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
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
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.
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,…
Research-Practitioner Loop in Access to Justice work
Last week I had a double conference weekend in DC. The first was with front-line lawyers and executive directors at legal aid groups and public defender officers. The second was with academics and researchers, who are studying the access to…
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 &…
What can legal learn from medical when it comes to ethical AI?
Does virtual court mean more or less meaningful participation by litigants?
Benny, the legal aid unemployment benefits chatbot
On a recent conference call, someone pointed out a new bot from the CARPLS legal aid group in Illinois: Benny, a conversational bot that can help a person with their unemployment public benefits situation. From CARPLS, here’s a quick description…
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
Research-Practitioner Loop in Access to Justice work
Last week I had a double conference weekend in DC. The first was with front-line lawyers and…
Administrative Burden book on measuring citizen’s experience of government
Design rules for accessible civic websites
Here is a terrific visual guide for all those making legal aid, court, or government help websites….
Design work for government systems change
My sketches of designer/UK Policy Lab leader Andrea Siodmok’s talk at the Digital Citizens conference in Melbourne….
How can you visualize your statistical data?
Here are my drawn notes about the most effective ways to communicate quantitative data, for others to…
Sketching the rise of government policy labs
At a recent class on Community-Led System Design, we were lucky to be joined by Verena Kontschieder,…
My Latest Posts
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…
Research-Practitioner Loop in Access to Justice work
Last week I had a double conference weekend in DC. The first was with front-line lawyers and executive directors at legal…
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…
Contracts can be user-friendly, but they’re often designed not to be
An article analyzing legal contracts in Cognition A new article in Cognition lays out an analysis of millions of contracts (compared…
Administrative Burden book on measuring citizen’s experience of government
This book explains how policy-making often focuses too much on the policies in the abstract and does not focus on their…
What can legal learn from medical when it comes to ethical AI?
Can legal practitioners, particularly those working on access to justice, learn from how AI is being rolled out in medical systems?…
Does virtual court mean more or less meaningful participation by litigants?
What research can we do to understand if virtual hearings improve or degrade the quality of justice that civil litigants get…
Benny, the legal aid unemployment benefits chatbot
On a recent conference call, someone pointed out a new bot from the CARPLS legal aid group in Illinois: Benny, a…
The Access to Justice Pathway: from naming to claiming to action
How do we activate people along the Justice pathway?I am lucky to be in a wonderful group of young scholars focused…
Must Read: Reimagining Courts, a design for the 21st century
Reimagining Courts collects data and ideas for how the court system in the United States might be improved to be more…
Design rules for accessible civic websites
Here is a terrific visual guide for all those making legal aid, court, or government help websites. It is from the…
How do we make a good taxonomy of legal problems?
I have been working on the giant effort to make a comprehensive, user-centered taxonomy of legal issues that people have in…
The future of legal business models and regulation
A quick sketch of Professor Gillian Hadfield’s presentation to the California Bar’s task force on innovation and access to legal services,…
Legal flowcharts from tax law class
Upon some online requests, here is a backlog of 2014-dated tax law flowcharts that I did while studying for my Tax…
Should we regulate public data like a community swimming pool?
A sketch of Arjuna Dibley and Rachelle Cole’s talk on how we might conceive of government/public data not as private goods…
What is a design approach to policy vs traditional policy-making?
Another sketch from Andrea Siodmok, of the UK Policy Lab, about how a design approach to policy work, as opposed to…
Design work for government systems change
My sketches of designer/UK Policy Lab leader Andrea Siodmok’s talk at the Digital Citizens conference in Melbourne. She presented on methods…
How can legal design work be evaluated?
From day 2 of the Digital Citizens conference at the University of Melbourne, Dr. Genevieve Grant of Monash University presented on…
Govt. digital innovation vs. Automated decision-making harms
At the Digital Citizens conference, Dr. Adam Fletcher from RMIT University raised important ethical and justice questions for those working on…
Do we need more laws to respond to AI? #digitalcitizens
Interesting discussion at the Digital Citizens Conference: do we need new laws, bills of rights, etc. to respond to the concerns…
Data privacy, human rights, and social services #digitalcitizens
Today I am at the University of Melbourne at the Digital Citizens conference, where the discussion is about concerns arising around…
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