The importance of creativity, community and fun in developing legal inventors of the future

Reimagining Justice

Episode no. 61 features Dan Jackson, Executive Director and Jules Rochielle Sievert, Creative Director of NuLawLab, Northeastern University School of Law.

The NuLawLab is the interdisciplinary innovation laboratory at Northeastern University School of Law. It is one of the first law labs established in the US and its staff, students and stakeholders are leading the way in the emerging global Legal Design movement.

Through its programs, projects, seminars, and research the lab builds cross-disciplinary teams and community-based partnerships focused on transforming legal education, the legal profession, and the delivery of legal services.

The discussion covers:

• how the NuLawLab approaches problem-solving and collaborates with artistic people outside the walls of academia to find new ways of moving through complicated issues and to provide people with greater access to their legal rights;
• how integrating various design methodologies provides the freedom to explore and to work with community needs and values;
• what Dan and Jules see as the current and future possibilities for legal design, and what legal design shouldn’t be;
• how law students are involved in both long and short scale work;
• details of projects including RePresent game, and Stable Ground and how they had to pivot with the onset of the pandemic;
• how building trust with community organisations long term can shift the work from transactional to transformational;
• issues with innovation funding and how it could be better spent;
• how co-design centres community leadership and leverages resources to assist direct services;
• how each project and team gets started and developed (and why the lab doesn’t have an application form!);
• where project funding comes from and other important forms of sustainability;
• how Dan and Jules respond to requests to articulate the value of the lab’s work;
• the need to bridge the “language gap” between people from different disciplines;
• how black letter lawyers can approach work with people from other disciplines and why we need to work with creative fields;
• key factors for a successful innovative lab;
• how legal design enables lawyers to exercise their creativity;
• Dan’s idea about add-athons and Jules (re)definition of legal innovation!

Proudly sponsored by Neota Logic.

Links:

• NuLawLab
• Neota Logic
• Feedspot

Andrea Perry-Petersen – LinkedIn - Twitter @winkiepp – andreaperrypetersen.com.au

Twitter - @ReimaginingJ

Facebook – Reimagining Justice group