It's about applying design to the world of law. Why? The law is sorely lacking in usability. Decades of jargon, meaningless processes, and small print have made the law unusable by non-lawyers, and a source of frustration for lawyers themselves.
The good news? Design is obsessed with use and the search for meaning. Designing the law allows it to return to its function: to be actionable and acted upon, to allow humans to live together.

A persona is a fictional character, which represents a group of users in a credible way, an archetype created using observation and information gathering techniques (interviews, shadowing...).
A persona allows us to understand the habits, behaviors, interests and frustrations of users, to solve their problems and meet their expectations.

It is simply a matter of prioritizing the elements of the document/support/process according to their importance to the users. A basic example: most contracts start with a "definitions" section, while the purpose of the contract is not yet known.

Similarly, price-related questions are often relegated to the 15th page, when that's what users are most interested in. These are very easy friction points to resolve.

Most lawyers fear that they will no longer be considered experts if they use plain language. This is a point of frustration for lawyers, because nothing makes us feel more sophisticated than Latin formulas.
But it is the best lawyers and the most recognized experts who manage to make the law accessible and intelligible. It is no coincidence that an ISO standard for clear language will be published in 2023.
Let us recall in passing that in France there is a principle of constitutional value of the clarity of the law, that our two highest courts have each produced a vademecum on the clarity of judgments and that a good number of texts in France, within the European Union and in the rest of the world impose clarity and accessibility.

We are asked this question very often and the best answer comes from the judges themselves. We have been training ENM judges in Legal Design and Clear Language since 2019 and we observe the way they appropriate the methodology over the course of the classes. Some judges are so taken with the exercise that once in court, they apply the legal design method to letters or even judgments. Some judges speak out on legal design, see in particular "La place du visuel dans le contentieux administratif" by Didier Israël, administrative magistrate, AJDA n°1, 2023. We are also very active in litigation design in 19 jurisdictions in Europe, and we observe that judges do not read more than 20 or 30 pages and encourage lawyers to keep it short. Some of our visuals have been discussed in court.

Most lawyers fear that they will no longer be considered experts if they use plain language. This is a point of frustration for lawyers, because nothing makes us feel more sophisticated than Latin formulas.
But it is the best lawyers and the most recognized experts who manage to make the law accessible and intelligible. It is no coincidence that an ISO standard for clear language will be published in 2023.
Let us recall in passing that in France there is a principle of constitutional value of the clarity of the law, that our two highest courts have each produced a vademecum on the clarity of judgments and that a good number of texts in France, within the European Union and in the rest of the world impose clarity and accessibility.