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Design meet law firms

The once square black and white legal which come usually with huge, monotonous contracts – all of this is gaining new traces these days.

A contract, in addition to being read by lawyers, also passes through the hands of ordinary people who have nothing to do with law. Pages and pages written, clauses with countless items can scare and bore clients. A new way of thinking about how contracts communicate with clients and lawyers is one of the main objective of legal design.

Negotiate better

It is proven that colors and shapes affect the brain in different ways, orange for example reaches the brain in the Reward System – It responds for pleasure and the need to repeat the pleasurable experience. And it has an effect of Change, expansion and dynamism. Yellow gives the message of transparency. Combined with other colors it can indicate credibility to your brain.

Infographics are also a way to transmit information in a playful and friendly way, facilitating the understanding of what is being said and presenting better the ideas. All of this – guarantees an advantage when negotiating. Using these techniques and working with the subconscious in a negotiation can make all the difference and be what differentiates a closed deal from a broken one.

Happier lawyers and clients

The long and similar contracts do not animate anyone, both lawyers and clients. Hours of reading and reviewing information on a giant contract make a lot of people unhappy and bored. If you are not in the area of ​​law is even worse, you have to read all those difficult words and phrases and still everything in small letters.

It is not just contracts, but presentations also suffer from this problem. For example – a 1 hour presentation with grey text only slides is also terrifying for anyone.

Modifying this scenario, with more playful and colorful contracts, visually pleasing presentations and with infographics, makes the environment lighter and a milder climate takes over the place, all of which contributes to a greater index of general happiness both in the law firms and for lawyers and clients..

Increasing productivity – Generating more value

We already know that such a change in design has positive impacts on happiness and negotiations, this makes the environment more productive and that lawyers are more committed to their tasks and can focus on what matters most pleasantly. All of this contributes not only to a friendlier and happier workplace but also business growth and general economic growth of the office.

Making law firms more accessible

Often what happens is that the average person signs contracts without even reading it all. Just looking at so many pages with long texts and small letters discourage reading and end up just subscribing to get rid of it. This ends up causing a lot of confusion, lawsuits and losses for both sides.

Making the contract more pleasant to read, and presentable to the common public, the law naturally becomes more accessible and new doors are opened. People who previously sign without even reading would be more interested in what they are agreeing to and would avoid a lot of headaches in the future, making it more accessible, so that the operators of the law, the people who benefit from it and society as a whole all can enjoy a simpler and more functional justice.

Many law schools are already thinking about the subject and creating study groups on this topic.

Stanford University, already well recognized for its innovation, does not leave the legal area out and created the Legal Design Lab. Another that is not far behind is the Northeastern University School of Law that created NuLawLab to discuss programs and projects using design thinking as a tool. There is also Vanderbuilt Law School and Berkeley Law, which also have programs focused on using design thinking methods to solve their problems

All this innovation in the archaic world of law shows an evolution. Design thinking is already a reality in the world and law is not left out, the world is increasingly competitive and distinctions like this can make a difference in contracted offices, closed negotiations and the general well-being of employees, lawyers and clients. The world is changing at a very fast speed, and we are following a simpler, clearer and more accessible justice to emerge.

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