Welcome to Open Law Lab

Open Law Lab is a Margaret Hagan’s blog on Legal Design:
a movement to make the law
more accessible, more usable, and more engaging.

The Open Law Lab blog collects my thoughts, drawings, and projects on how design can improve the justice system.

Thanks for visiting + exploring!

Legal Design edited volume

You can buy the book Legal Design.

Explore this volume on how to integrate business, design, and legal thinking with technology. It includes my piece “Prototyping for Policy.”

I co-edited this new book out with my colleagues Marcelo Corrales Compagnucci, Helena Haapio, and Michael Doherty.

It features pieces like:

  • “A new attitude to law’s empire: the potentialities of legal design” by our team of editors
  • “Prototyping for Policy” by me, Margaret Hagan
  • “The relationship between legal and design cultures” by Michael Doherty
  • “Legal design for the common good: proactive legal care by design” by Helena Haapio, Thomas Barton, and Marcelo Corrales Compagnucci

The Rise of Legal Design

Come read the MIT journal Design Issues’ special edition on “The Rise of Legal Design”.

I co-edited this volume, which features a number of studies and essays profiling the design of new government systems, privacy communications, legal aid initiatives, and participatory governance processes.

It features articles like:

Legal Design as a Thing: A Theory of Change and a Set of Methods to Craft a Human-Centered Legal System” by Margaret Hagan

The Rapid Embrace of Legal Design and the Use of Co-Design to Avoid Enshrining Systemic Bias by Dan Jackson, Miso Kim, and Jules Rochielle Sievert

Airlines, Mayonnaise, and Justice: Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Legal Design and Technology by Gordon Ross

The Escambia Project: An Experiment in Community-Led Legal Design by Melissa A. Moss

My Legal Design Projects

Legal Design Lab is an R&D group at Stanford Law School and d.school that works on access to justice efforts, as well as how to improve how lawyers work and serve clients.
Visual Law Library
Legal Design Toolbox
Communication Design Project

Access to Justice Innovations

Want to make law more accessible to more people? Here’s a collection of my posts on ideas, projects, research, and tech to improve access to justice.

System Shocks & A2J Policy

At last week’s Access to Justice Symposium hosted by the Stanford Law Review, I was on a panel about A2J and housing, with a focus on evictions. What are the policies and services that can prevent evictions, or mitigate their…

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Making complicated court & efiling tech clear

As part of my access to justice innovation work, I realize one big barrier to change is understanding how systems currently operate. For example, filing and court technology is confusing. There are lots of acronyms and interrelated systems: efiling managers,…

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Institutional Mindset for people in court

Victor Quintanilla presented at Georgetown Law/American Bar Foundation on his research on people’s experience of courts. He’s measuring people’s social psychology while going through a justice journey – -including how they are treated by court and legal services staff &…

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Play Law Dojo

Come try out the Law Dojo app to learn law smarter, faster, and funnier! It’s made for law students, high school students, and anyone else who wants to learn US law through a fast-paced game.

 

Learn more about the design process + law

Law By Design is a free online book about how legal professionals can use the design process, mindsets, and strategies to improve their work.
Rituals for Work is a book from Wiley Press that I wrote with my partner Kursat Ozenc, on how to improve your creativity, engagement, and culture through rituals big + small.

My Latest Posts

 

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