You have to appreciate a book that discusses Legal Design and puts design concepts into action by working with a fellow designer on the layout and functionality of the book itself. The results of The Legal Design Book: Doing Law in the 21st Century is both a great read for the content and the physical interaction with the book. Astrid Kohlmeier and Meera Klemola, Lawyers and Legal Designers, join us from Munich, Germany, and Helsinki, Finland respectively to discuss their motivation in writing a book designed to raise awareness of legal design concepts and tools to the legal industry.
We define Legal Design and discuss the ten philosophies that legal design professionals need to understand as they implement these ideas and processes within their organizations. There is a role for legal designers within the industry, and it is one that we are constantly defining and redefining at the moment. And as we define it, we must be able to measure it and prove the value and return on investment as well. And the focus cannot simply be how lawyers and legal professionals apply Legal Design concepts, the legal user experience (LUX) must also be taken into account.
Join us for this podcast user experience into the evolving area of Legal Design.

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Transcript

Marlene Gebauer  0:22

Welcome to The Geek in Review. The podcast focused on innovative and creative ideas in the legal industry. I’m Marlene Gebauer.

Greg Lambert  0:29

And I’m Greg Lambert. Well, this week we talk with Astrid Kohlmeier and Meera Klemola about their new publication, The Legal Design Book: Doing Law in the 21st Century. Now I was really excited to get them on the show, Marlene, as this book is really something to behold. I mean that it doesn’t just have great content, but it’s also it’s a wonderful book just to look at.

Marlene Gebauer  0:50

It’s beautiful. I mean that the design elements are just are just gorgeous.

Greg Lambert  0:55

Yeah, and we talked to them I think that’s one of the first things we talked about. So what normally at this time, we would jump into our information inspirations portion of the program. But to be honest with everybody, our day jobs have just been keeping us a little busy lately. So we decided to take a personal privilege this week and skip out on the inspiration so

Marlene Gebauer  1:17

So on that note, we’ll just get right into our interview with Astrid and Meera.

Marlene Gebauer  1:25

We’d like to welcome Meera Klemola and Astrid Kohlmeier, authors of The Legal Design Book: Doing Law in the 21st Century. Meera and Astrid, welcome to The Geek in Review.

Meera Klemola  1:35

Thank you so much.

Astrid Kohlmeier  1:36

Thank you for your invitation. Thanks.

Greg Lambert  1:39

So you are both joining us from Europe. Meera, you’re in Helsinki, Finland and Astrid, I believe you’re just outside of Munich. We were talking before we jumped on the timezone differences here. So it’s early morning for us and late afternoon for y’all. But I wanted to jump in before we get to the content of the book, and take a couple of minutes just to talk about the actual design of the book, actually had the book laying out on the kitchen table at home. And my wife, who’s a middle school librarian commented on how much she loved the design of the book. So can you tell us about who you worked with on the design of the book and how your interaction went with that designer?

Astrid Kohlmeier  2:21

First of all, thank you so much, that this is the best feedback you could give us. To be honest, because it was exactly our intention to have a real user-centric approach also with the book and the layout and design. And that’s why we chose  Tobias Heumann is his name. He’s a graphic designer, and he supported the whole process from A to set. And it was a real pleasure to work with him together. Meera, maybe you want to add some on that.

Meera Klemola  2:51

I think as Astrid said, Just hearing that feedback from you. What we wanted was, you know, a legal book that people would also feel proud to have on their coffee table. Collaborating with Tobias was a huge, you know, asset to ensuring that our book not only spoke about legal design, but really embodied legal design philosophies being visual, easy to understand, you know, something you want to pick up. And throughout the journey, it was a very collaborative approach with Tobias and ourselves back and forward, him, of course, learning a bit more about the law and us also kind of diving deeper into what is legal design from a designer’s point of view. So there was some good learning in that collaboration,

Greg Lambert  3:37

putting that multi-disciplinary work … to work.

