Episode 29: Exploring Legal Design Methods and Tools with Angélica Flechas

(upbeat music) - This is Likko Design Podcast, where your hosts head not all of them. - And Nina Doivanen, this week we discussed what Likko Design can be in practice and meet with Likko Designer Angelika Fleshas from Colombia. Angelika tell us what kind of methods and tools she has successfully used when working on Likko Design projects with her designer team. - We also hear how lawyers can start prototyping their ideas. - Angelika encourages other designers to work with lawyers as well. After all, making more better is the team effort. (upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Angelika and welcome to the Likko Design Podcast. You are a lawyer and a designer working with many interesting Likko Design projects. How would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners? - Yes, I'm a lawyer, I'm a designer, I'm the owner of two amazing dogs. And I am the founder of Optika, which is a service design and a legal service design consultant, the agency based in Colombia, which also works in Mexico, Peru and Chile. - Wow, we're just name Optika, mean, or does it have a specific meaning? - Yeah, Optika is the name that you call when you touch something and you feel it. And so as service designers, what we do is we design touch points. And what we want to do here is creating the optics of the service. So that's why we call ourselves Optika. - I like that. A few things about your background. It's not very common even inside this Likko Design bubble, we're having to have both a legal and design education background. Angelica, how did you end up studying both of these subjects? Did you plan to do both? Or how do we have it? - No, I didn't plan it. I have my parents, both they are lawyers. So I grew up with this background in my life, with books and laws and cases all around my house. And I just knew I wanted to become a lawyer. So I went to law school here in Colombia in Los Angeles University. And when I was almost finishing like one year, almost done, there was a teacher who asked me to design a game to understand a new law. That was an assignment for all of the class. And for all of us was weird, but for me was weird, but also excited. So I went home and I tried to find inspiration. And I found a game, the game was Clou, which is a game where you try to find who is the murderer of the game, right? And I said, well, in this game, you have to find the murderer. In my game, you have to find who is the corrupt person because it was a law related to that. So I created this game. I designed of the characters, of the little cards, all the situations. And it was huge, the game. Like I created this huge, amazing thing, but I just felt that I was playing with it. So I came to class and it was so different that I have done. And the professor said, well, Angelica, this is so different. And I have a question for you, which is, can I take the game to my house? I was like, of course, if I give it to him. And then he said, I have another question. And I was, okay, what is it? And he said, when are you going to talk to your parents about your wish to become a designer? So that was a tough one. I have to come back to my place and talk to my parents, both lawyers, remember? And said to him like to them, sorry, but I want to do this. I know that I'm about to become a lawyer, but I feel this in my blood. And please let me do this. And my father was like, no, no, no, this is not going to happen. My mom said, if you really feel this is your call, I'm not going to stop you. So do it. And in my university, you have the chance to do both degrees while you are still paying one. So that happened. And when I finished law, I have to feel pain the other one. But my father was so upset. So he said, you have to do something else really too long. So I did like a minor in contracts for law. So when I was doing design, I was still studying law. So that was really weird. It took me eight years to do all that. And I'm going to be honest with you. I just felt that it was like my mother ship calling me. I wanted to put all the law in a box and saying goodbye to that. But then when I was a working as a designer, I realized that I could combine them. I found a way. And that's how I realized that I could do legal design. - You still have the game. - The teacher has it. It's a kid. - He made some so cool, I love a clue. - I guess it's in use if he still has it. We would like to deep dive into one of your legal design projects and hear more profoundly about it. There might be listeners who have not yet participated in a legal design case project or are not aware what legal design actually is in practice. So we would be very interested to hear from your practical experiences. Is there a legal design project you'd like to share with us? - Yeah, I really would like to share with you a case that hasn't been really other. This case that is based in Peru, we received a call like three years ago from a public entity. The name is OsipTel. And what they do is they create these guidelines for the communication system. Like for all the companies that sell phones and all that services related to mobile services, that kind of stuff. So they are the ones like this OsipTel entity. They are the ones who decide how should the service be provided. And also they say how the contract should be defined, what should be the guideline for that contract. So there's a person the name is Nancy Espinoza. And she actually, she was like the only woman in that group which I love. Like she was like, I don't love that she's the only woman but she was the woman who said, let's change this. And she called me and she said, I feel that there is a problem with our guidelines and the users having problems with their contracts. And we are having a lot of problems with their complaints. So we want you to come to Peru and help us to redesign those guidelines and teach us how to do it. But you only have one week. So this project school takes months. So I invited somebody from my team that person is Maria Camila Venegas and the two of us, we went to Peru for one week. First day, it was to diagnose the guideline and some of the contracts for those companies. To do that, we did some research and we applied some tools and we realized that there were like a lot of problems and a lot of gaps related to content, related to what the user really needed in those documents. Then we created some files to include the