Legal Design Jam is a workshop format, inspired by service design jams and hackatons, aimed at challenging people to rethink and innovate the very concept of what a legal document should be, look and feel. I started organizing Legal Design Jam workshops in 2013, as a spin-off of my research and design work: the best way to convert people and show a different way of doing things is, in fact, let them do it in first person.

A Legal Design Jam brings together a group of motivated individuals, ideally from different fields (e.g. designers, lawyers, policy-makers, coders, innovators, business people…). Together, they give an extreme, user-centric makeover to a target legal document.

During an intensive, hands-on day, the participants ideate and prototype a new version of the chosen document, creating visualizations and good layouts, rethinking the structure of the document in terms of good storytelling and user needs, and where possible, simplifying its language.

Since 2013, over 20 Legal Design Jam workshops have been organized. The name and concept of the event have taken a life on their own, as other legal design innovators picked up the concept and adapted it to their needs (see e.g. Janders Dean’s Legal Data Design Jams, Legal Service Design Jam, and Comic Contract Jam)

The past Jams have been documented at www.legaldesignjam.com