposium 2020: Mediation as a multidisciplinary practice.
“Mediation by Design is my proposal to simplify and clarify the various stages of mediation, to make the parties protagonists by placing them at the centre, especially in online mediation, in which transparency and accessibility are even more challenging to achieve.”

Episode 20: Breaking the Awkward Silence with Niina Ratsula

8 syyskuun, 2021 legaldesignpodcast 0 Comments

Is it possible to be compliant if it’s not part of the organizational culture? We write policies and tick the boxes, but at the end of the day it’s really the culture that defines if we’re compliant and ethical. Culture determines what is acceptable and valued no matter what is written in the policies. We welcomed Niina Ratsula to discuss about doing the right thing.

Many people may find the concept of “culture” a bit difficult to understand and explain, especially in the working life. 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”. However, culture is the key component of corporations and it will eat your strategy for breakfast if you’re not making sure that the desired behavior happens outside the policies and even when no one is watching.

Culture starts with people and should be everybody’s business in the organizations. It is not enough if the values only reflect the management, they should represent the entire organization and all its people. Most of the times it is easy to recognize what is right and what is wrong, but the our working culture might not encourage us to actually speak up about the wrong doings. How can we encourage people to speak freely and without a fear? How to break the awkward silence?

In addition to compliance culture, we talk about work ethics. Traditionally, we have overlooked some topics in the legal industry. However, these are the days that also law firms have to start paying attention to their own culture. Is it ethical to expect people to burn the midnight oil? Should we match people with the excisting culture or should we match the culture with people? Tune into this episode to learn more about designing and re-designing the organizational culture!

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”.

Niina spent 12 years in multinational corporations (Nokia and Kemira) focusing on ethics, compliance, internal controls and audit. In 2018 she started her own business Code of Conduct Company and is now supporting organizations in building their ethics and compliance programs, ethical leadership and internal control projects. Niina was awarded the recognition as the ‘responsible business influencer’ in Finland in 2019.

Niina is also an author and has written several books in Finnish on the topics of Internal Control, Internal Audit and Ethical Leadership. She defended her PhD. in 2020 with a topic “Interplay between technical and social control – Case study of Nokia’s SOX implementation project”.

Episode 19: Will AI Cause Lawyer Extinction, Jim Chiang?

1 syyskuun, 2021 legaldesignpodcast 0 Comments

We kick off the second season with Jim Chiang, the CEO and Founder of My Legal Einstein.After having a relaxing summer break and resting our brains we are back with a bang!

Artificial Intelligence is such a hot potato in the legal industry it deserves an episode of its own. And there certainly can’t be value adding AI without design thinking behind it. We are joined by Jim Chiang who is a pioneer when it comes to AI and is now leading My Legal Einstein on its journey to help lawyers find better ways of working.

We lawyers are known for our not so functional ways of working. Most of our processes are based on manual work and we still do a lot of copy-pasting. A few years back there was a lot of discussion about whether or not the robots are going to take over the legal work but we are still at the place where we lack imagination of how to add AI to our work. But this is where Jim can help us lawyers. His examples are so practical that AI actually makes sense, finally.

The systems at the moment don’t include high-level reasoning or thought and computers can only do what us humans have taught them to do. One of the goals for Legal Design is to find better ways for lawyers to work so that we can focus on actual legal work and problem solving instead of wasting our time copy-pasting. But how do we make sure that we don’t teach AI our bad processes and up with AI that just knows how to copy-paste?

After talking to Jim, we can safely encourage you to set your alarm clocks for tomorrow morning, there is still a need for human lawyers and legal designers. But with the help of AI the future might be a little brighter for lawyers and other professionals working in the legal industry because AI can enhance our ability to perform our tasks and optimize our practices. Tune in to our discussion with Jim to learn what you can expect from AI.

Jim Chiang, CEO and Founder, My Legal Einstein – Before starting My Legal Einstein, Jim led the AI engineering teams at Conga and Icertis, the two market leaders in the CLM (contract lifecycle management) product space. Jim has served multiple executive roles leading product and engineering organizations. Jim has over 20 years of experience in big data analytics and AI algorithm development. Jim holds a Bachelors of Engineering from MIT.

18. Episode: Myth Busting Contract Design with Stefania Passera

27 kesäkuun, 2021 legaldesignpodcast 0 Comments

“As many other things more or less abstract in the world surrounding us, contracts are man-made. If they are man-made, they are designed.. The fact that there’s a lack of design doesn’t mean it’s not designed, it’s bad design. We might as well do good design that is self-aware.” says Stefania Passera.

Many people associate legal design with designing of contracts, but actually contract design is its own unique form of design that can have many other purposes than just making the legal aspects more understandable. Contracts can work as effective tools for preventing legal conflicts by supporting business, brand or social relations between contracting parties. However, these different purposes can be reached only when contracts are designed to fit them.

In the last episode of the spring season 2021, Henna and Nina are joined by Stefania Passera, to bust myths about contract design and legal design. Stefania is an information designer and a legal design pioneer who has worked with many lawyers to help them make law more user-friendly. We also talk about legal design from a designer’s perspective.

In an ideal world all the contract designing, and legal designing, would be done in multidisciplinary teams of lawyers and designers. However, there is often a lack of resources to do this and lawyers might want to design legal documents and concepts themselves. Stefania gives tips to these lawyers on how to make law better and more understandable and functional for the end-users.

Stefania Passera is an information designer and a legal design pioneer. For over 10 years, Stefania has been helping her clients to simplify, visualize, and make user-friendlier their contracts, policies, and other legal documents. Born in Italy and based in Espoo, Finland, she is the founder of contract and legal design consultancy Passera Design and assistant professor at University of Vaasa, Finland. Moreover, she is Contract Designer in Residence at World Commerce & Contracting, a co-author of the Legal Design Manifesto, and a co-founder of Legal Design Alliance. In 2020 she received the European Women of Legal Tech Award.

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