“[It] is being used as both as a strategic tool and a way to enhance overall user experience in the law, particularly for client-facing legal services. The process of taking a human-centered design approach to the preparation, development and delivery of legal solutions results in both better experiences for users/clients and more useful, productive and profitable solutions for business,” she explained.

“Within government and courts, the focus is on using legal design as a tool to enhance overall accessibility to justice and legal recourse as well as enhance legal understanding. There are some great examples in Finland, Sao Paulo, Brazil and [the] Netherlands.

“For corporate organisations, the focus here is to use legal design in various strategic ways – to modernise thinking and ways of working in legal teams, to develop new products and services, to identify strategic opportunities for new ways to better serve clients, and to redesign legal information, contracts, documents and compliance.”

Here in Australia, we are “faring well”, Ms Klemola mused, with more and more law schools incorporating legal design courses into the curriculum and an increasing number of legal design initiatives across the country, particularly in relation to access to justice and education, she said.

“In addition, there is a small, yet growing population of individuals offering legal design services within the country. Also, several professionals and firms reaching out to Observ Agency are in fact from Australia, which is a clear indicator of growing momentum, interest and desire for expertise in this area,” she noted.

“In Europe we are working on numerous strategic legal design projects to enhance legal services, products and overall experiences across government, law firms and in-house spanning industries like fashion/retails, banking and insurance. There is room for Australia to focus on and invest in and deliver concrete legal design projects in these areas too.”

But while students are getting greater exposure to new ways of thinking and practising, it is more difficult for graduates and young lawyers already in the profession, she said, with opportunities to work and improve one’s skill set in legal design being “dependent on their employer actively pursuing legal design initiatives within their organisation”.

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When asked if the younger generation is particularly well placed to embrace legal design, Ms Klemola said such an embrace is not a matter of age, but rather of mindset.

“At its core, legal design is multidisciplinary and intergenerational. What this means is tapping into the collective genius of various experts from differing fields and having a level of diversity in terms of age, ethnicity, gender etc. in teams to solve complex legal challenges. This is the proven way to create the best results and solutions,” she submitted.

“Interestingly, through my work as a legal design adviser we have encountered younger people who are less comfortable with this style of working than their older colleagues; or then vice versa. It is not a matter of age, but rather mindset. 

“It comes down to an individual’s ability to adapt to change, challenge existing thought patterns and adopt new ways of working and doing – characteristics that are crucial to thrive in today’s global economy.”