Abstract

This article introduces the concept of legal design thinking education for lawyers, emphasizing the importance of design as a tool for moderating and animating social change. The introduction is based on the thesis that everything is design, and the alternative to good design is bad design. The authors propose teaching legal students using interdisciplinary design methods that take into account the needs of the end users of law. The article discusses the deficits of the current legal system, which provides users with neither a right to the law nor a useful law, and proposes a system-theoretical approach to legal design as a response to social complexity and legal “wicked problems.” The authors point to the need for a paradigm shift in legal education, promoting interdisciplinary learning and the implementation of design thinking in legal education programs. The proposed education model incorporates human-centered design, humanity design, and transformation design, promoting reflective design. The article concludes with a call to change the way we think about legal education, emphasizing that the lawyers of the future must be prepared to work in a dynamically changing social and legal environment.