Use visual design and interactive experiences, to transform how you present legal info to laypeople
Our team at Legal Design Lab uses visual and interaction design to create new ways to communicate legal information.
The Stanford Legal Design Lab focuses on how legal and government professionals can communicate better with the public. We draw on all kinds of examples of communicating complex information, from science, to healthcare, to finances, and beyond.
Visual Design can improve how legal professionals communicate to people.
And they can increase people’s legal capability.
You can design communications that are both legally strategic (for complying with regulations and protecting legal interests) and user-friendly (enhancing the lay person’s engagement with complex info, their comprehension of it, and their overall experience with the legal system).
Are you making your work product as effective as it can be?
Use visual design to be more intentional and successful.
While you craft contracts, emails, memos, briefs, presentations, policies, legislation, or any other legal communication — follow our principles to make them more powerful.
We are creating the design principles, strategies, and patterns to make these new, more effective types of communications.
Our Design Research Work
We are doing user research to understand not just how an individual document or policy can “look better” — but how it can be part of a larger service or system flow.
Our user research has shown that people go through a journey when dealing with legal communications — especially when they’re expected to decide how to act upon them.
Don’t design a document or presentation to be a “text-dump” — putting all the detailed information out there for a person to make sense of.
Instead, how can you design an experience, that helps the reader make sense of the information, relate it to their own situation, and figure out how best to act in response to it?
Get Started on Designing Better Legal Communications
More Resources from Legal Design Lab on Communication Design
Any thoughts or ideas for us? Let us know!
Latest Posts from our Team
- Better Disclosure Design through Data-Driven Risk Communication
How can we help people to understand whether a contract is a good fit for them? Like when they are faced with a possible insurance policy, how can we help them make wise, informed choices about whether this policy is a good fit for them? This piece explores a new risk, scenario-focused set of disclosures. - Risk Communication Design
This Cambridge University center works on innovative new risk communications & tools. - Improving the Design of Insurance Contracts
How could computable contracts improve people’s health insurance contracting? by Nora al-Haider, Luz Daniel, Shobha … Read moreImproving the Design of Insurance Contracts - Behavioral insights for online TOS, disclosures, and policies
Here’s a report from the OECD on how to leverage behavioral insights for better complex … Read moreBehavioral insights for online TOS, disclosures, and policies - How to Make Privacy Policies both GDPR-Compliant and Usable by Karen Renaud and Lynsay Shephered
A 2018 piece describes some new strategies, using usability-oriented design, to present privacy policies in … Read moreHow to Make Privacy Policies both GDPR-Compliant and Usable by Karen Renaud and Lynsay Shephered - Grocery Store terms of service redesign
The Simplification Centre has a ‘Simple Action’ report on how to present better Terms of Service through … Read moreGrocery Store terms of service redesign - Traffic ticket redesign from the Simplification Centre
The Simplification Centre has a redesigned traffic ticket — a speeding notice that would come in … Read moreTraffic ticket redesign from the Simplification Centre - Redesigned rental agreement for landlords-tenants from the Simplification Centre
Another project from the Simplification Centre is a redesign of a UK rental agreement — a … Read moreRedesigned rental agreement for landlords-tenants from the Simplification Centre - Emergency overdose instructions from the Simplification Centre
The Simplification Centre has a group of volunteer designers who do ‘Simple Actions’ to rehabilitate an … Read moreEmergency overdose instructions from the Simplification Centre - New benefits application from Project Re:form of Civilla
The design group Civilla, in Michigan, has a new legal/government benefits document design, under the … Read moreNew benefits application from Project Re:form of Civilla - The Moscow Project
The Moscow Project is another visual storytelling project to show events and policies’ relationships. It is … Read moreThe Moscow Project - Law of the Land policy tracker
The Center for American Progress has a policy-tracking/visualization too, Law of the Land Project. It offers an … Read moreLaw of the Land policy tracker - Visualization of state spending and policy
This visualization web app from the Urban Institute has a very interesting, complicated design to … Read moreVisualization of state spending and policy - Juro’s privacy policy communication
The UK legal startup Juro, which works on improving contracts, has a new design for … Read moreJuro’s privacy policy communication - Empowering Investors with Social Annotation When Saving for Retirement by Junius Gunaratne, Jeremy Burke, and Oded Nov
Another article documenting new ways to improve people’s financial decision-making, from Junius Gunaratne, Jeremy Burke, … Read moreEmpowering Investors with Social Annotation When Saving for Retirement by Junius Gunaratne, Jeremy Burke, and Oded Nov - Using Interactive “Nutrition Labels” for Financial Products, by Junius Gunaratne and Oded Nov
Another interesting academic study of new interventions to increase understanding: from New York University professors Junius … Read moreUsing Interactive “Nutrition Labels” for Financial Products, by Junius Gunaratne and Oded Nov
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