Practicing Legal Design

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Practicing Legal Design

By Marco Imperiale
Globe Law and Business September 2025

Specifications

ISBN-13
9781837231195
Publisher
Globe Law and Business
Publication
September 2025
Format
Paperback
Jurisdiction
U.K. ? Countri(es) for reference only

Details

Legal design is no longer a niche concept but a growing movement reshaping how legal services are delivered, understood, and experienced. While discussions around innovation in law have gained momentum, meaningful adoption often lags behind ambition. Many legal professionals recognize the need for transformation but struggle to integrate a prototype-driven and interdisciplinary approach into their working environments.

This book bridges the gap between theory and execution, offering a comprehensive guide to implementing legal design in law firms, legal departments, institutions, and other legal service environments. From exploring user-centered approaches to structuring design-driven processes, it provides actionable insights into how legal design can enhance clarity, accessibility, and efficiency in legal services.

Drawing on extensive experience in legal design, innovation, and transformation, this book blends strategic vision with hands-on experience. It goes beyond high-level discussions to address the real-world challenges of integrating legal design thinking into legal practice, whether that means overcoming organizational resistance, aligning stakeholders, or proving the value of legal design to decision makers. It also offers practical tools and frameworks to navigate the hidden complexities of legal design projects, ensuring that design-driven change is not only embraced but sustained.

Whether you’re just starting your journey in legal design or already working on innovation projects, this book serves as a practical resource that you can revisit as challenges and opportunities arise. By blending theory with real-world application, it provides a roadmap for making legal design a fundamental and effective part of legal practice.

Table of Contents

Preface
Heidi Gardner
Intro to the book. Why (A)nother legal design book

Part I. Ontology
Intro to part 1. Opening the door
Chapter 1: So this is legal design
1. Law and the Oral B toothbrush
2. A definition (or many definitions?)
3. What legal design is not
4. A Panacea for all evil. Well, not..
5. A global movement
6. Prototyping in the legal world
7. The legal designer. A new job?
8. When law firms offer legal design services

Chapter 2: Principles of legal design
1. Why do we need to speak about principles?
2. Humancentrism
3. Co-creation
4. Diversity and inclusion
5. A not-hierarchapterical approachapter
6. Process first
7. Divergence and convergence
8. Fail fast
9. How might we?
10. Productification
11. Kiss (aka Keep It Simple Stupid!)
12. Dignity
13. + 1
14. Future principles

Chapter 3: The why of legal design
1. New context, new demand
2. A form of innovation. Or innovations
3. The legal experience
4. The illusion of reading (legal) texts
5. F-Patterns and scanning. How we actually read
6. A neurological case for legal design
7. A nudging law
8. Is legal design just for b2c?
Chapter 4: Abandoning the legalese. Communicating plain
1. A quick intro to plain language
2. What does it mean to communicate clearly?
3. Benefits of clarity and comprehension
4. The plain language ISO
5. A world in emojis
6. Notes about inclusive language
7. The intercultural factor
Thoughtful perspective: Michapterael Doherty

Part II. Legal design and…
Intro. Beyond legal design
Chapter 1: Legal design and Other Designs
1. Legal design Vs.
2. Legal design or contract design?

Chapter 2: Legal design and sustainability
1. Legal design and the United Nations 2030 Agenda
2. Enhancing accessibility
3. Legal design and neurodiversity, pt 1. Designing
for a neurodiverse audience
Startup Law and Strategy
4. Legal design and neurodiversity pt.
2. When the legal
designer is neurodivergent
5. About clear communication as human right
6. Redesigning governance towards transparency

Chapter 3: Legal Design and artificial intelligence
1. The evolution of legal design with generative AI
2. From design thinking to emerging thinking
3. How about AI as final user?
4. Thinking before building.
5. Ethical considerations and challenges
br>
Chapter 4: Legal design and dark patterns
1. What is a dark pattern?
2. Dark patterns in practice
3. Why legal design is important for dark patterns (and potential related risks)

Chapter 5: Legal design and proactive law
1. What is proactive law? Evolutions and significance
2. Benefits of proactive law
3.
5 main barriers to proactive law and potential pathways
to success
4. Legal design and proactive law
Chapter 6: Legal design and gamification
1. A quick intro to gamification
2. Gamification in the legal field. Strategies and applications
3. Challenges and ethical considerations of gamification
in the legal field
4. A virtual legal experience
5. Legal design and gamification
Thoughtful perspective: Ashleigh Ruggles and Maclen Stanley

