Design in Legal Education

A visually rich, experience-led collection
exploring what design can do for legal education.

A visually rich, experience-led collection exploring what design can do for legal education.

In recent decades design has increasingly come to be understood as a resource to improve other fields of public, private and civil society practice. Today legal design – that is, the application of design-based methods to legal practice – is increasingly embedded in lawyering across the world.

This new publication brings together experts from multiple disciplines, professions and jurisdictions to reflect upon how designerly mindsets, processes and strategies can enhance teaching and learning across higher education, public legal information and legal practice. It will be of interest and use to those teaching and learning in any and all of those fields.

A conversation between the editors

Emily Allbon

Emily Allbon

Associate Professor of Law
City Law School
Amanda Perry-Kessaris

Amanda Perry-Kessaris

Professor of Law
Kent Law School

Explore the chapters

Designing access to the law: An ethical perspective

by Emily MacLoud

What are the intended and unintended consequences of adopting design in legal education? What duties do educators owe to their students or lawyers to their clients? How should these practitioners behave? This chapter seeks to unpack the reasoning behind these questions, explore the ethical implications of using design methods in legal education and identify several methods used to support ethical design, which can be applied in the legal education sphere. This chapter aims to nourish a rich and critical ethical perspective that will enable educators and practitioners to think more deeply about the role of design in legal education.

Emily MacLoud is a legal design enthusiast, committed to access to justice. She currently leads the digital team at Law Centres Network and sits on the executive committee for Pro Bono Connect. Prior to her current role, she worked across a variety of projects, exploring how design can be used to make legal services and systems more effective, efficient and satisfying. She has also served on the committee for London Legal Hackers and delivered workshops across England about legal design. She holds a BA - Psychology with the degree of Bachelor of Laws from Macquarie University, Australia.

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