Origin
The approach was named as legal design by Dr. Colette R. Brunschwig in 2001. In her dissertation "Visualization of Legal Norms — Legal Design", the ways to visualize legal norms were explored. Nowadays Dr. Brunschwig develops the content of the legal image database in the University of Zurich.
One of the ambassadors of legal design is Margaret Hagan. In 2013, she was an organizer of *Legal Design Jam*, a hackathon in Stanford University. The participants focused on law, design education, and journalism united to visualize and improve the Wikimedia’s new draft of a Trademark Policy. Later, Margaret Hagan published a *Law By Design* book, a legal design manifesto.
One of the ambassadors of legal design is Margaret Hagan. In 2013, she was an organizer of *Legal Design Jam*, a hackathon in Stanford University. The participants focused on law, design education, and journalism united to visualize and improve the Wikimedia’s new draft of a Trademark Policy. Later, Margaret Hagan published a *Law By Design* book, a legal design manifesto.
What legal design involves?
The user perceives the document not only as text but as a joint object. Therefore, the tools improve the documents with text and visual elements. As the approach developed, the set of tools expanded.
Tools
- Vocabulary & Sentences. As David Mellinkoff noted, Legal English is not as convenient as Common English. In legal design repeated and extraneous words are deleted so long sentences are shortened. At this step, oversimplification is a risk. The lawyer should be careful to preserve the legal content of the document
- Structure. The text is divided into blocks, headed by titles. They supply navigation helping the user to find the needed section quickly. For example, AirBus provides partners with a user-friendly and well-structured NDA in order to create the necessary environment of trust and confidence.
The improvement of the text includes:
- Graphic elements. They can be indicators of the sections. Shell uses visual contracts in its lubricant sale agreements to speed up negotiations.
- Data visualization. Schemes, bar charts, line graphs show the numbers more clearly than text.
- Comics. This kind of graphics helps to present the instructions and rules via characters and stories. The Australian bank Bankwest created comic version of the terms and conditions for its everyday transaction account.
The visualization consists from:
