Human-Centered Legal Tech: Integrating Design in Legal Education
The Law Teacher, Vol. 50, No. 1, pp. 82-97 (2016). DOI: 10.1080/03069400.2016.1146468
Northeastern University School of Law Research Paper No. 262-2016
Posted: 23 Apr 2016 Last revised: 8 Mar 2022
Date Written: April 12, 2016
Abstract
As the legal profession begins in earnest to deploy digital technology in service and information delivery, greater numbers of law schools are including technology instruction in their curricula. The prospect of more lawyers with digital expertise, while a welcomed development, amplifies a parallel imperative that new technology tools be designed to be responsive to evolving human needs. This paper argues that coupling technology instruction with training in human-centered design approaches offers legal educators a means of preparing lawyers not only able to generate novel technology solutions, but able to fundamentally improve legal institutions and programs through those results. The use of design pedagogies within legal education also provides educators and students with the opportunity to reimagine the law as a creative pursuit by exploring structured methods like empathy via observation, prototyping, and the embrace of failure, with learning outcomes that hold the potential to transform how lawyers approach their role. This paper concludes by detailing the insights the NuLawLab has gained in the application of design methodologies in the creation of digital legal resources, and the modifications we are adopting to the approach to produce better results for the legal sector.
Keywords: Design, Legal Education
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