Episode 29: Exploring Legal Design Methods and Tools with Angélica Flechas

Angelica Flechas.

If you are a designer, I really think you need to work with lawyers. Law is like a box no one wants to open, unless you are a lawyer, but now this box is being opened. And there are many lawyers who want to be part of this movement. If you are a designer you can be the bridge that connects these lawyers with the final user. And your tools are part of that process

There are many ways design can be practiced, also in the legal context. Many are familiar with the methods and tools highlighted in various service design books, such as making up different user personas and prototyping with legos and cardboard boxes. But what kind of methods and techniques legal designers like to use in their real life design projects? Are there some tools that work particularly well in the legal context?

In this episode we meet Angélica Flechas, who is a legal designer both with a law and design degree from Los Andes University in Bogotá, Colombia. Angélica runs her own service design consultancy agency HÁPTICA and has a wide experience from various service design cases both in legal and other industries. Angélica shares with us her favorite design methods and tools and tells how they work when designing legal products and services. One of them is called “Frankenstein”. We also discuss why prototyping is so important and how lawyers can easily start using it to improve their performance. Hint: your daily assignments are a potential test environment. Angélica also encourages designers to engage with legal design projects. Helping lawyers to bridge the gap between their services and the clients can have a significant social impact.

Angélica Flechas is a designer and a lawyer from Los Andes University in Bogotá Colombia. She has been working on service design for 8 years, after getting in touch and falling in love with this Design wave, when presenting a paper at the Global Service Design Conference in Helsinki in 2012 – Servdes. Six years ago, she decided to create her own Service Design Consultancy Agency – HÁPTICA – where she runs as Founder, Service and Legal designer Consultant, and as General Manager. She has worked for different industries such as: retail, finance, hospitality, health care, insurance, education, construction, government, law offices, among others. She is also a teacher in the undergraduate program for Business Administration at Los Andes University.