“You Don’t Often Create Solutions in the Law”: Legal Design in a Small Australian Law Firm

This article reports on a study of the use of legal design principles in a small law firm context. Among other things, legal design privileges the views and experiences of users (clients) in a deep and empathetic way. In doing so it seeks to reimagine and reengineer legal services in novel ways. It involves the creative generation of ideas and an iterative process of developing, testing and modifying – a process often seen as anathema to traditional legal organisations, which are typically perceived as uninterested in innovation and slow to change. The goal of continuous improvement means that legal design is about sustainable and positive change, recognising that ongoing change is imperative in pursuit of best practice. Despite significant recent interest in legal design, there is generally an absence of studies or evaluations of legal design. In the Australian context, there are few exemplars of how legal design might, practically, be used, especially in the private sector. There are reports of using visual elements in contracts and the use of design principles in legal education, but the use of legal design in relation to law firm services is typically referenced only in media releases or on firm websites, without detailed description or analysis. By illustrating the application of legal design in a single setting, this article therefore aims to present a tangible example of how legal design principles can be meaningfully used in legal practice.