Astrid Kohlmeier  3:41

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So this is one of the ground rules in legal design, that you collaborate actively with different disciplines. And that that’s why we had to embody that in our concept as well. Yeah, and

Marlene Gebauer  3:55

I have to say, the design is great. It continues through the book, there’s lots of whitespace, the fonts are great, very, very enjoyable read,

Astrid Kohlmeier  4:04

maybe another word, and that is that we really, you know, there’s so many publications out there that just do not fulfill the goal that you really engage with the book. And maybe this is also something new to the legal industry and education that we wanted to trigger a little bit and also layout a new concept.

Marlene Gebauer  4:26

I can tell you all the law books I ever read, have tiny, tiny little print, like just cram as much as they can. So this is very refreshing. You start off the book by giving the reader 10 legal design philosophies, and you recommend that we should get to know these philosophies. What’s the value you find from being familiar with these legal design philosophies?

Astrid Kohlmeier  4:47

I start with saying that it really sets out the ground rules for being able to participate and conduct a levy design project in your own organization. lever design philosophy prepares a setting to create collaboratively and it makes sure that you are really building on each other without judgment, for example, and makes true collaborative approach possible from the from the very beginning. Because this is something we sometimes miss in the legal industry so far, this radical collaboration approach that we do not established or haven’t established yet. And with this 10 philosophies, you could start thinking in the right direction, and yeah, set the ground rules and maybe Meera, you go on the specifics in the 10 philosophies.

Meera Klemola  5:49

Yeah, I think it’s really about establishing the right mental models here. Because we can’t just use our traditional legal mindsets to then work as legal designers or really implement legal design, it really takes coming from a different perspective, and onboarding, a different mindset. So that’s why before we can get started before you can really prove and create value within your company, everyone participating in legal design has to have the right mindset. So there, I’m not going to list them all. But it’s things like curiosity and creativity, deferring judgment of yourself and others, embracing failure and failing fast. So really switching that narrative of failure as being something that should be feared and kind of something that as lawyers would translate across to complacently shifting that narrative to failure being an opportunity to learn. And it’s always part of the innovation process, you can’t create anything good or new or great, without taking some small risks and failure as part of that process. We have things around diversity, and then the art of pivoting. So not being so fixed on a path that you’ve set, but seeing what user feedback is, and if the users and your clients are telling you something different to what you have envisioned, taking that on board and being open to pivoting. So these 10 philosophies are really about getting everyone into the right mental model so that you and your team and the group that you’re working with Kim go on successfully. So these are just a few of the mental models that we established in these 10 legal design philosophies.

Greg Lambert  7:34

Right. I think one of the things that’s a value to having these philosophies is I think lawyers are those of us in the legal field are used to following a set of rules. And almost you can almost think of these as Okay, here’s your rules. here’s the here’s, here’s the orders the precedent, yeah, exactly.

Meera Klemola  7:54

That set of ground rules is.

Greg Lambert  7:57

So there’s a quote that you use from the Cox review of creativity in business, and it’s all the way back in 2005. That really stood out to me, and that quote, is, design is what links creativity and innovation. And the reason that this stood out is because the theme of this podcast is actually that we’re focused on innovation and creativity and creative ideas in the legal industry. So apparently, Marlene, and I have created a sort of legal design podcast, and we didn’t actually even

Marlene Gebauer  8:29

realize it makes me so happy.

Greg Lambert  8:33

So help us understand what your view of design is, and how you think that that works its way into what you’re calling legal design. Well here

Meera Klemola  8:43

and what we really try to emphasize in our book is that design is very much multifaceted. So a lot of the time, people in the legal profession, and just generally we equate design to aesthetics and visuals. And that’s a myth that we really sought to dispel in our book, to really make sure that everyone has an understanding of how holistic design is. So here for us design is a mindset. So a way of viewing problems and a way of solving problems. It’s a process. And this is where we go into the design thinking process, which is really core to innovation. And then we have design as a skill set. So here we have things like organization design, visual design, user interaction design, we’ve got both tangible and intangible design that we flesh out so that everyone understands that when we talk about legal design, it’s applying design in this holistic definition to solve legal challenges and problems. Yes, and

