On July 26th, Justis co-hosted a Student Legal Design Sprint with Emily Allbon of The City Law School, University of London, where a group of highly engaged students began to apply Legal Design to real-world problems, identified by a range of industry experts. A number of student teams then went forward and took on the summer challenge of developing Legal Design solutions to these real-world problems.
On September 6th the student teams returned to London to present their ideas to a panel of judges, including Emily Allbon and Caroline Sipos from The City Law School, James Steiner from the global design firm, Method, and Matthew Terrell from Justis.
#TeamConsumer
Tasked with applying legal design to the Consumer Rights Act, Team Consumer created a visual solution, considering a wide range of age groups and needs. The team conducted thorough research using a variety of methodologies to develop and validate their ideas, which resulted in a creative solution that could assist consumers in understanding their rights and navigating the lengthy Consumer Rights Act with greater ease.
Jessica Twumasi and Jade-Amanda Laporte of City, University of London, and Tom Mak from the University of York from Team Consumer showing how they have developed their idea from Day One.
Team Consumer’s iteration on a section of their visual solution to help the general public understand the Consumer Rights Act following their primary research and user feedback.
#TeamTenancy
Throughout university life, almost every student will be tasked with reading at least one tenancy agreement. Understanding this information is both important to the tenant and landlord. Therefore, Team Tenancy had the brilliant solution of separating the important parts of the agreement for both parties and using icons and illustrations to simplify the process of navigating the document by signposting the most relevant information.
Ms Simon from the University of West London and Clinton Walker from Nottingham Trent University from Team Tenancy walking us through the key parts of a tenancy agreement.
A slide from Team Tenancy’s presentation, demonstrating how the use of icons and smaller sections of text can help end-users understand key information about their contract.
An early-stage concept illustration from Team Tenancy, showing a variety of ways in which a tenant may cause disruption to their neighbours.
#TeamUniversity
Focusing on the importance of students understanding their contract with the university they are enrolled at; Team University presented a detailed analysis of the current spectrum of university contracts that exist and developed a simple solution built upon the idea of a flow diagram. This solution would help students from all backgrounds navigate the complexities of a contract and highlight the important and relevant sections to them.
Team University was awarded with Best Presentation
Reem Ayad from University College London alongside Alexandra Matveeva and Lekhika Chaudhary from City, University of London, from Team University, showing how long a typical university contract can be.
The decision tree from Team University’s solution to help students navigate their university contract, and to ultimately compile terms relevant to each student.
#TeamSocial (Winners)
Many of us will have used a social network at one point. But did you read the terms and conditions? Not many have according to the research conducted by Team Social who set out to make the terms and conditions of a popular social networking app comprehensible and engaging to the app’s popular user group of teenagers. Team Social conducted independent and insightful research, applied the end-user design techniques they learn from Day 1 of the Legal Design Sprint and developed a full storyboard of the app’s terms and conditions.
Team Social was declared the winning team from this year’s Legal Design Sprint by the panel of judges.
Maheen Bukhari, Christina DeSouza and Jessica Brown from City, University of London, from Team Social, alongside Emily Allbon and Matthew Terrell
A slide from Team Social’s presentation, demonstrating how the use of personalisation can make terms and conditions easier to understand, and that this approach encouraged more people to read the terms and conditions.
Where next?
Legal Design is still making its way into the public eye, and organisations are beginning to explore legal design solutions to help their clients and end users better understand contracts and important legal information. This Legal Design Sprint demonstrates that law students have the ability and motivation to drive legal design forward.
Following the success of this year’s Legal Design Sprint, we are looking forward to 2019 and additional events to help provide the public with greater access to justice through legal design. For more information on future events, please contact Matthew Terrell and Emily Allbon.
The presenters from the Legal Design Sprint Day 2 alongside Emily Allbon.
A huge thank you!
Finally, we would like to thank everyone who supported this event including:
Sandrine Herbert-Razafinjato and James Steiner from Method, Phil Richards from Jisc, Claire Stripp and David Harris from Browne Jacobson LLP, Caroline Sipos from The City Law School, the team at Janders Dean International, Daniel Hoadley from the ICLR, Dr. Liz Dowthwaite from University of Nottingham, Andrew Maynard from Ruby Datum, Peter Bradley and Alan Wylie from Citizens Advice, Richard Mabey from Juro, Clemence Tanzi and Omefe Uduebor from qLegal, and everyone who attended including all the fantastic students!
Interested in learning more?
You can find out more about our Day 1 of our Legal Design Sprint here You can also read Emily Allbon’s thoughts on Day One, and the student perspective here.
Tweets from the day:
Had an amazing time at #LegalDesign2018 yesterday! Didn’t win but enjoyed seeing all the presentations! Can’t wait to take this further. #TeamUniversity pic.twitter.com/lDMUjSaXhA
— Lekhika (@lekhikaaaa) September 7, 2018
One of many highlight from the #LegalDesign Sprint: @lekhikaaaa showing us how challenging university contacts can be to read and understand for students👨🎓👩🎓 pic.twitter.com/j30N48kCsT
— Matt (@JustisMatt) September 7, 2018
Listening to Team Consumo giving a simply marvellous presentation at the @Justis_London #legaldesign sprint. pic.twitter.com/gZj7PPSXBm
— Daniel Hoadley (@DanHLawReporter) September 6, 2018
I now know how contestants feel in *insert business/entrepreneurial/creative competition* whilst waiting for judges to deliberate… Such a fun Day 2 and incredible experience all round – Here’s to 4 AMAZING teams! 🍾🥂👏 #LegalDesignSprint2018 @JustisMatt @lawbore pic.twitter.com/WTfs1wYl05
— Jade-Amanda Laporte (@ladyjadeamanda) September 6, 2018
Down at @CityUniLondon today for Justis #legaldesign sprint. Really excited to see the result of what the students have been working on for a month. #accesstojustice #legal #design pic.twitter.com/3Lgw21ZD0d
— qLegal (@qLegal_) September 6, 2018
#LegalDesign2018 winners #TeamSocial!! Amazing competition, looking forward to seeing all of the designs being taken further! Big thank you @lawbore & @JustisMatt pic.twitter.com/VcidNtQnrd
— Jess Brown (@JessicaCEBrown) September 6, 2018
A huge thank you to everyone who supported and took part in the Legal Design Sprint. It’s always a pleasure to be surrounded by so many talented and motivated individuals 🎉👏🏻 #LegalDesign2018 @lawbore pic.twitter.com/FkxMPOraBA
— Matt (@JustisMatt) September 7, 2018
