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

Teaching innovation in the age of technology: Educating lawyers for digital disruption using visually-oriented legal design principles

by Lisa Toohey, Monique Moore, Sara Rayment

In an era of disruptive and technological change to the legal landscape, law schools face the challenge of identifying how to equip law graduates with the necessary knowledge, attributes and skills, and deciding how much technology should be incorporated into the legal curriculum. This chapter reflects on our experiences developing an elective subject in Legal Design Thinking and Innovation at the University of Newcastle Law School, a course that was the first of its kind in an Australian Law School.   The chapter incorporates empirical research drawing on dozens of in-depth interviews from top Australian legal industry consultants, innovation experts, educators, and students engaging in emerging legal innovation, collected as part of a broader project examining lawyer engagement with innovation. Our research and findings suggest that exposure to technology alone is not the solution, but law schools need to foster four critical attributes, these include creativity, resilience, collaboration, and empathy.

Lisa Toohey is a Professor of Law at the University of Newcastle Australia, where she was a founder of the Legal Design and Innovation Initiative, and an Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales.  She has previously held Deputy Dean roles in teaching and in equity, diversity and inclusion.  Lisa teaches and researches in the fields of international trade law, legal design, and dispute resolution. Her research is focussed on the question of how individuals and groups understand and interpret their rights in order to resolve disputes at international, domestic, and transactional levels.  She has a particular interest in how individuals in civil disputes access and interpret legal information, and how legal design can be used as a tool to better facilitate understanding of legal information.

Monique Moore is a doctoral candidate in her final year undertaking a multi-disciplinary collaborative research project between the Law and Business Schools at the University of Western Australia. Her focal research examines the role of third-party contracting by innovative small firms operating in high technology industries, such as biotechnology. A central theme is exploring the impact of emerging stakeholder approaches to current corporate governance, traditionally predicated on shareholder primacy. Monique currently works at the Legal Design and Innovation Initiative on various research projects investigating the impact of innovation and technology on the future of law.  

Sara Rayment is the founder of Inkling Legal Design, a consultancy that reimagines legal services through design, law and technology.

Having worked as a lawyer for over 12 years, Sara blends legal expertise with human centred design principles to provide solutions for clients. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Newcastle. In the Financial Times 2021 awards, Sara was shortlisted for most innovative individual and Inkling was named winner in the Legal Design category.

Go back