Astrid Kohlmeier  9:51

the reason why we approached it like this was that we am so in our practice and experience that there is kind of a mis understanding or a lack of knowledge, especially in the legal industry, when we talk about design and lawyers also tended to jump very quickly to the conclusion that they, themselves legal designers, when concluding, for example, a workshop on DB design once, two for two days or whatever, and we wanted to show that design is in itself, our own profession, as the profession of law is one profession in itself. And we wanted to prevent people to easily or to easily jump to the conclusion that they know everything about design, when it comes to the law and legal design, because at the beginning, especially, it was more than a perception that it everything has to do with aesthetic graphics only. But as Meera said, It is crucial for us to make people understand that we adopt also the whole process of how designers work, how designers go in their process, and how they then find solution with a number of skills that you have to learn, as well as we have to learn the law. It takes time and also experience and exercise to come to a very good conclusion then at the end. And since just the last sentence on that, since we are not or most of us are not trained in two professions or three professions, we advocate that if you are not able to have all the skills within yourself, then again, go and look for other designers to collaborate with and find the translation or a good briefing and a good communication together. So then do them together come to a good conclusion.

Marlene Gebauer  12:00

A lot of the advancements that we’ve seen in the legal industry are a result of how we come to consume information. You mentioned the need to use correct vocabulary specifically around the three words of digitization, digitalization and digital transformation. Whoo, I got that right. How did these three phases help us as we begin to understand legal design thinking?

Astrid Kohlmeier  12:24

Let me answer that. So we wanted to lay out this expressions or declare or explain the expressions betters because we saw that is often also a misunderstanding of those expressions. And it’s easy to think you are doing digital transformation, if you just think about digitalizing something and that is just not true. So there are different levels and different stages of digitalization or digitization. And it’s super interesting because in German For example, we do not have differentiation between digitization and digitization. Whereas you do you do have it in English. In Germany, for example, everything is digitalization, but in your language, it is digitization, which is the representation of what already exists. And the digitalization, which means making already digitized material more accessible. And digital transformation, on the other hand is something that is bigger than only digitization digitalization. Because with digital transformation, you come to even disruptive elements, you do things totally differently and don’t only represent for example, a PDF for example is a very good example. It’s it’s only a representation of let’s say it’s a picture a digitalized picture that you can use. But if you have this transformation in your head, and it comes to disruption, you search for different flows for the different digital solutions on every step in the customer or the journey that you have to find a solution for. And it connects differently. It has different touchpoints. That’s why it is so important to differentiate between this simple legislation. The middle step, which is digitalization, so a little bit more and digital transformation that leads you into another digital sphere. Let’s say

Marlene Gebauer  14:34

you observe something in your writings that comes as a result of these outside-the-norm ideas. And that’s what you call innovation after 6pm only can you explain what you mean by this?

Meera Klemola  14:47

Yeah, and it’s a concept that I think most people would be familiar with. And really what we mean by this is the fact that innovation or the role of being an in Aveda isn’t necessarily or it isn’t incorporated into what is seen as a lawyers role. It’s often what we observe from our clients and people speaking in the industry is that innovation is seen as an add-on task to what lawyers do. It’s not something that’s built into their role itself. So what we have is just people who are executing their everyday role as a lawyer. And then we have a few enthusiastic people who are then putting in that extra time to do innovation. So it’s innovation after 6pm only. And of course, that takes extra effort, extra motivation. But it also kind of speaks to perhaps the culture of the legal industry here. And maybe a reason as to why we as an industry haven’t been innovating at the speed that perhaps other industries have been.

Astrid Kohlmeier  15:58

Yeah, exactly. So what we observe is that, especially leading organizations lack an innovation strategy of mainly because we as lawyers do not learn all of that what we are talking about in our book. And this is also a reason why we have this observation that many leading organizations do not have an innovation strategy, which means that the whole organization has to believe and also lead in the same direction when it comes to innovation. Innovation is not something that you do in a silo. Innovation is something that has to be embodied in the DNA of every company of every organization, have also legal teams and legal organizations per se. And that is just another reason why we called it innovation after six only and we wanted to have this picture, that it’s just not sufficient enough to put everything in extra work. After a normal work. innovation has to be embodied in your normal work. And together in your team, you have to follow the same direction. Because

Meera Klemola  17:14

that’s how you will succeed in terms of competitive advantage, customer success yourself as a, as a developing professional, too. And I think when we can really move from this innovation after 6pm mindset to innovating, being part of the lawyers everyday role will also reduce this concept of innovation theater, which I think a lot of people have been speaking about, too.

