Katri Nousiainen: How to measure the total impact of legal design?
Katri Nousiainen is conducting her PhD work at Hanken, in the Department of Accounting and Commercial Law. Currently Nousiainen is conducting research in the United States at the University of California, Berkeley, at the Center for Law & Technology. Her pioneering research focuses on the total impact of legal design in the framework of commercial contracts.
- Currently, there are no empirical studies yet on the field of legal design with respect to economic analysis of law and ethics for commercial contracts, she tells.
In her work as lawyer, Nousiainen has seen that there exists a great need to modify commercial services, products and processes with human- and user-centred design.
- Increasingly, legal contracts have become greatly comprehensive, they can be boiler-plate contracts or individually written; but what they have in common is that people often have no idea what their rights or obligations under these contracts are.
Legal design could solve this problem. Empirical studies on impact of legal design are needed to understand the real-life big picture of contracting. Law and economics can assess this impact. When the impact of legal design can be scientifically measured, it will make the use of design more feasible for different operators, as then procedures and decisions can be grounded with black letter numerical, empirical data, she says.
- These numbers are of crucial value for societies and businesses in their strategic decision and policy making as they imply the possibilities and obstacles behind the application of legal design in commercial contracts.
Bridging between legal practitioners and academia
Nousiainen believes that legal profession is rapidly changing. She is of the opinion that we need to innovate and implement new methods and content for academic teaching.
- Research is essential to understand the big picture. The use of technology plays increasingly important role in many professions. It is of crucial importance that we are aware of the need to bridge between legal practitioners and academia. We need to foster broader and deeper connections, she explains.
Nousiainen is also motivated by bridging between academia and the society as a whole. She sincerely believes that if people understand more about their agreements and legal matters in general, it will promote both the economy and people’s rights.
Knowledge is empowering people
Empowering people by increasing symmetry of knowledge and understanding inspires Nousiainen.
- People become empowered when they can understand the legal framework where they are operating – without all the legalese. In some circumstances there could even be no need for an expensive lawyer to work on all legal matters - people could do it themselves. This is also an important driver in reaching equality between people.
As a take-away, legal design approach can be used to empower people, societies, communities and entities in their legal matters and life in general. It also allows more ethics and efficiency taken into account in legal products, services and processes. It creates monetary savings for society as a whole.
- Human- and user-centred approach to law has not only monetary implications, but also great ethical significance in enforcing equality. Legal design increases transparency and thus promotes symmetry of information, knowledge and understanding. It enables people to make better grounded strategic decisions and to better understand their rights and obligations.
Nousiainen believes that this kind of understanding will, in addition, increase obeying of one’s obligations as well as to commit on their realization.
In this research interdisciplinary approach of other fields of science (e.g. service design, behavioral economics, psychology, neuroscience, economics) are used to support human- and user-centred, visual, ethic and empowering approach to law. Case studies in the field of insurance and legal practice are used in the empirical part of the work. Co-operation is conducted with international and influential business operators such as insurance company Fennia, Fondia Law Firm and Finland Design Forum.
Nousiainen is lawyer with European Master in Law and Economics, (LL.M.); Master Universitario di primo livello; Master d’Analyse Economique du Droit et des Institutions. She gives expert legal lectures in various practice areas of commercial law, legal design and law & technology.
Photo: Berkeley