Legal Design

The deployment of design principles within a legal context has gained some traction in recent years, with exciting work being done on contract design, policy design and legal education too.

The legal world is waking up to the fact that actually it would be quite helpful if we designed legal documentation so that those who need to use it can understand it. We have got used to a world where we sign up for things without thinking, clicking through the dull terms and conditions in order to get at the product.

Viewing law as a service rather than some deluxe product allows us to assess it by different means: focusing in on how usable and accessible they really are and making changes to ensure complexity is reduced or even eradicated.

It might seem alien to imagine living in a country where you did not understand your rights, particularly those that relate to your own body, but for Nepali women living in rural communities (some ?% of the population), this is a reality.

The rest of the world looked on in admiration at two landmark judgments made by the Supreme Court of Nepal but most of the population don’t know anything of the judgments or why they changed the law for them personally. We wanted to apply design-thinking to this problem and see what we could do to change perceptions both for the Nepali community and those in the legal/government sector.