Greg Lambert  17:41

Yeah, that reminds me of a conversation we had a couple of weeks ago with Mary Oh, Carol, one of the things that Mary said and leave it up to the legal industry to kind of screw something up, that’s good when it comes to they’re actually creating these innovation labs or these kind of unique systems within a law firm, to dip their toe in into the innovation and try to make it part of the culture. But the in-house attorneys who use these firms are seeing it more as, okay, the innovation is happening over here on this side, and you’re getting all this PR out of it. But you’re still doing the same work on my stuff that you’re always doing. I’m not seeing that innovation. So in your research, were you seeing anything where law firms specifically were adopting these innovations, but they were almost taking your after 6pm? And just saying okay, but innovation only in this in this laboratory. Everyone else? Do your own work, but the innovations happening over here? Are you seeing that?

Meera Klemola  18:50

Yeah, and I think this is also what, what you touch on here is this concept of innovation theater, you know, using and creating innovation labs, innovation, committees, innovation, you know, groups, etc. But they are working in that silo. And a lot of it may be more about incremental innovation, not really about doing something more transformative. And again, siloing people off in saying this is the innovation team, and they’ll work in this area in this playground. But on a positive note, what I’d like to bring to the table is that both Astrid and I have worked with some really big law firms here. And they’re using legal design as a tool and a methodology to kind of stop this silo way of thinking about innovation, and instead bring on tools and skills into every lawyers toolkit so that they can be innovating with their clients, and it’s going to a place where words and actions are aligning. So there’s some positivity there too, that I want it to highlight in that

Astrid Kohlmeier  19:59

context. I have to add because as was the origin of your question, there is even a one tangible example in the book from Clifford chance that I did together with Clifford chance Germany, where we especially thought about how to build up the German innovation hub of Clifford chance, in order to be user-centered. And it was a very bold step also from the department in Germany, of Clifford, to lay their hands into the new methodology of legal design. And they have to say that it was a huge success. And even now, they still benefiting from the research we did there to find out what the needs of users of such an innovation are. And it’s also laid out very well in this in this use case, in the use case section in our book and because you started with the innovation, half question, that is a very positive example from one of the largest law firms in the world, how we how we can change that,

Greg Lambert  21:09

you lay out these six steps in the legal design process, and there’s team and culture building research and understand synthesize and define idea development and consumption, prototyping and testing, and implementation. I actually use these in a presentation that I gave to law school last week, and it really helped kind of define this. But how difficult is it for some legal teams or, or law firms and or legal departments just to get past the teams and culture-building step of this? Because that’s a huge step for them to take.

Astrid Kohlmeier  21:54

Yes, getting past this culture-building step is an interesting question. Because you never get past the culture-building step, I would say, the culture-building is an ongoing process that you fulfill all the time. But you can start with building the right culture, for example, with implementing the 10 philosophy mindset that we have in the beginning of our book, but I know where your question leads. So how difficult is it to get past the culture-building as ground rules? It depends, I would say, and it depends where you are. Now, whether you are in an in house organization or in law firm. In that respect, I could so it depends. It’s the lawyers answer. I

Greg Lambert  22:39

know, that’s why I was laughing.

Astrid Kohlmeier  22:45

It is correct. But I have to say that in house organizations are just a little bit advanced when it comes to getting past the culture-building instead, I would agree, they have more exercise in that out of the company’s philosophies and the innovation activities that are going on in companies, whereas law firms are maybe not that advanced yet, but I don’t say that they can go there. But it still needs more effort now to get there. And may or may, you want to add something.

