Legal design is an emerging field involving the application of service design methods and mindsets to legal problems e.g. in access to justice projects or for clearer contracts (M Hagan, Law by Design 2015). Its interaction with legal education has focussed, so far, on providing design training for students via elective programmes (D Jackson ‘Human-Centred Legal Tech: Integrating design in legal education’ (2016) Law Teacher 82-97).

This seminar will outline the nature and development of legal design and focus on using design thinking as a development framework, mindset and methodology for all sorts of mainstream legal education development projects.

It will outline how design thinking can promote deep collaboration, genuine student-centredness and innovative and inclusive outcomes in legal education projects of all kinds. Attendees will be introduced to key design thinking methods (M Stickdorn, Service Design Doing (O’Reilly 2016)) together with examples of their use in curriculum development projects and will be encouraged to consider their applicability to their own current projects or legal education challenges.

The methods and tools will include: project planning so as to build in deep collaboration; building user personas to keep student experience visible in decision-making; designing a universal icon set to demonstrate linked learning between modules; and service safaris where staff walk in the footsteps of students to try to better understand their experiences.