Transcript
Speaker: Well, it's so important because today the world is visual. I mean, ah it's no longer the web one zero. As lawyers, we have been stuck a little bit in this old era. I call it the typewriter era Yeah. We kind of got stuck there, you know, using typewriter machines.
Speaker: And all you could do was underline. i think you you could not even do bold i don't know i think you could do all caps and not on a typewriter yeah yeah yeah i don't even remember underline i remember the all caps yeah yeah the underline was you had to hold two buttons down in order to get the all caps yeah so i don't know many folks who are listening remember that yeah and i think as lawyers we just kind of just got stuck in this era and kind of keep reusing the same strategies. Again, underlining and all caps, black and white, because i don't know, that's what we've always done.
Speaker: Hi, everyone. This is Akshay Verma. I am the Chief Operating Officer at Spot Draft and also the host of our podcast, Spot Draft Beacon Voices. I'm really excited today to have a conversation with Tessa Manuelo, who is the founder and CEO of Legal Creatives.
Speaker: And we'll talk about that in a little bit. But um what we're really here to talk about is a book that she has co-authored called Visual Literacy for Lawyers. And yes, it's exactly what you think it is and exactly what it sounds like, but it's also revolutionary. And I'm excited to to understand a little bit about you know why they thought the book was so important to write, who's been involved, what's in it. Maybe not everything that's in it because you should buy it and you should read it.
Speaker: I still need to read it. I will carve out some time to read it before our webinar on October 29th. And that's a preamble to also remind everybody to tune in for that webinar where we'll actually get into the nitty gritty of what the book tries to teach.
Speaker: ah But before all of that, Tessa, thank you for joining me today. Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to share about the book and to have this conversation about visual literacy for lawyers, what it means, white matters, and how does this work?
Speaker: Yeah. um Before we get to the book, and I have a very specific story about the old law school in the early part of my career. i was obviously doing my own research on on your background. You did some international arbitration as a case manager. So you were certainly exposed to the legal process and the document heavy nature of profession. ah But tell us a little bit about that early experience. Was it ah foundational in your decision around law and the law school and all that? Or was it just kind of a stop along the road for your career?
Speaker: Well, that's a short question. I could give a short answer or a really long one. So I'm going to try to hit something in the middle. okay um Yeah, I was working in international arbitration right after I finished law school. And at the time, I was one of the first of my graduates to start having a proper job. you know I mean, is the job market is not easy in general, especially in law. Yeah.
Speaker: And I was so excited, but I have to admit, after a couple of years, I just realized my day-to-day work was mostly, you know, drafting memos, memorandums, letters, ah email. At the time, we had fax machines, and I'm pretty sure today they still use them because it's part of the, don't know, the procedure. um and I was just thinking, is this really what I'm going to do my entire life and career?
Speaker: i was 25, and I started to get my gray hair, which you see now if you're watching the video. Well, I don't have any, but if I did, mine it would be gray, too. and So i was like, I can't just kind of, I don't think I can do this. It's, um I mean, it was extremely interesting.
Speaker: exciting from an intellectual perspective. You think about cross-border contracts, um operations, commercial agreements, constructions, plans.
Speaker: And then, you know, I would be receiving those disputes on my desk and I would be in charge of managing the entire cases yeah and appointing arbitrators and working with the International Court of Arbitration with really high profile experts, professors, arbitrators. And I mean, he was absolutely amazing. I mean, i i i was I think I was really lucky I got into the position and I really enjoyed it. But what made me change my mind is was at the time, I mean, we didn't we didn't have so much technology at the time. I was like 20 years ago almost.
Speaker: So, you know, I mean, we we did what we could with the technology what that we had, but it was extremely repetitive. Yeah. And I think later on in my on my journey, I discovered, um you know, I had this creativity in me, which i think everyone does, by the way. i think everyone has...
Speaker: you know at least a little bit of creativity. But it feel like it felt like I had a lot. By the time, I just didn't know it. But this is why I felt it there was a little bit of a mismatch. And when eventually legal innovation started to become a thing, I was like, that is what I want to do.
Speaker: yeah And I was one of the pioneers to be involved in, you know, how do we redesign the workflows and the contracts and the documentation so we can also prevent those disputes from happening in the first place.
Speaker: So a more proactive approach. So I kind of went from the continuum to like the ultimate dispute resolution mechanism, international arbitration. you know You could think of it as as the fi Ferrari of dispute resolution. And then I went, you know I went had tried all of the cars along the way, ah yeah until the Fiat Uno, let's say, you know I print everything.
Speaker: I tried everything, mediation and consultation. and wow true And then I was like, you know what? I want to be really at the at at the at step zero or maybe step you know minus one before even the disputes could even arise. How can we draft the contract in a way that we can align business partners together?
Speaker: on the rights, on the obligations, on the deadlines, on the timelines. And that's how I ended up doing contract design and legal design. What was it about the innovation that really drew you in?
Speaker: um We don't typically think of lawyers as innovative. i do think lawyers can be very creative because if you look at some of the arguments, if it's just hardcore law, if you look some of the arguments that come out of some of the cases, like that you have to have a level of creativity around that. But but what was it for you on the even innovation piece that really drew you in?