Greg Lambert  23:20

I wonder if that goes back to another philosophy that that law firms tend to fall victim to and that is, they tend not to do something and if it’s not perfect, and I wonder if it’s not seen as culture that’s totally ingrained and ready to go. If that until that’s done, then they’re afraid to move on to that next step. I wonder if that’s part of it is as well,

Meera Klemola  23:47

yeah, that’s certainly part of it. And I’d like to highlight what Astrid said the culture-building never ends, it continues. And it should evolve as your company and the company’s goals evolve, of course, as well. But then what you said about prototyping and testing, is that something that’s uncomfortable, there are steps in the process, both Astrid and I have done some deeper research on which of these steps kind of more comfortable or less comfortable for legal professionals. And what stands out the most is step two, which is research and understanding. So actually, legal professionals find it quite difficult to build that empathy. Part more because we are trained to be advice-givers. So we’re trained to be providing the solutions and doing the talking. And whereas when you are building empathy, it’s all about stepping into the shoes of your client to see from your clients perspective. So that’s a kind of different mental model to put into place. Lawyers are good at it when they do it, but it takes a little bit more effort. And then the second one that is quite often very difficult is what use Around prototyping and testing, Greg. And that comes from that innate culture that we don’t put up a rough, scrappy prototype of anything. You know, if you think about juniors within the legal sector, even when you create a draft, your draft is pretty much perfect, right? You’re hoping you don’t get too many red marks from someone who’s more senior than you. But here prototyping and testing, it’s really a prototype like, okay, you want to concept an idea, do a rough sketch of it and get questions, get feedback, start a dialogue. And that feels really uncomfortable. But once lawyers get over that, and start understanding, hey, this is actually a way of working more iteratively. It’s a way of getting feedback quickly so that we can progress faster, you’re going to see numerous benefits. But yes, both of those research and understanding and prototyping and testing are typically where lawyers feel less comfortable

Astrid Kohlmeier  26:01

one adding on that, yes, they feel more uncomfortable. But on the other hand, this process that we also have in dq design, and the process step at the beginning is very analytical and these analytical capabilities we do have as lawyers, and that’s why I also think that legal design is fitting to our mindset that we established through universities and law schools already. So there’s also that this positive side here that is very logical and analytical and inviting for lawyers, therefore.

Greg Lambert  26:41

Now, once you get past the six steps of the process, you start talking about the role of legal designers. And so I want you to explain what is what’s the profile of a legal designer? And where does this legal designer, typically sit within an organization?

Astrid Kohlmeier  27:02

So first of all, and the profile of the legal designer is something we put together by ourselves. And we also created this profile of legal design at that, that is consisting of law, design, a good understanding of tech, and especially legal tech, but also business and operations. And we call it also attitude and behavior. So this is, let’s say, the outline of the profile that we see as a round and floating model, let’s say So

Meera Klemola  27:37

yeah, I think what you’re what like the word there around, how, like the amount of depth that you would have in those areas, technology, business operations, attitudes, in particular, would change depending on the legal design project that you have. So legal design is really at the core of what a legal designer has. But illegal design is very holistic as a professional. So they do need technological knowledge, business and operations, attitudes and behavior. But depending on the focus of the legal design project, you may bring in more or less of those floating aspects. And the other thing that would be important to highlight here is our floating model, which outlines this legal design professionals profile is in flux. So this is currently its state. But we also need to be open to this model evolving as our world evolves to, that’s something that’s really important. For Astra deny that people understand this is the model now, but it’s in flux, and it may be built on or reduced etc. Going forward.

Astrid Kohlmeier  28:46

We came to that because we saw that there are different profiles also out there, for example, the T-shaped lawyer that we already know. And what we just missed, or what we see in the design profession is this huge capability of design that is still lacking, even though the T-shaped lawyer still has or as a first concept has also design thinking in itself. But on the other hand, we need more design if we want to do Liga design projects. And that what we did, this is also what we wanted to highlight with the floating model. And as Meera said it’s in flux, it’s in development, it is not fixed. And this is one of the major reasons or the most important reason that we don’t see it as a fixed model yet, but it’s a beginning. And all of those capabilities that we mentioned, they are just floating around in that floating system.

Marlene Gebauer  29:45

So as the floating model describing where they fit, or is there a preferable place for these legal designers to be located within the organization?

Meera Klemola  29:53

Hmm, yeah. No flirting model is more about thinking of those five areas of it. expertise coming in and out based on needs. But where legal designers will sit in the organization? That’s a really good question. Because what we have seen in the past 12 months, is a real formalizing of the legal designer role. And we’re seeing within in-house as well as law firms, legal designers now being hired and advertised and jobs. So we would see the role of a legal designer being quite flexible here. But a few that we really touched upon is, of course, is like a head, legal designer, also someone who’s could be heading up your kind of client experience and representing the voice of clients. Because at the heart of the legal designer skill set with the design aspect is all that knowledge around design thinking, user-centricity, co-creating with your clients, so kind of a head of client experience, then of course, they would make a great fit within any innovation role within an organization as well. So these are some of the like three key areas that we would see legal designers feeding into a legal ecosystem.