different problems and the different profiles of users that Peru has, right? And then we lead some creation sessions and we taught them how to lead them. And we redesigned those contracts and after we redesigned those contracts, we abstract the DNA of the best contract ever to define the perfect guideline. And we created some prototypes on the final day with them and we invited some Peruvian people to a grid like speed dating session. So there were people on the other side of the table and then decide where people from opposite tail showing the prototype. And we were saying, understand this, I understand this. I like this. like this. Thanks. Next. And we were doing this speedtating with users and people from Opsipthel. And they felt like we own this. We can have this in our hands. Let's do this final guidelines. That happened in one week. We said goodbye to Nancy. And at the beginning of the pandemic, she sent me a WhatsApp message. And she said, Angelica, there are two million contracts right now that have been signed around through. Thanks to your new guidelines. Oh, wow. That's huge. Talking about contract design impact, that's that's really amazing. We would also be interested to hear more particularly about some of the design methods and tools you used in that project or some other project. You can you can decide what were the methods and why did you choose to use them and what kind of results did you get? For example, for researching data about the issue or for ideating. Do you have any favorites you usually use? Yes. Well, the first one that I always use is interviews because we all have to talk to people and understand their story. Like, why are you going to this company, to this mobile company? So that's like a must. But when we are working with documents, we have treated a tool. The name in Spanish is entrelinias. And in English, we can translate it to between the lines. It's like reading between the lines. And it's really simple to use. It's based with three colors. So we tell the person who is part of the interview to highlight the document. With reg, everything that you don't understand related to the document. With yellow, everything that you feel that should be part of the document. And with green, everything that you feel that you understand and you feel connected with. And you do that not only with the user, but also with the lawyer of the user in this case, you didn't have one, but also with the lawyers of the company in this case, AsipTel, which is awesome because people from AsipTel didn't understand some part of the document. So they highlighted in red. So it's like, so you're sending documents with content that you don't understand to the final user. Who is not a lawyer like you? Who is like, oh yeah. So it's really simple, the tool is also inspired in some practice that we do as lawyers because we love highlighting. But it's really easy to categorize the content and say there is a lot of red here and a lot of the users have highlighted this in red, but also the lawyers. So then we realize that for a lot of time, this content have been here and a lot of people haven't understand it. So there is a chance to translate this. So in another phases of the method, we can really sign that. So to do that, we have created the tools, the name is what if? So what if this is new draw? So this content is something that is a drawing. Or what if this is going to be read by your grandmother? So if the user is your grandmother, or if the user is a kid, so if we change the final user to extreme user, they start to think, oh, a kid, what is he going to feel connected with? With comic, with a persona, with telling a story, with audio situation. So in that case, like your mind makes some connections, because that's creativity about, and you start to create a new content to translate that red part that is not defined in a way that the user can understand it. And also we have created another tool, the name is Frankenstein, which is you take scissors, and you say, let's break it. So the lawyers at the beginning are like, no, but this is like a sacred document, a legal document. It's like, don't worry, just paper, take it. And it's like they start to break it and move it and create this new puzzle, because sometimes they realize that the green part is so important for the user, but it's at the end of the document. So maybe they want to see it at the beginning. So what happens if the green parts at the beginning, when you feel the final resolution, or what you have already bought, which is the summary of the product, maybe at the end, what if it is at the beginning, and you understand from the beginning, where is the summary of the product. So it's just doing the Frankenstein of the document. So those some of my favorite tools. And Chelyka, you have designed and redesigned legal processes, and from my point of view, it can be hard for lawyers to see their work as a process. And that's why it might be difficult to see how we might do designing work for legal processes. Could you explain to us and our listeners why we should see legal work as processes, and would you mind giving an example of a process designing project? Sure, thanks for the question. Because here I have the option to tell you our approach to legal design. How I told you at the beginning, Aptika began not as a legal design company. We were service designers at the beginning. And what we do as service designers is we understand every single service as a story that comes to life, thanks to the touch points, which are people, processes, channels. And you can design that. You can design a process. You can design a channel. You can design a person. You can design how they talk. And related to process, you can design a process. And when we are moving to the legal industry, that's a service. And when you are a lawyer, you are providing a service. But the situation here is when you go to law school, they never tell you that. They teach you the law. They teach you how to understand it. They teach you how to apply it. But for me, for example, they never told me, they never told me, hey, Angelica, you are going to provide a service. And at the other side is going to be an user. And that service could be designed. And you can design the people, the channel, the process, the space, all the touch points that are part of it. One of the touch points are the processes. And you can design that step by step of the way that you provide that service, which is the process, which