Legal Design Podcast Henna Tolvanen & Nina Toivonen

In this season finale, we unleash our inner child and explore the role of creativity in law with Tessa Manuello, a pioneer in legal design and innovation. As the founder of Legal Creatives, a legal design training agency, Tessa has empowered legal professionals worldwide to integrate design methods and tools into their work, especially for communicating law visually. Recently, Tessa launched The Legal Designers, a collective for experts with verified credentials in legal design, to collaborate on real-life projects and make a significant impact in the legal industry.

Tessa shares her journey in legal innovation, her unique perspective on creativity, and what motivated her to become an entrepreneur in legal design. At Legal Creatives, Tessa has worked with lawyers from diverse cultural backgrounds and jurisdictions. In this episode, we ponder how legal culture influences openness to innovation and the adoption of legal design ideas across different countries. We also discuss the benefits of obtaining credentials in legal design and what it takes to be recognized as a legal designer.

Additionally, Tessa shares her thoughts on the current market for legal design services. Are lawyers more inclined to learn legal design skills themselves, or do they prefer to hire experts in the field?

Lastly, we delve into what fuels Tessa's creativity. Tune in to find out what ordering pizza has to do with it!

As law schools are places for the development and betterment of society, shouldn’t they also foster creativity and innovation? Is law actually a design science? Should learning empathy be part of the law school curriculum? Is being student-friendly still a revolutionary act for law school teachers? And lastly, why should all lectures begin with a brief mindfulness session?

We explore these questions and more in this episode with Sampo Mielityinen, a law teacher and developer of legal learning. Sampo is currently the head of the master’s program in legal design at Laurea University of Applied Sciences. Before this, Sampo worked as a teacher and teacher trainer at several Finnish universities, where he earned a reputation as an exceptionally innovative and student-friendly law school pedagogue. Sampo shares how he manifests his core values of teaching—creativity, playfulness, and presence—in practice, and how he sees the role of design in enhancing learning experiences. We also discuss what design can offer for legal education in general: various new models and tools to create something new, and perspectives on the human experience, to mention a few.

Furthermore, Sampo talks about the legal design master’s program at Laurea and what he has learned about legal design during his first six months as the head of the program. We also hear some initial results from a survey conducted among the program's alumni and learn how students who have graduated from the program view its impact on their careers.

Tune in to hear more!

Many contracts can be really complicated, especially the ones used in industries like construction. They are known to be long and complex, making them difficult to understand and comply with. These contracts are often designed by a lawyer for another lawyer, with potential disputes in mind.

This kind of contracting doesn't really support the end user in their daily activities so it's time to make changes! The field of contract design is dedicated to transforming these kinds of risk-averse and lawyer-centric contracting practices. It promotes a more proactive and user-centric approach to contracting where contracts are perceived not just as something to be shoved in the drawer, but rather as tools that can guide, support and empower the businesses.



In this episode we meet with Sarah Fox, a contract simplification specialist and the creator of the 500 word contract. Having decades of experience as a construction lawyer, Sarah knows how bad contracts can cost time, money, deals and relationships. With her simplified contract design model she advocates for more meaningful and user-friendly contracts that help streamline deals, enhance customer relations, and still keep everyone protected.

Sarah shares with us how she came up with the idea of the 500 word contract and what kind of feedback she has since received from users and other lawyers. We also hear her tips for contract simplification and how to use them in redesigning other types of legal information as well. And of course, we also discuss the future of contract design with AI. Tune in to hear more!

In this episode we meet with Sarah Fox, a contract simplification specialist and the creator of the 500 word contract. Sarah shares with us how she came up with the idea of the 500 word contract and what kind of feedback she has since received from users and other lawyers. We also hear her tips for contract simplification and how to use them in redesigning other types of legal information as well. And of course, we also discuss the future of contract design with AI. Tune in to hear more!

Sarah Fox is a recovering lawyer transforming the way people do business. After decades dealing with huge deals in the construction sector, she realised that long, complex and bad contracts were costing time, money, deals and relationships. And after all that, they were usually just shoved in a drawer! There was a better way. Now Sarah advocates for short, simple contracts of less than 500 words. And delivers keynotes that inspire people across industry how to streamline deals and enhance customer relations with contracts that represent their values, embed trust, and keep everyone protected.

The ability to tell stories is what distinguishes us humans from other living creatures. We think, remember and pass on information in the form of storytelling. It’s no wonder, then, that storytelling is also a powerful method in design. It helps make sense of the world, empathize with different perspectives and simplify complexity. Law and legal work are no exceptions, as legal professionals benefit from good storytelling skills too. In the context of law and legal design, storytelling can help make people’s experiences of the law and justice visible and relatable, and help understand what measures are needed to fill gaps in the legal system.  

In this episode we deep dive into the world of storytelling with Senior Design Strategist Emily MacLoud and Principal Design Strategist Luke Thomas, both at Portable. Portable is an Australian-based design agency specialized in using design and technology to create positive impact in areas like justice, public sector, mental health and more. With Emily and Luke, we discuss the elements of a good story and how to craft one for the purposes of legal storytelling. Emily and Luke also share their insights on using design tools like user journey maps in story building, and how to address sensitive topics in law with storytelling.  

But does a story need to have a happy ending? And who is Becky, and what does she use storytelling for? Tune in to find out.

The majority of people in need of legal help do not turn to formal legal services, such as going to court. Research indicates that this is a global phenomenon: those who seek to solve their legal problems often turn to their social circles and other informal sources of information instead. By doing so, people look for advice that is precise, tested, and socially approved, making it relevant and practical for their own personal situation. However, many legal innovation efforts seem to be focused on fine-tuning and polishing formal legal services, with fewer solutions aligning with how people really want and need their justice problems solved. 

But how can we fill the 'engagement gap' between people and the legal system? What exactly does being people-centered entail? What should we pay attention to when seeking more systemic changes in law and access to justice? In this episode, we discuss these questions with the inspiring Zainab Malik, Senior Justice Sector Advisor at The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) and the leader of the Justice Innovation Labs. Zainab introduces us with case examples of HiiL's projects in Tunisia, Uganda, and Nigeria, alongside her insights into creating an enabling environment for legal innovation. We also discuss the role of technology in improving access to justice. Is it sensible to digitalize court services or make legal help apps when people lack access to basic commodities, such as mobile phones or electricity?

In this episode we venture one of the most classical examples of automating legal processes and talk about document automation. We are joined by the notorious guru of this field, Catherine Bamford of Bamlegal. Catherine shares with us her career story and what insights she has gained on her transformation journey from a lawyer to a legal engineer. We also hear why she is so passionate about document automation and what are the benefits for it. With over a decade of experience in digitalizing legal work, she tells her secrets on what to do and what to avoid in automation projects. We also learn why organizations should create and maintain contract playbooks.

We won't miss the discussion on the role of AI and GPT tools in document automation either. Catherine explains whether human-made templates are still needed in the era of AI, or should we concentrate on prompting and training AI tools to raise ourselves to the next level in document drafting. We also hear how Catherine views the general impact of technology on legal work over the past decades. Has there been any significant milestones yet? Or are we lawyers still working like it was the 1970's?