Marlene Gebauer  31:13

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about legal design and legal designers within legal organizations providing services. But what about the end-user of the services, and I love that you refer to them as looks for legal user experience. So what makes for a good legal user experience?

Astrid Kohlmeier  31:32

a great experience would be that you don’t even recognize that you have, for example, a legal service going on. That would be the ultimate goal of the intuitive experience. And this is why we build it this pyramid of different levels where we have at the bottom, the profound legal advice and expertise as we know it in the traditional service. And the middle ground, we have the user-friendliness, which is one step further into an intuitive experience, where you occupy yourself with the real needs of real users, and find a solution for them. That makes it easier to understand the legal content, for example, and also makes it more transparent how certain services and leaving industries fulfilled. But if you come to intuitive experiences, so at the top of the pyramid, then we really talk about these delightful experiences in the legal field. So where you have maybe a legal problem, but the answer for that lies, for example, in a digital service or digital app that you might use, and don’t even feel that you are dealing with a legal question anymore. So that is the ultimate goal that we are trying to achieve and the work or let’s say, to achieve that, it means to invest a lot of time and work because even though even all the instruments that we are using all the time, like our mobile phones are built on design thinking that user centricity and to come to services that we are using 24. Seven, it needs, sometimes a whole team to come up and occupy themselves with what you really need as a user. And this is just the equivalent in the legal industry is the legal user experience.

Greg Lambert  33:37

That’s a great answer. I love the thought of obtaining legal service without having that feeling that you’re obtaining some legal service. That’s, that’s good. That’s, that could be applied to another. A few other industries, I was thinking dentists going to be great to go to the dentist and feel like you’re getting a dental experience. You can’t pick up a management book these days with and not since probably the days of Peter Drucker without some variation of the phrase that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. And so how do you measure the value the success and the return on investment? For legal design?

Meera Klemola  34:20

Really good question. And I think this is something that we advocate in our book that we need to do more of in the legal industry setting KPIs key performance indicators, and measuring the success of our different projects. And that’s one key element of all legal design projects here. I won’t go into all of the different KPIs because we have I think, like quite a few pages dedicated to listed KPIs in our book, but at a high level, we look at QUE’s so Q quality, so they’re setting your key performance indicators around what kind of results were obtained, how accurate and reliable the results are, then in you is user satisfaction. So a more qualitative style of key performance indicators, looking at what was client feedback? How did users respond? Were people delighted? What was the overall emotional reaction as well as kind of quantitative reaction? And then in terms of effectiveness, these are more kind of quantitative metrics around speed and efficiency. So if you’re redesigning a contract, how many times does it go back and forward between parties before it’s finalized? Are there ways to streamline that process? And if so, by how many steps? Did you reduce that process with the legal design project? And in terms of readability? How quickly? Can people read through key terms? How many hands does it pass through? How understandable was the content? So there are a few different metrics that we tend to set in all of our legal design projects, it always

Astrid Kohlmeier  36:05

needs come? Yeah, a comparison between the before and the after, if you talk about measurement and KPIs, and what we observe and see in our daily practice is that the before is often in legal organizations not laid out yet. So they just do not measure enough at the moment. And in our projects, when we ask at the beginning of what KPIs Do you want to do you want to transform? Where do you want to get better? And we often get the look of What do you mean? So because it’s the only measurement or KPI that they have at the moment is often the billable hours system, and not so much else. And we as designers can also train legal organizations in having the capability and The Big Start of how to measure anything, because it’s, yeah, astonishing that it’s not so much out there that they that organizations measure at the moment. And we advocate to start that simple. And you do not need fancy technology for that you can just think of all the things that just as Meera said you don’t need complicated technique for that you need only at the beginning. And yes, the thought, where do you want to get better? Where do you have problems? And what is my, my original? What is my blank page?

