This chapter proposes that the methods and mindsets of service design can be usefully applied to the design of a whole law degree curriculum. It outlines how a team from Lancashire Law School, UCLan, UK, used the Stanford model of design thinking to re-imagine how they could deliver the first year of an LLB programme. This covered the structure of the teaching week, pedagogies and learning communities, and student support.

As this was the first attempt to use design thinking in this structured and intentional way in relation to a general law degree, the chapter takes a very practical approach. It explains how we used methods such as UX research, user personas, ideation, co-creation, and prototyping in the curriculum design process. We reflect on what we learnt from the experience; that this is a positive and energising way of working with colleagues, that it generates innovative ideas that are centred on the needs of students, but that it does not lessen the volume of work or the challenges of implementing novel ideas across a large law school.

This was an ‘all in’ end-to-end service design project, but we propose that the flexibility of service design lends itself to the use of individual methods, alone or in combination with others, to re-think a wide range of regular activities that take place within a law school, from open days and induction to assessment and graduation.