Contract Design School: A must for change-maker lawyers

What is Contract Design School

Contract Design School is a signature online program for lawyers (or anyone who works with legal documents) who want to simplify and visualize user-friendly contracts.

It’s designed to give participants the mindset, framework, and tools for the journey from a traditional lawyer to a designerly lawyer who is inspired and confident about designing user-friendly contracts. 

It’s a comprehensive six-module package that runs over five weeks. To make learning impactful and easy, the course includes self-paced videos, simple step-by-step tools, practical exercises with live sessions, and an exclusive community. 

It is a cohort-based school and runs twice annually. This means participants get a complete and transformative experience that includes live sessions and peer support – so they’re able to implement the learning immediately.

Who should join Contract Design School

The School is for anyone who works with contracts, legal documents, legal writing and legal information. Experience with contracts or other legal documents means participants can apply the learnings in practice and not just listen and read about it.

Here are some outcomes previous participants were looking for

• I want to explore simple redesign techniques to create better user-centric contracts
• I want to make contract clauses more actionable
• I want to modify long and complicated contracts to be more simple and comprehensible
• I want to know how to use simple visualizations in my contracts

Each had their own goals. Some struggled with legalese and complexity, while others were ready to explore visual elements in their contracts. The School understands and supports every goal, no matter how big or small. We supply the solutions and tools for every single one.

The new way to work with contracts and customers

Redesigning legal documents works best if your mind and heart are ready for changing the way you work contracts and with your customers. 

This readiness or ability can look like this: 

• You’re ready to explore new ways to serve your customers
• You’re a creative lawyer and you want to use your creative skills in your work
• You’re excited about implementing legal design in your work and delivering amazing outcomes for your customers, or
• You are a misfit in law. You ask a lot of “why” and “what if” questions instead of accepting what is.

Did any of these statements get a nod?

Confession time: I’m a misfit in law

If you don’t know me, I’m Hannele Korhonen, founder of Lawyers Design School. Contract Design School is our signature program. And I am a misfit in law. I don’t think and act like other lawyers. For a long time, I thought there was something terribly wrong with me because I didn’t fit in. 

It wasn’t until I found design in the early days of my own law firm: first service and product design, later legal design and contract design, things started to change.

Contract design, simplification, visualization, and killing off dense legal writing have completely changed how I work with contracts – especially with the clients who are using the contracts. And I firmly believe that it can do the same for you.
It’s all about changing the lawyer mindset – and it’s not hard.

No prior design experience is required

Contract Design School is designed to give you the essentials of contract design – starting from the very beginning. So there’s no previous experience required in contract design, legal design or graphic design.

This is our secret sauce in Lawyers Design School. 

We take design techniques, make them relevant for lawyers and simplify them to the max so that anyone is able to start using them without hours and hours of studying.

Lawyers are super clever but they are also chronically busy and very aware of the value of their time (billable hours, remember?). They want easy-to-use tools and instant results. 

So when our participants are able to create their first visualizations in less than 30 minutes, they are both surprised and happy. 

Can you imagine yourself learning this way?

What are the learning outcomes?

In Contract Design School you will learn the mindset, the contract design process and tools to simplify and visualize user-friendly contracts. Contract design is a skill that enables you to craft contracts in the way your clients will best understand. 

The course is hands-on and will take you through the entire design process from start to finish, step by step:

• You will analyze your own contract to find opportunities to redesign
• You will nail down your user research for your contracts. Which, by the way, is the neglected strategy behind user-friendly contracts! Being user-centered means that you actually involve the users in the process
• You will compose a user-friendly structure for your contract
• You will craft a simplified version of your contract language
• You will create visual elements to support the understanding and
• You will test and validate your prototype with users.

You’ll be set up to become a human-centered lawyer with the boost and confidence to make the leap from the old school of contracting.

Now how does that sound to you? Exciting or scary, or not for me?

How long does it take to complete the program?

Contract Design School is delivered over five weeks with the course modules in our learning platform plus five live question-and-answer sessions. So the active time we spend together is five weeks. We of course end with a celebration!

The best part is that you can work through the modules in your own time. You will have access to all the materials for 12 months from joining, so if life gets busy you can go through the program at your own pace.

What kind of results do students actually see after the program?

The results of our contract design workshops have been incredible. We have helped lawyers all over the world to simplify and visualise their contracts. I shared a few powerful results in episode 29 of Legal Design Thinking IRL. 

But you don’t have to take our word for it. The feedback we receive tells us that the course is fun and creative and that is exactly what we try to do. 

When learning is inspiring you want to make time and room for it.

Participants have implemented contract design in practice. Often they’re aware of the principles on a conceptual level but crave a bridge that allows them to use them on a practical level. We make it our job to enable practical and experiential learning for our participants.

One of the best results from entering into the world of contract design is that the misfits of law find other misfits and see that they are not alone and crazy thinking the way we think. Putting people first. Working with empathy and creativity. Challenging how we look at problems and communicate with customers. Shattering the mystery of the law.  

Clients are demanding the law drag itself into the 21st century. You can be part of the solution.

So there you have it. Contract Design School – a must for change-maker lawyers – take a look at the School.

Legal design thinking: IRL. Episode 30

You’ve just read a summary of my LinkedIn Live about the launch of our signature program on contract design for lawyers.  

I jump on LinkedIn every week to give lawyers actionable advice for lawyers and discuss real-life legal design in action.  I hope legal design thinking and contract design can help you get more happy clients and be happier lawyers. 

Unhappy lawyers talk about leaving the law instead of opening their hearts and minds to a new way of doing law – and this is what the course is all about – changing the way lawyers do law. 

Don’t leave the law – just change the way you do it. Be part of the change.

If you’re keen to start re-shaping your documents and the way you approach working with your client contracts head to our Contract Design School and enroll today. It’s the new way you’ve been looking for.

If you’ve read something that interests you please join me next week. 

You can catch a replay of episode 30 here  Legal Design Thinking: IRL or join me live and ask questions.

Want to chat about it?

Feel free to DM any questions or join me on LinkedIn every Wednesday at 8 am ET where you can ask me about contract design and legal design and what it means for you. 

Follow me at  @lawyersdesignschool for more tips and tools.

Prefer email? Drop me an email at [email protected]. And while you’re here, take a peek at the Lawyers Design School and check out other ways to use legal design thinking to grow your law firm and thrive in your business.
Watch all the Legal Design IRL Episodes episodes.