is beautiful. For me, it was like that connection that I wasn't like ready to embrace when I decided to go to design school. And as I told you, I put that in a box. But when I began to have projects with banks and with insurance companies, and I found that they were like a lot of legal touch points in that experience, because at the beginning, a bank didn't tell me, "Hey, Angelica, I want you to help me to redesign the legal experience." They said, "I want you to redesign the experience of the user." And then I found that there were legal processes, legal documents, legal content. And I said, "Hmm." And of course, the people who found me, they weren't the lawyers, were people from the service perspective. And they say, "Hey, but don't touch that document. Don't touch that process." That's from the lawyers. That's the lawyers problem. It was like, "No, no. That's the user problem. We don't do that." So I said, "Let's understand that process." No, that's the process where the lawyer had to check all the documents of the user. But that takes like 10 months, it was like 10 months for the user to get approval. Yeah, but don't worry. 10 months, that's regular. In other banks, it's like one year. It's like, "No, no. Let's do something about it. Let's make a connection between marketing, service, and legal." And let's understand why this process is taking so long. And then if we go deeper to the legal area, we understand that a lawyer never was trained in really sign a process. Because we didn't go to school to learn that. But we should. One of the projects that I'm working right now is with another public entity. And it's a beautiful project. It's not done already, but I just wanted to share with you. Imagine this. Is that public entity which works is based on helping young people to see. solve their issues with the law, because they are not adults, so it's not a felony. But they are really close to be in a real jail problem, you know. So what happens here is there are like documents that say, that say, sorry, that say, how those young people should be taking care of. And some of the process of that situation should be handled. But those who define those processes are lawyers who are never out in the street taking care of those people. They have no idea about the real life, how it is. Exactly. But still, it's not like that lawyer is a bad person and gives up, like every single one said, I'm going to damage that people's life. No, no. They don't need, they don't know how to. But on the other side, there is the operation side, right? Those companies who have to apply that law and feel that disconnection between what the document said and what they have to do. And right now, my company is turning that bridge between the document that what the process should be and what those companies should apply. And we are designing the method to co-create the process between lawyers, the young and the companies. Angelica, keep us posted with the project because it sounds so interesting. And as you said, it really touches you. And it's a great example of what legal design can do to make law better. Hey, let's move on to prototyping in legal design projects because I'm pretty sure that prototyping might be a little hard for lawyers to understand. When I started to learn about design thinking and the process, I mean design process, prototyping and testing were the parts of the process that were hardest to understand from my lawyer perspective. Traditionally, we have thought that we should only deliver the final forms of the documents or give final statements or answers. And there I was in this service design training with a bunch of Legos and other very unroieristic stuff in front of me. And I was to prototype and test. And I think this prototyping might be a little unfamiliar at least for some of our clients because my colleague was asked to share the first draft of a document with the client. And at the end of the project, when it was feedback time, their review from the client stated that they delivered unfinished material. Reviewing lawyers might translate into failure. Did you explain why prototyping and testing are important? Okay. I am a teacher. And when I teach my students this component of the method, the first thing that I say is life is a prototype. So they don't feel that, oh, this is the phase where I fail. No, you are not failing, you are learning. And in your life, this presentation is a prototype and the next one could be better because you learned from the last one. And if you see your life like that, it will be better for you. So that statement said, what I see in the prototype process is the opportunity to learn from the mistake of the project. And if you are not learning anything from your prototype, you are maybe doing something wrong. So is the opportunity to be safe and be learning about your project and from the feedback of your user because you create your project, you materialize it, you make it real, and then you go and validate. And when your user or the company or the system gives you feedback related to that touch point that you have created, you have to feel amused by the amazing opportunity of learning and moving forward with that touch point. So this is so important because it's a safe space where you can create the next version of your project. So I understand why they felt all we failed because it's not finished, but maybe the problem was that not all the stakeholders were aligned with the situation and the method. But when we have all those stakeholders in tuned and align with the situation that we are doing right now, and they know that for example, a bank, I work a lot with banks, with the bank, feel that they need to create the better document for them to really understand this new product, this new credit card product. And they feel that they can be part of that document and with their feedback, this document is going to be better. We change that people's perspective of that bank. So what we have here is a communication issue as well, but prototyping is the opportunity to create the improvement of your project in a safe space. Yeah, and what you said about the communication, I think that's the key because we have to also, well, educate is a bad word or it has a bad sound, but we also have to educate our clients that this is the new way of working and it's going to be a little different from also their point of view. Exactly, but when you when you when you made them part of the process, you