A group of colleagues, including our Lab staff, wrote a manifesto: Helena Haapio, Rossana Ducato, Monica Palmirani, Stefania Passera, Arianna Rossi. The premise is plain. The legal system can be made more human-centered, and design is how you get there. We call the group the Legal Design Alliance. Most people just say LeDA.
LeDA is a network of lawyers, designers, technologists, and academics who want law to work better for the people who actually use it. That means everyone who has to read a contract, fill out a court form, or work out what an official notice is asking of them, not only the lawyers, judges, and regulators who write those things.
What would law look like if it were designed around the people who use it? The manifesto is our answer, and it comes in three parts. Attitudes are the mindset: human-centered, preventive, interdisciplinary. Goals are what we aim for: clarity, trust, applicability. Approaches are how we work: problem-based, visual-first, prototyped, evaluated. It takes a few minutes to read.
We are publishing it at a good moment. The MIT journal Design Issues ran a special issue, “The Rise of Legal Design,” with studies on redesigned government systems, privacy communication, and legal aid. The field is growing, and it needs a shared statement of what it stands for.
Alongside the manifesto we keep a reading list. It collects the academic and practical work that shows legal design in action, from contract visualization to court redesign to privacy icons. It is a good place to start if you are new to the field, or if you need evidence to bring to a skeptical colleague.
The version 1 manifesto is written and signed, and we are already collecting comments toward a version 2. Legal design is still a young field. The work of making law usable is nowhere near finished, and there is room for more lawyers, designers, and researchers who want to build it.
If it resonates, sign on. Read the manifesto at legaldesignalliance.com.