Every day we observe a dangerous practice of a particular interpretation of legal provisions, which in today’s highly diversified society causes the polarization of entire social groups – and yet the law applies to all of us and should be applied by all of us. But what after legal provisions, if they are unclear, incomprehensible, badly designed? The solution can be legal design – an area of ​​design that introduces a new perspective to legal communication and legal services. It allows, among other things, to translate the complicated code of law into an accessible language oriented to the user in any social role. As part of the first edition of the Legal Design Forumwe tried to understand what is the specific synthesis of design techniques and deficits of the legal system. We invited designers, lawyers and linguists to participate in the debate. This year we would like to expand the formula to include the legitimacy of legal education in the field of socially oriented communication design. After all, the law is a specific, negotiated social contract – and thus communication is close.

As part of the Legal Design Forum organized by the Department of Graphics and  the Department of Law at SWPS University in Wrocław, we would like to look for design solutions to reduce the deficits of the education system and legal practice for the benefit of both parties – representatives of the legal sector and their current and future clients. We see a fundamental benefit in educating non-designers in socially oriented and systemic thinking, which in turn allows people to think of law in a human-oriented way in a specific social role. The importance of design thinking in non-design sectors of the market is aptly captured by Brian Reed’s observation – “Everything is designed, few things are designed well.” The law is also included in this set.

We are aware that the area of ​​legal education is very broad and it is difficult to unambiguously, time-limited operationalization. However, it seems to us that only the interdisciplinary approach, characterized by openness to change through design (change by design), will allow us to throw off the limitations of fragmentary manifestations of legal services in favor of a systemic view of mechanisms that can be managed in a human-friendly and participatory manner. We want to devote this discussion to the next edition of the Legal Design Forum.

We would like to invite you to participate in our initiative.