The Lawyer Who Is Also an Information Designer: An Indispensable Ally for Organizations
It’s not easy to be both a legal expert and a communications expert. Analytical and creative. Rigorous and concise. Firm and empathetic. A guardian of risk and a guardian of simplicity.
Simplifying the customer experience is now at the heart of many companies’ strategic positioning. As a result, contracts, forms, policies, and legal notices must be thoroughly reviewed, because it is impossible to create a positive customer experience with legal content that is long, complex, and difficult to understand.
It is against this backdrop that a new specialty has emerged in recent years: the information designattorney, who is dedicated to designing legal documents as true communication tools. Today, this professional serves as a strategic ally for companies and attorneys who must manage risk and who struggle to strike a balance between legal rigor and a positive user experience.
In practical terms, who is theinformationdesigner-lawyer?
Feature #1: Information designer , a lawyer, views his content as objects in the world
To fully understand this aspect, let’s take the example of an industrial designer who wants to design a chair.
To design a high-quality chair that meets the needs of its users, the designer must ask themselves a multitude of questions, including:
Who will be using this chair?
In what context will it be used?
What will the user's state of mind be when using the chair?
How can we make the chair attractive and easy to use?
The designer can consider the commission a success if the chair created is actually desired, purchased, and useful for its intended purpose. To achieve this, the industrial designer must absolutely find answers to the previous questions.
The lawyer who is also an information designershares these same concerns. He wants his own creation—his legal document—to be a pleasure to read, to be read, to be understood, and to be useful. Therefore, he does not focus solely on the quality of his raw material (the legal information conveyed, which requires rigor and legal logic), but he also devotes himself to creating a document that will meet the needs of its user, taking the time to ask the right questions and answer them appropriately. In particular:
Who will read and use this document?
In what context will it be read and used?
What will the reader's frame of mind be when reading this document?
What are his expectations, needs, and limitations?
How can you make decision-making easier?
How can we make reading easy, useful, and effective? (In other words, how can we avoid wasting the document user's time and money?)
By taking the time to answer these questions, the lawyer who isalso an information designergives the recipient the full attention they deserve. He or she views legal documents not only as regulatory tools, but also as genuine communication tools.
Characteristic No. 2: The information designer does not claim to know what is clear and what is not.
Simplicity is measured from the client’s perspective, not from the document designer’s. This may seem obvious to many of you, but that is precisely where the problem lies, particularly among lawyers and other legal professionals.
Too many professionals tend to have preconceived notions about what is clear and what is not, while ignoring their own cognitive biases and failing to adopt a truly empathetic approach—which is essential to any successful communication process.
The information designer-lawyerensures that the reader will feel smart when reading the content—not incompetent. He scrutinizes every word, every headline, and every internal logic of the content from the reader’s perspective and based on what the reader actually understands. They do not assume that a particular word, concept, or paragraph will be understood simply because people “should” understand it. They are not afraid to rephrase things or sacrifice some precision, because they have a deep enough grasp of their subject to avoid cutting corners.
In other words, the information designerdoes not write for himself, but for others.
Characteristic No. 3: The information designer who is also a lawyer is aware that his or her editorial choices can sometimes have costly consequences.
The information design attorney recognizes the costs associated with the complexity of documents within organizations (numerous questions and complaints to customer service, significant time spent on analysis by business partners, a hindrance to the company’s internal productivity, etc.).
He believes that people (citizens and professionals) have a right to understand legal documents. He recognizes that legal documents should be readable and understandable without requiring an unreasonable amount of effort. He is also aware of his cognitive biases (errors in judgment), as well as his preconceptions, such as:
The user will understand this word or concept.
This wording is too informal to be included in a legal document.
It is important to remain formal and reserved.
Aware of these risks, the lawyer who is also an information designeracts accordingly.
Feature No. 4: The information designer-lawyer understands that the legal profession would benefit from being more multidisciplinary.
As I mentioned in the introduction: it’s not easy to be both a legal expert and a communications expert. Analytical and creative. Rigorous and concise. Firm and empathetic. A guardian of risk and a guardian of simplicity.
You can switch roles during a creative process, but it becomes difficult to constantly switch roles without losing your own identity and without doing things halfway.
That is why it is in the best interest of both the company and the traditional-style attorney to surround themselves with attorneys who focus not on creating legal information, but on how to convey it in a way that makes it clear, useful, and even impactful. In particular:
How can we take into account the way people today consume, process, and assimilate information? How can we rethink the legal structure based on a secular approach?
How can we rephrase messages to make them accessible to non-lawyers?
How do you assess the added value of a visual?
How can legal content be adapted for web browsing?
These are the questions that the lawyer-turned-information designer is dedicated to addressing by drawing on cognitive science, design principles, and the sociodemographic characteristics of his target audience, among other factors.
Curious?
Why don't you go grab a coffee with a lawyer who's also an information designer?
Cover illustration inspired by the work of Quebec artist Yannick Pouliot, *Louis XVI: Impassible*, 2015.
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