Legal Design for Practice, Activism, Policy, and Research
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Author | Amanda Perry‐Kessaris |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12154 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 46, NUMBER 2, JUNE 2019
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 185±210
Legal Design for Practice, Activism, Policy, and Research
Amanda Perry-Kessaris*
This article offers an original integrated introduction to how to think
about what design can do for law; where to find examples of legal
design; and how to assess it. It identifies clear points of contact
between lawyerly concerns and designerly skills, knowledge, and atti-
tudes. It proposes that designerly ways can directly improve lawyerly
communication; and that they can also generate new structured-yet-
free spaces in which lawyers can be at once practical, critical, and
imaginative. The article foregrounds the , hitherto unrecognized,
diversity of existing legal design practice by drawing examples from
across four fields of lawyering: legal practice, legal activism, policy
making, and legal research. Emphasis is placed throughout on the need
for a critical approach to legal design ± that is, for legal design to be
thought about and done with a commitment to avoiding, exposing, and
remedying biases and inequalities.
INTRODUCTION
What can design do for law and who (ought to) care(s)? Since the making of
tools and the painting of caves became commonplace 2.5 million years ago,
human life has been increasingly entangled with design(s). Designs or
designed outcomes can include artefacts, images, sounds, and systems. The
range of design disciplines is continually, and now rapidly, expanding from
traditional fields of graphic design, which centres on typography, colour
185
*Kent Law School, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NZ, Kent, England
a.perry-kessaris@kent.ac.uk
Thanks to the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) and Kent Law School for
financial support of activities underpinning this research; Roger Cotterrell, Kate Bedford,
Richard Moorhead, Stefania Passera, and Steven Vaughan for comments on this and
related writing; Paul Bailey for my time as a student on the London College of
Communication MA in Graphic Media Design; and to every researcher, especially the
students, who has taken a leap of faith with me over the years.
ß2019 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2019 Cardiff University Law School
theory, and visual grammar; to product design which is concerned with
ergonomics and user interface; to software design which relies on linguistic
skills; and event design which includes attention to factors such as narrative.
This article is a design. In fact, it is a something of a co-design. My choices
as author have (mostly) determined the pattern of words; the publisher's
choices have determined the typeface, scale, and weight in which those
words appear, as well as the referencing style, margins, and so on; the
images were designed in India, the United States, Cyprus, and the United
Kingdom. You may have chosen to print it on a certain size and weight of
paper, or to read it on a particular type of screen (in which case your view is
also co-designed by whoever wrote the software). Each of these factors
individually and collectively influences whether and how a potential reader
receives, and is willing and able to respond to ± for example, by rejecting,
repurposing, reworking or relaying ± the messages in this article.
Legal design is a nascent field of thinking and practice, the contours and
content of which are emergent and contested. At its heart is a shared interest
in how design-based methods and attitudes might be deployed in relation to
legal matters. This article strengthens the case for legal design by offering an
original conceptual framework through which to think about legal design; a
varied selection of contemporary examples of legal design; and some criteria
with which to assess them. It does not address the methodological question
of how to do legal design. It begins by highlighting three lawyerly concerns:
the need to communicate; the need to balance structure and freedom; and the
need to be at once practical, critical, and imaginative. It then argues that
designerly ways (which emphasize communication, experimentation, and
`makin g things v isible a nd tangi ble'
1
) can both improv e lawyer ly
communication and generate new spaces of `structured freedom'
2
in which
lawyers can be at once practical, critical, and imaginative. Next, the article
offers examples of the application of designerly ways in a range of legal
spheres: legal practice, legal activism, policy making, and legal research.
Emphasis is placed throughout on the need for a critical approach to legal
design ± that is, for legal design to be thought about and done with a
commitment to avoiding, exposing, and remedying biases and inequalities.
In that spirit, the article concludes with an assessment of some of the risks
associated with legal design.
186
1 E. Manzini, Design, When Everybody Designs (2015) 31.
2 A. Perry-Kessaris, `The Pop-Up Museum of Legal Objects project: an experiment in
``socio-legal design''' (2017) 68(3) Northern Ireland Legal Q. 225 (Special Issue on
the Pop-Up Museum of Legal Objects).
ß2019 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2019 Cardiff University Law School
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