are listening their voices and they feel part of that document when they signed it at the end, it's like, oh, some of my mic is there. So it's beautiful because it's not only the system talking, now they are part of the system. Exactly, it's more personal because they participated. That makes sense. I know this is weird question, but do you have any tips on how to prototype? I mean, with the service design classes, with the labels and other nice stuff like that, but how to do prototyping in legal? Yeah, I have worked with a lot of industries with the finance and health and I think when you are beginning with this industry, for example, if you are a designer and you're beginning to work with lawyers, I don't recommend to work with super powerful different tools because maybe for them could be like, this is so different. So begin with baby steps. Paper is your best option. Paper is to type in so easy post-its. It's like, for example, let's go again with the process. Right now the process to sign a document is five steps, to the five post-its. What if we change this post-it for another moment? That could help, but what if you are prototyping right there? The idea just with post-its. We are changing a document. The idea that I told you with the scissors, that's ideation, but also prototyping because we are already moving and creating prototyping is also the the the the the act of creation of moving your idea from here to the reality. So when you are cutting the classes of the document and moving them around, you're already prototyping the the final result of the document. So working with paper which is more familiar to lawyers is better when you have new lawyers in this methodology. When you have lawyers that are already like part of this movement, you can go with different tools. If you are working with the document and you want to maybe work with the what if tool that you want to change a content that is written and move it to a draw, there is animation tool, the name is AutoDraw, it is for free, and you can, for example, if this is an insurance contract and is related to vehicles and you want to draw a car, but you are not a really good person doing that. These two ask you to try to draw a car. Maybe your drawing is really not that good, but the tool tells you, maybe you're trying to draw a car because it has this algorithm that tries to identify your figure. So this is a really good way to create easy figures, but also there are like a lot of icons around the internet that you can put down and include them. So don't find obstacles in the process, just find the tools to make it easier. But if we're not talking about documents or processes, we're talking about a new way to attend your client. You can do some role playing. And we are used to do that as lawyers because we went to law school and we work with communication and remember a dual-error exercise of that. And we created some role playing to defend a client. But let's come back to that and use that to create this new service. And these are services techniques that I have brought to this legal service design approach. And it has been amazing watching my lawyers doing that and becoming more aware of their body language, their faces, how it could be easier for the client to connect with them in their smile. And that is just role playing. Or moving the space like staging. He's not only about you, but also how the place looks like. What if the light is different? So let's turn the light off. Oh, let's turn the light on. And what if there is a different atmosphere? Let's put something on the wall and project an image there. And what if this is a bakery shop when we attend our client? Let's project that idea and all and see what happens and let's bring a client and how he feels. These are tools ready to service design that I have brought to the space of legal design. And it has helped me a lot. Great examples. And what I love to hear is that small steps count. So it can be as simple as a smile that makes a difference. And we don't have to build a space rocket. We can start prototyping with paper, just brilliant tape. Thanks. Hey, Angelica, it's been great to have you with us. And it has been such a great conversation. And we have blocked all your insights and ideas. And just because you are a true expert of flow and design thinking and know what it requires to combine these two worlds, how would you encourage more designers to work with flow and lawyers and help solving legal problems? Well, if you're a lawyer, the first thing that I want you to tell you is that there are like a lot of opportunities in your daily life to apply this method. Like, you don't need your boss to tell you, hey, apply legal design. So right now, next email that you are going to send, ask yourself, who is the user? Who is going to read this? How much time does it have? If you're going to feel okay with the content, how can I really sign this to make it easier? An email can change people's lives. So you can apply legal design there. And you can prototype that. Next time, I'm going to send a picture. Next time, I'm going to send a diagram. Let's prototype that. So it has to be huge. You can do a little change in your email. And then you can be doing legal design. And if you are a designer, I really feel that you need to work with lawyers. And you have to stop being afraid of lawyers. Like, I told you, it's not like a warm potato that nobody wants to work with. Because for a lot of time, law is like a box that no one wants to open unless you're a lawyer. But now this box is open. And these kind of tools are helping you to work with the process. And there are a lot of lawyers who want to be part of this movement. If you're a designer, you can be the bridge that connects these lawyers with the final user. You just need to understand the way to connect with them. And your tools are part of that process as a designer. So believing yourself, you can be part of this transformation of the legal services around the world. Thank you Angelica. Thank you. I really enjoy it. And I am so passionate about this. I cannot even believe that I'm right now doing this with my company, with my team, without Jorge and Maria Camila and Sofia. And all of them, I wouldn't be here. So I didn't want to miss the opportunity also to name them. Great. Thank you for joining us. Yes. And greetings to your team. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Legal Design Podcast. Get to know us at LegalDesignPodcast.com.