Legal Design IRL: Designing a meaningful legal career with Cat Moon from Vanderbilt Law School
Use design to explore the opportunities & design your career in law
What would happen if you didn’t have to follow a predetermined path in your legal career?
What if you could explore your interests, follow your passions, and design your life in law?
You can! Design thinking allows you to take control of your personal and professional development in the law.
We spend a lot of time talking about a human-centered approach to serving our clients, but we can also take the human-centered approach to ourselves, and use the mindset and the tools offered by design thinking to forge a career that helps us as much as it helps our clients. There’s a tool to get you started later in the post.
So today, it’s about you. Let’s turn lawyer-centricity on its head and focus on you, as a human and a lawyer.
How design thinking allows lawyers to carve out a fulfilling career in law
This week we’re talking with Caitlin “Cat” Moon from Vanderbilt Law School. Cat teaches in the Program on Law and Innovation (PoLI) at Vanderbilt Law School, where she also serves as the Director of Innovation Design and directs the PoLI institute, Vanderbilt Law’s innovation-focused executive education program.
One of her courses is Designing a Life in Law – which is what we are talking about today.
We’re exploring how lawyers like you can use human-centered design to create a fulfilling and meaningful legal career – without having everything figured out from the start.
You can connect with Cat on Twitter.
A quick note about me. I’m Hannele Korhonen, founder of Lawyers Design School and host of Legal Design IRL. Each week I talk with practitioners working with lawyers about design thinking, contract design, innovation and the future of law. Most importantly, we talk about how exploring new possibilities can help you be a happier and more grounded lawyer who delivers legal services the way you want to deliver them.
Tune in and learn:
- Why customer-centric lawyers are critical
- Why customers aren’t the only stakeholders in this customer-centric approach
- Why lawyers need to take the tools, methods, and mindsets of human-centered design, and use them on themselves (because not all lawyers want the traditional path)
- The self-awareness exercise Cat uses to help lawyers understand if they are on their true path in law
- Why lawyers with increased self-awareness and human-centered mindsets shifts will help the legal system overcome the challenges it faces. These mindsets are really creative problem-solving. And creative problem-solving is founded on curiosity, empathy, optimism, and innovation. And those things drive change.
- Why the PERMA Map Exercise is the place to start if you want to design your life in law – and thrive.
The PERMA Map exercise
If you’re not feeling like you “fit” in the law – start with the PERMA Map Exercise following Cat’s guidance below. You have superpowers. You’re smart. You’re a lawyer. You just haven’t found where you belong yet. And you can.
Here’s a note from Cat:
“Before doing the mapping work, read Seligman’s PERMA+ Model Explained: A Theory of Wellbeing and watch this PERMA with Martin Seligman.
Then, complete this Map Your Happy worksheet [source: University of Arizona]. The exercise helps you to develop self-awareness around those areas that are already working for you (so you can leverage this) and the areas where you need to do some work.
You can then start designing tiny experiments that engage you in those areas of your life that need attention.”
Legal design thinking: IRL. Episode 41
Are you going to do the PERMA mapping? I encourage you to do it. It’s powerful stuff. Not just in law, but in life.
If you enjoyed the talk, you can join me live every Wednesday at 8 am ET on LinkedIn. The chat is open and you can ask questions.
Lawyers Design School is a learning centre for lawyers and practitioners who want to explore new possibilities in law, break down the barriers to justice, and thrive in their careers. Through courses, workshops, and the free weekly Legal Design IRL series, you’ll get practical, real-life examples of design in action. If you’re a change-maker lawyer or a lawyer who knows they want to change but doesn’t know where to start – stick around.
I’ve created one helpful resource for you. It’s a designerly lawyer superpower quiz to help you tap into the amazing skills you have. The things you hide in your work – like practicality, visuality, and creativity – are your superpowers.
Learn more about legal design and contract design.
You can catch a replay of episode 41 Legal Design Thinking: IRL or join me live next week and ask questions.
Want to chat about it?
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.
Grab a virtual coffee with me and let’s figure out the next step!
