How Legal Design Can Help Companies Communicate With Their Users

Global access to knowledge and technologies leads to the dramatic change of old professions and the emergence of new ones. In pursuit of efficiency, yesterday’s lawyers become today’s legal engineers, data scientists, and blockchain developers. Law companies, for their parts, apply more agile and creative approaches for the legal services delivery.

On the other hand, laws that regulate new technologies require more than documental obligations for organizations. To meet the requirements, companies must take technical measures, create a compliant software and step back from legalese to comply with consumer protection laws.

Legal complexities lead to the need for new approaches. One of such approaches can become the legal design, an interplay between design thinking and legal practice. The unusual principles for legal services aim at better understanding ‘users’ of law and their needs.

What is Legal Design?

Explained by Margaret Hagan in the ‘Law by Design’ book, legal design is an application of human-centered design to the world of law.

This application consists of many parts, which lawyers are used to speaking about, but not using in practice: finding new paths for the services delivery, applying the user-centered approach, and implementing a culture of innovation.

Legal Design does not end on the visual appearance of services, which is only the tip of the iceberg. Using mindsets and tools of the designer, the legal professional aims to put the user in a center and find the most suitable path for the problem-solving. Those mindsets and tools consist of:

1. Splitting complex problems into small and simple parts;
2. Engaging users of legal services by interviewing and collaborating with them;
3. Visualizing and mapping the user needs, interests, expectations, and values;
4. Working together with people from different expert areas, such as law, engineering, design, and marketing;
5. Prototyping solutions, getting them criticized and iterating. Using critical feedback as a source of improvement, not a constraint.

‘Design-driven’ legal services allow their consumer to understand legal rules better and make more informed and genuine decisions. Rather than leaving the user behind the process, the lawyer engages one in building personalized services.

Legal Complexities of Interface

For instance, from consumer and privacy perspective, the company must communicate with its users in a transparent, concise, and easily accessible way.

It is not enough to have legally perfect documentation. It requires companies to be user-friendly. Companies must create an interface of services, which ensures ‘privacy by design’ and allow its users to easily exercise their rights.

Being user-friendly in legal compliance only seem to be easy. Let’s take the example of Google. The Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), a French data protection authority, imposed a fine on the tech giant amounted to 50,000,000 euros on January 2019. The maximum fine was applied for the non-compliant User Interface:

1. Google failed to give its users detailed information about the sources of personal data collection, how long it stores the data and how Google created personalized advertisements. The user was required to switch up to six links and documents to learn the details. The CNIL considered this practice too vague and not transparent;
2. The French regulatory body invalidated the user consents to use their data. The reasons for this are (a) the user was not informed enough and (b) the consent was ‘bundle’ — the user can either agree to all types of data use or… cannot decline the collection of data at all.
   At the same time, the consent must be freely-given (with the option to decline) and genuine (separate consent for each type of data use).

UX of Legal Obligations

The ‘transparency’ principle in consumer protection means more than having a perfect documentation package. The classic legal approach and use of ‘legalese’ jargon will not help. Rather, it is necessary to take a look from the user experience, a layperson experience.

The services interface and design (especially, online services) must not only engage users to spend their money, but also give them appropriate information. From a legal perspective, the user interface must give enough capability to make informed decisions. This includes:

• Informing the users about services, goods or other features in a simple and understandable way. Visual representation and good examples help in explaining as well. As a result, the user understands details and legal consequences of the ‘deal’, which he concludes with the provider;
• Giving the user a genuine choice. When the user takes obligations, including paying a monthly subscription or sharing the information, she/he must have an opportunity to make a freely given consent. To the possible extent, the user must have two equal options — to accept or decline the offer. Nudging to ‘yes’ answers are also not welcome; and
• A user-oriented interface that allows users to control their legal choices, rights, and obligations. Sometimes, the design tends to hide rather than show a user’s control after one’s legal parameters.
  Good legal design lies in the opposite: it creates an intuitive and navigable system of control of user settings, including those that regulate terms of services.

Legal Design Thinking

Using the toolkit of design thinking, companies can solve the problem of the users. The starting point here is user legal needs and expectations.

How can the company address them? By giving users more control and becoming transparent for them, not for the team of lawyers. Fortunately, any company can use this approach in their daily operations.

A few steps to design user-friendly compliance:

1. Do user research. The best way how to understand the legal expectations of the users is to ask them about it: How and when would you like to be informed about your rights and obligations? What do you understand under the term “personal data”? How would you like to manage your rights and service terms?;
2. Initiate a collaboration between different expertise. While lawyers are good at game rules, the UX designer can help effectively represent the information and make interface usable. Maybe a help of a storyteller? Great. Eventually, explaining the rights and obligations in a story form can be a good idea. Bring them together and synthesize the legal solution fit for the users;
3. Use different means of expression. Text usually is the most popular (if not the only) form for legal documents. In the case of end-users, however, consider using other tools, such as illustrations and video clips, which can visually explain complex matters and consequences;
4. Use metrics. There can be many criteria for legal design quality before users: conciseness, plain language, accessibility, consent requirements (if it is informed, specific, and freely given). User expectations add requirements as well. Let these characteristics be the result metrics.
5. Prototype, get feedback and iterate. To tackle the issue best, develop multiple solutions to the problem. Create early prototypes. After it, crash-test them by the metrics and opinions from potential users and get the use of feedback. It allows to set aside the non-working solutions, find and improve the best working one in terms of the metrics.

Design thinking can apply to many areas of law. Legal practice has its own ‘providers’ and ‘users’, and there is quite a big room for its improvement in terms of design. Although organizations only began to apply legal design, it is becoming the “must” to comply with legal requirements. The more you understand legal user experience and its problems, the better you can perform before your users.