Greg Lambert  37:42

So yeah, as you as you were talking about the kind of take a snapshot of where we are so that you can see at the end, you know, where we’ve come it’s, it’s almost like if you’re redesigning your kitchen, you want to take a picture of what it looked like before, so that you can actually see and measure the difference. And not just not just feel the difference, but actually have something tangible to look at. So I think that’s that’s great advice. And, and I think you’re right, we don’t measure enough as it is. So it’s going to be really hard to all of a sudden pick up that habit going forward as well.

Marlene Gebauer  38:25

So the book has been out for about a month now. Right? So yes.

Greg Lambert  38:30

So I imagine you had fun teaming up together to do this. But Astrid, I’ll start with you What, what’s next on the agenda for you?

Astrid Kohlmeier  38:41

Next on the agenda, is that the release of the German version in six days?

Greg Lambert  38:49

And Meera?

Meera Klemola  38:51

yeah, we’ve got Astid and I are so excited for the launch of the German version. But continuing on, we have a few talks and discussions on this book. And each of us have some different projects as well as teaching at various at academies and universities. So just really starting to build and continue building the legal design movement. That’s something that’s our mission, I guess.

Astrid Kohlmeier  39:19

And also educating people in that field. And I have a new intern right now, in my consultancies, and this is, for example, one thing that I really love, you have one person that you can advocate the whole day, and that is, you know, we have to be more league designers out there. And we are the ones who are responsible for education at the moment. So that’s that’s the thing. Yeah,

Greg Lambert  39:47

I know the book is getting rave reviews. And it’s really interesting because although YouTube or not in the United States, as I’m reading through this, it’ll be applies very much I think universally. Yeah. So it’s, you’ve done done a good job of making this, not just easy to read, but easy to apply. Regardless, I think of where you are so well done.

Meera Klemola  40:15

Thank great legal design has no boundaries here has no borders. It’s not jurisdiction based, because it’s really a methodology to improve legal services and industries and teams, really happy to hear people in the US are also getting excited about the work

Marlene Gebauer  40:33

very nicely put, well, Meera Klemola, and Astrid Kohlmeier, authors of the legal design book doing law in the 21st century. Thanks for talking with us. So much.

Greg Lambert  40:47

So I really enjoyed talking with both of them. And I really enjoyed the part towards the end where they were talking about, how is it that we measure the return on investment for this, and the fact that we really only have like one or two measurements that that we use in law firms, and that is, you know, revenue and time, this is going to be pretty difficult, I think if those are the only two things that that we know how to measure. Now, if we start improving the process and the design of the services, we really need to start looking more at what we’re doing now. And then seeing how that actually improves. So I’m glad they brought that up.

Marlene Gebauer  41:30

I like this idea about legal designers within legal organizations providing services. That’s that’s a pretty unique idea. I don’t think I know any legal designers that are in law firms, for example. And, you know, I think that that would be quite disruptive.

Greg Lambert  41:49

Yeah. And I think the way that they were kind of mentioning about it, there’s some titles that, that they talked about that I don’t think we necessarily think about design, and that is, you know, the client experience person, there’s, you know, there’s the overall these there’s these new chief levels out there that talk about working with the clients. I think those are the legal designers now. It’d be interesting to see what they morph into as we go along.

Marlene Gebauer  42:20

Yeah, I think this this is going to be a, a moving area, I think go in, in law

Greg Lambert  42:27

indefinitely. So if, if you’re in one of those moving positions, I highly suggest that you go out and buy the legal design book. So thanks again to Astrid Kohlmeier and Meera Klemola for taking the time to talk with us.

Marlene Gebauer  42:40

Thanks for taking the time to listen to The Geek in Review podcast. If you enjoy the show, share it with a colleague. We’d love to hear from you. So reach out to us on social media. I can be found at @gebauerm on Twitter.

Greg Lambert  42:52

And you can reach me at glambert on Twitter

Marlene Gebauer  42:55

you can leave us a voicemail on The Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and as always, the music here is from Jerry David DeCicca Thank you, Jerry.

Greg Lambert  43:07

Thanks, Jerry. All right, Marlene, I will talk to you later

Marlene Gebauer  43:10

Get back to work.