Lawyers Learning Design
I love it when friends whose careers are different than mine send me content that connects our diverse interests. That's the case with the podcast above about the Legal Design Lab that my friend Ben, a lawyer, sent me. The Legal Design Lab is at the Stanford D School and connects law students with design thinking practices. It's fascinating.
Margaret Hagen shares, in the episode, that law is known for projects that end in detailed reports. But, that the Legal Design Lab program, built on a lab-based model, leads to new products, better services, and strategies. She says that the students "solve problems, by doing things," and that they work toward "system solutions, rather than patches."
The Legal Design Lab is more evidence that crossing interdisciplinary skillsets gives an advantage. The program invites students and educators from different schools at Stanford. In doing so, the law students are exposed to new methods, tools, and opportunities. Hagan says that the students are "jumping from traditional roles," into new non-traditional career paths. The students are "future-proofing" themselves by attaining disparate capabilities.
That's what happens when lawyers think like designers. What happens when a designer thinks like a lawyer? I don't know the answer to that question, but my friend Ben shared how a lawyer solves problems, and I appreciate the approach:
“Legal problem solving, at least in part, trains you to understand why something is the way it is; a lot of analogical thinking; and how to drill down to what is the important and determinative part of a problem—how not to get sidetracked on the parts that don’t answer the question.”
That's sound wisdom for problem-solving, regardless of the field. More often, my approach has been pretty sloppy. Usually, I gather as much information as possible and overwhelm myself. I'm learning, from both Ben and my design professors, to frame one problem at a time (that's the hard work) and to seek content/resources that help answer that specific question.
My hunch? It will be an advantage to think like a lawyer (as a designer).