Part III. From theory to practice
Intro to part 3. Law and the Ikea instructions
Chapter 1: Setting the stage for our legal design project
1. Choosing the format, part 1. On-line, in person, or hybrid?
2. Choosing the format, part 2. Hackathons, jams, and periodic
sessions
3. Choosing the format, part 3. Parallel, serial, or both?
4. Preparing a legal design project
5. Involving the right players and creating an
inclusive environment
6. Developing a preliminary chapterecklist
7. Creating common knowledge

Chapter 2: The legal design toolbox
1. The platforms
2. Most common visual tools
3. Icons
4. Patterns libraries
5. Tools for law firms
6. Readability tests and software
7. An always evolving scenario

Chapter 3: 12 challenges of a legal design projects (and tips to overcome them)
1. Challenge n.1. Is this thing valid?
2. Challenge n.2. Budget
3. Challenge n.3. Internal selling.
4. Challenge n.4. Managing time constraints
5. Challenge n.5. Quantifying benefits. Measuring what’s often hidden
6. Challenge n.6. void deviating from the original project
7. Challenge n.7. The Tetris agenda. Balancing competing priorities
8. Challenge n.8. avigating interdisciplinary teamwork
9. Challenge n.9. Establishing a structured framework
10. Challenge n.10. Different clients, different organizations, different processes. Adapting to varied needs Startup Law and Strategy
11. Challenge n.11. The smartest ones in the room
12. Challenge n.12. Modification and editability of legal design outputs

Chapter 4: 12 tips for great legal design sessions
1. Tip n.1. Don’t let equity partners and general counsels run the show
2. Tip n.2. Manage interruptions wisely
3. Tip n.3. Be cautious with recording sessions
4. Tip n.4. Use of AI tools for minutes
5. Tip n.5. Assign homework duties
6. Tip n.6. dopt forward, not backward thinking
7. Tip n.7. Rely on evangelists
8. Tip n.8. Maintain an informal approachapter
9. Tip n.9. Less words, more practice
10. Tip n.10. Celebrate small wins
11. Tip n.11. Manage cognitive load
12. Tip n.12. Defer judgment

Chapter 5: The 12 most common mistakes in legal design (aka the best lessons I learned)
1. Mistake n.1. Thinking you know the user
2. Mistake n.2. Considering the contract out of its system
3. Mistake n.3. Raising excessive expectations
4. Mistake n.4. Expecting legal design to fix everything
5. Mistake n.5. Losing the initial enthusiasm
6. Mistake n.6. Treating documents as static artefacts
7. Mistake n.7. Assuming our documents are already good enough
8. Mistake n.8. Jumping directly to the solutions
9. Mistake n.9. Lack of interdisciplinary collaboration
10. Mistake n.10. Downplaying resistance to chapterange within legal teams
11. Mistake n.11. Underestimating regulatory and ethical considerations
12. Mistake n.12. Treating legal design as a one-time effort

Chapter 6: Practical applications of AI for legal design projects
1. Choosing the right engine. A short guide to AI tools
2. Building with the machapterine. Prototyping in practice
3. From drafting to conversating. Specific uses of AI
4. More tools, better questions

Chapter 7: Leveraging on the learning experience
1. Gathering feedback and listening for learning
2. Maintaining momentum
3. After the project is done. Turning (more) ideas into action
Thoughtful perspective: Sally Guyer

Part IV. The Leonardo Framework
Introduction to the fourth part. Towards a common ground
Chapter 1: The Leonardo framework
1. A bunchapter of disclaimers
2. How about 3 levels of legal design?
3. Level 1. The base of the pyramid
4. Level 2. The magic of legal design thinking
5. Level 3. Metricizing the law

Chapter 2: Level 1 of the Leonardo framework
1. Preamble. Always users first
2. Step 1. Look. Read. Listen
3. Step 2. Clarifying the language.
Part 1. Things to avoid
4. Step 3. Clarifying the language.
Part 2. Things to do
5. Step 4. A matter of how
6. Step 5. Refining our typography
7. Thinking in terms of information archapteritecture

Chapter 3: Level 2 of the Leonardo Framework
1. From level 1 to level 2. From intervention to intention
2. Step 1. What do we want to achapterieve? What impact do we want to have?
3. Step 2. Empathize
4. Step 3. Define
Startup Law and Strategy
5. Step 4. Ideate
6. Step 5. Prototype
7. Step 6. Test
8. Step 7. Refining our work

Chapter 4: Level 3 of the Leonardo framework
1. From level 2 to level 3
2. Why we need to measure impact
3. Working towards an impact analysis
4. Reflections about scalability
5. Delving into A/B testings
6. The measure of maturity
7. Three levels and Dante’s Paradise

Thoughtful perspective: M. Butterick
Conclusion. Legal design and the Ikigai.
A pathway to holistic fulfilment
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