The Aesthetics of Legal Design: Current Achievements

Key conclusions

Legal Design makes it possible to adapt complex texts so they’re easier to understand

“Without feedback, without data collection, it’s really hard to build a quality structure or a quality process. Unfortunately, the conservative legal environment sometimes commits the sin of withdrawing into itself and creating nice paperwork for itself. And you’re lucky if it’s nice. […] There is some scepticism as to whether the things we write are serious, and it is serious and important work, it definitely is, but on the other hand, people sometimes forget that the paperwork has to be understandable, especially if it’s b2c. That is, if we write up a contract, a manual, or some other kind of document, and it’s read by someone who lacks the knowledge that you are lucky enough to have, they need to make the information understandable somehow. First of all, we have to avoid getting lost, if you’ll forgive my saying it, in the artifice of legal writing, legal knowledge, and have to succeed in conveying information as correctly as possible. The difficulty lies in preserving the legal meaning of the information without distorting it,” Mirza Chiragov, Practicing Lawyer, Follower of LegalTech and Legal Design.

“After we changed our approach to guidelines by reworking the usual instruction manual, which was a 16-page document in Word... we held a training session, and there was a survey of colleagues as to whether everything was clear and what needed to be changed, what could be changed. The results have obviously been very positive, assessments have been great, and people really got it. The training was understandable. The instructions were understandable. We can see that people are picking up the tools we’ve given them, and they’re working,” Maria Doroshenko, General Director, LegalPics.

PROBLEMS

Legal Design is not part of a basic legal education, it is something extra

“How proficient should a person with Legal Design skills be? They should probably do Legal Writing, which is part of Legal Design, as much as possible in university. How many of our universities teach Legal Writing as a separate discipline? Very few, I would think. It’s always a supplementary course somewhere, and you’re lucky if you find a course at all, though writing quality documents is a very important skill to have,” Mirza Chiragov, Practicing Lawyer, Follower of LegalTech and Legal Design.

“Lawyers don’t usually learn how to write contracts. They’d rather say, ‘OK, I’ll write it myself,’ than give it to the procurement department or something, or they go and make a draft and then correct it themselves when there are additions to it. In other words, they don’t study, they don’t get training. Training is motivation. Legal Design can helpdevelop this interaction. [...] The message of this measure is that legal [relationships] are necessary in any work - when concluding contracts, when interacting with external clients, and so on. This is very important, but it can be done with any kind of online course, including one on legal techniques. They are aimed at improving the skills of the lawyers themselves but can be carried out as part of a general educational enhancement for all,” Denis Primakov, Head of International Law and Compliance, Faberlik.

Courts have started to open to Legal Design, but tools are lacking

“Now, even internationally, since covid began, even the way people perceive courts in different jurisdictions has changed – they’ve started to hold online hearings, with recordings and so on. In other words, they’ve begun to simplify things even within the court, though it is, of course, a very conservative institution, and the courts themselves have begun to move towards, I wouldn’t say, of course, Legal Design, because sometimes we look at court rulings, and Legal Design is nowhere to be found, though in Russia they write very concisely – we’re not talking about British judges who write 200 pages. We do save the parties’ time on reading, so they’ve started to move in that direction too. [...] We need to move on, and that probably means the courts are finally getting their turn, because we need to do something there,” Denis Primakov, Head of International Law and Compliance, Faberlik.

“I really like the topic of Legal Design in courts because it is a prime example of how one can combine different methods and tools to achieve what one wants, to help achieve the desired result. [...] The main goal is to get your position across competently and correctly without taking a lot of time. [...] Apply tools that allow you to read faster without losing, most importantly, the legal content of the text - time-lines, diagrams of the same related parties, structure, quality Legal Writing with margins, paragraphs, ‘air’ to make them more readable. You have to understand who they’re addressed to. Of course, if they’re addressed to a judge, the document should be more serious and apply methods that make them easier to understand,” Mirza Chiragov, Practicing Lawyer, Follower of LegalTech and Legal Design.

“From the point of view of corporate institutions, I would like to say that there is a lack of tools. Rather, there are many tools, but either you have to spend time learning the difference between them because the company needs internal auditing, reporting so you don’t lose out, especially if the company is multi-level, when there are lots of subsidiaries. From this point of view, it’s important to understand Legal Design and shape it internally in terms of approaches, which Legal Design tool is better, or which QuickBooks is better for a particular area. Once again, though, in terms of sanctions compliance, all the European and foreign IT mechanisms are gone now. There are literally one or two left in Russia, but we’re open to new development tools right now just in the IT sphere, in legal IT, because this is now very much in demand with business in many ways,” Denis Primakov, Head of International Law and Compliance, Faberlik.

SOLUTIONS

Legal design visualization allows information to reach more people 

“We’re talking with our colleagues. There are quite a number of tools at our disposal. We also have a ‘Knowledge Base’, a legal chatbot, which not everyone was prepared for. [...] I would strongly advise that before anyone introduce anything in this area for communication and support for this whole beautiful legal design story to ask: “Do you really need any of this, colleagues?” Because it really matters. When we realised that, we started using surveys. We have our own “How’s it going?” product, and we asked our colleagues how they wanted us to talk about the information security management system. [...] The guys told us: ‘Give us pictures. We want pictures. We need visualisations.’ [...] We talked to the IT people and found a good solution, and it really works,’ Maria Doroshenko, General Director, LegalPics.

“The overall objective is to find this universal, simple language that everyone can understand. Since we all grew up on good Soviet and Russian cartoons, visualisation is a tool that everyone understands,” Maksim Proksh, Adviser to the Chairman, All-Russian Socio-State Organization Russian Creative Products Rights Transaction Center.

For more, see the ROSCONGRESS.ORG Information and Analytical System.

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