Tag: courtrooms

Episode 58: Lean Thinking in Law with Isabell Storsjö and Ana Lúcia Martins

April 12, 2023 legaldesignpodcast Uncategorized 0 Comments
Ana Lúcia Martins and Isabell Storsjö

Welcome to this episode of our podcast where we will be discussing the concept of lean thinking in the context of law. Lean thinking, also known as Lean methodology, is a management philosophy that originated in the manufacturing industry and has since been applied to various fields, including healthcare, software development, and now law.

The core idea of lean thinking is to eliminate waste, increase efficiency, and continuously improve processes. In the legal industry, this approach has gained momentum in recent years as law firms and legal departments seek to increase productivity, reduce costs, and improve client satisfaction. Isabell and Ana have been researching how the Lean philosophy would also help on the public sector, especially in court proceedings.

In this episode, we will explore the principles of lean thinking and how they can be applied to the practice of law. We will also discuss some of the challenges and opportunities that come with implementing lean thinking in the legal industry.

Join us as we delve into the world of lean thinking in law and discover how this approach can help legal professionals achieve better results for their clients and themselves in the courtrooms.

Ana Lúcia Martins is an Assistant Professor at ISCTE-IUL and an integrated researcher at BRU-Iscte (Business Research Unt). She holds a PhD in Management, with a specialization in Operations Management and Technology. She currently serves as Iscte Business School Vice-dean for Teaching and Innovation, and as Vice-President of Iscte’s Pedagogical Council. Ana teaches Operations Management, Logistics Management, Service Operations Management, and Supply Chain Management. Ana has authored close to 100 scientific articles. She has authored book chapters in logistics management and lean management in the justice systems. Her current main research topics are operations management in humanitarian settings, logistics management, supply chain management, and lean management in the services area, mainly in judicial and healthcare systems.

Isabell Storsjö is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Law at the University of Turku. She holds a doctoral degree in Supply Chain Management and Social Responsibility as well as a law degree, and has always been interested in topics that combine the two fields of knowledge. One of the areas where they intersect is justice system reform and legal process improvement, and Isabell started investigating the problems with prolonged legal proceedings, especially in Finland, in 2011. She has published on lean thinking in the justice system in academic journals and books, and has also done research on cooperation between actors in the criminal procedure in Finland. Isabell has followed legal design since attending the first Legal Design Summit as a law student, and is especially interested in the process (or service) design, organization design and system design levels of the concept.

16. Episode: Systemic Change in Law with Nóra Al Haider

June 13, 2021 legaldesignpodcast Uncategorized 0 Comments
Nóra Al Haider.

Good news guys! In order to make law better, lawyers don’t have to become designers or coders. But what we need to have are curiosity and an open mindset. In this episode Henna and Nina are joined by Nora Al Haider to discuss how to make more of a systematic change in law.  

Quite often, lawyers see legal problems only in a legal way. But because law is interlinked to other systems, we have to start inviting other disciplines into the space of law without judgement. And we have to go beyond design and simply start to ask other professionals how they solve problems and explore in multidisciplinary teams. And when we learn new ways to solve problems from other disciplines, we create new methodologies and that is where the change begins.  

Nowadays, the legal industry turns to legal design and legal technology when trying to find a way towards more human-centric law, but those two are not going to solve our problems alone. We need more systematic change and we have to make sure that the projects aiming to change the law and the legal system aren’t just single projects happening here and there. Because of her unique and interesting career path and background, Nora can see the differences between the American and European legal systems and she shares her insights on what should be done in both systems in order to make law more accessible in a more sustainable way.

Nóra Al Haider is the Policy and Design Lead at the Stanford Legal Design Lab. Nóra is a multilingual lawyer and interdisciplinary researcher from the Netherlands. She combines the fields of law, design and tech to increase access to justice and equity in the legal system. 

Her pioneering and innovative creations from social media bots that provide legal advice to analyzing the legal needs of users on online platforms earned her international acclaim in the legal field. Nóra’s legal design projects and interactive art installations have been spotlighted at courts, bar associations, legal organizations and in law schools around the world. She is driven by merging various disciplines, processes, and methodologies to enact systemic change in the justice system. Nóra holds a Bachelor (honours) and Research Master in Law from Utrecht University.

5. Episode: Innovation in Courts with Andrea Lindblom

March 28, 2021 legaldesignpodcast Uncategorized 0 Comments
Andrea Lindblom

Courts, like all legal institutions, are designed for lawyers. However, the people whose lives going to court affect the most are the legal laymen. How these real end-users of courts would benefit, if their needs were addressed by re-designing the court experience?

In this fifth episode of the podcast series we talk about the possibilities of innovation, technology and legal design in courts with Andrea Lindblom, who works as the Chief of Administration in the District Court of Helsingborg, Sweden. 

Courts are known to be the blind services of the justice, pursuing objectivity, formality and the rule of law. For non-lawyers, however, a court process can be full of obscurities and evoke feelings of disconnection, anxiety and lack of control over one’s own case, not to mention the possibility of financial losses. For most of the people going to court is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, often leaving bitter-sweet memories that last for life. But what if legal design could help make the court experience more satisfying, and not just for the end-users but the lawyers as well?

Making courts more human-centric is not the only update courts might need these days. Courts are struggling to keep up with the rapid technological development and the new ways of providing court services in the digital world – all while resources are tight and case numbers going high. Experimenting for new ideas does not come easy, though, as lawyers are traditionally trained to look backwards when solving problems. Design thinking mindsets such as “fail fast” and “be curious” are rarely combined to the work done in courts.

How to initiate the needed change in courts, Andrea? “I think it is quite urgent that courts have an open mindset towards, for example, new  technology, and new ways of doing things. We need to find ways to experiment lightly, gently, because it’s much better for us to fail small and early in a process, then massively and late”.

Andrea Lindblom graduated from Lund University (law) in 2009. She has been working at Helsingborg District Court since 2011. During the last few years she has focused on issues relating to the presence of the courts and judges on social media and how digitalization affects the courts. In March 2019 Helsingborg District Court arranged Sweden’s first legal tech & design workshop in the public sector. Andrea was awarded Legal Innovator of the Year in 2019 and was one of the winners in the category Public Services, Politics & Social at European Women of Legal Tech in 2020.