Speaker: I think, you know what, it he was when I found out we could be creative in a professional setting, not just doing arts or performance, yeah which I also tried by the way, which was lots of fun, like improv, comedy. i don't know if I was funny, but I tried.
Speaker: And I was like, wow, I found out a community of professionals who are working, you know, as creative problem solvers. And I found out ah in Toronto, Canada, I went to a conference, and someone brought me there for a three-day conference on creativity. i was actually mind blown. I was like, wow, we can use creativity in a professional manner to solve complex challenges, to innovate in all kinds of fields.
Speaker: And at the time, no one was doing it in legal. And that was also the time where we started you know thinking about technology and the legal service delivery. And we also had tons of reports everywhere around the world about the access to justice problems.
Speaker: It's so hard for anyone to access justice yeah um or just to have legal information. um So it was like, i don't know, everything kind of came together. And I was like, I'm just going to go into this.
Speaker: yeah And I'm just going to research and find out how we can use these methodologies that already exist. They very established. There's a lot of empirical and qualitative research around creativity as a problem-solving methodology, not just to innovate, but to say again, to solve complex kind of recurring problems.
Speaker: So, you know, it's got Einstein said, if you're trying to solve the same problem, repeating the same thing over and over, you're just a crazy person. It's never going to happen. It's the definition of insanity. Exactly. You know the quote. Oh, yes, I do.
Speaker: Very famous quote. as it does my kids and My kids use it against me sometimes, unfortunately, but yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. um So, yeah by the way, something just clicked in my head because I just had a conversation with Olga. She also was on her way or at least had a desire on the creative side to be a commercial artist.
Speaker: ah You've dabbled with the creative side of your brain and your and and what you really valued. So now i'm I'm starting to put some of the pieces together as to how the three of you at Lindsay Krolick, who I will have a conversation with, ah p I think next week, about how the three of you got together for this. But we'll get to that part in a minute. But um you said that it felt like the right time to bring these creative approaches to the law.
Speaker: What were you, what was it that you were seeing in the law that was broken that, or there was a gap or however you want to coin it, that really felt for you as like, we have to be creative in how we solve this or nothing's going to change.
Speaker: Well, you know, i think it's like through the reality of um the day-to-day job for a lawyer, I mean, is extremely intense, right? It's super intense, right? You have all those deadlines, you have all those professional expectations and obligations,
Speaker: And, um you know, there's a lot of research about how, you know ah you know, burnout in the legal profession. Oh, yes. And stress and, you know, all kinds of problems. And on the other end of the spectrum, you've got the clients who,
Speaker: the user of the legal service and the user is overwhelmed, completely overwhelmed by the information that is being received, that is you know usually like really dense legalese, extremely long and complex. And if you think of legal procedures, they are extremely slow and expensive and yeah, overwhelmed. I think it's the word from both sides, lawyers and users.
Speaker: And it was a how can we create a better legal service delivery so that we don't have that overwhelm on either side, you know? yeah So lawyers can have, you know, a more balanced work-life balance, you know, like a more balanced life. And users can feel more satisfied with the service they receive.
Speaker: Yeah. Is that what led you to create and found Legal Creatives? or that Was that kind of the the main genesis? Yeah, it was like, let's think creatively about the legal service delivery. Let's use those methodologies that are already established and are grounded in research and translate those theories and methodologies and techniques for the legal field, for lawyers.
Speaker: Yeah. And see how we can start applying them to improve ah whether it's the output, like a contract or a policy, or even just email communications or client relationships, you know, or how can we improve the entire delivery with the backend, you know, now that we have so many technologies available, how can we improve the backend and start automating or maybe even, you know, eliminating or deleting stuff that we don't need to do or delegating, you know, all those strategies that come from like business administration or lean or agile and design thinking.
Speaker: yeah How can we infuse that into the legal profession? so That was a starting point. So I created Legal Creatives first as a community and an educational platform ah so we could have more lawyers and non-lawyers, but mostly lawyers, have this conversation and explore the new possibilities. And so it has been a ton of fun, and it still is today. Because the things people have came up with are just absolutely amazing.
Speaker: And some of the things have been translated in, you know, late day-to-day operation, which is even more amazing. So it's not just brainstorming for the sake of brainstorming. It's really solving problems you know, complex or maybe not even complex, but recurring problems are annoying everyone, you know?
Speaker: So that was the idea. Practical application of yeah of a theoretical approach. Yeah. ah um so You know, I practiced law for seven years and then for the last, whatever, 14, gosh, that feels like a long time. The last 14 of them i have been in my career have been on the operational side in various business roles and so forth.
Speaker: um And one of the things that I found really um appealing about being on the business side is that as a lawyer, I was so focused on input, how much time, how much effort, how much energy I put into something.
Speaker: Whereas on the business side, it's all about outcomes. It's all about results. um And how you get there ah has a component of of how little time you can spend and how little money you should spend in order to get that outcome, which is a very, very different way of thinking and doing relative to lawyers.
Speaker: um How has that philosophy or has that philosophy kind of woven into how you do your work at Legal Creatives? Yeah, absolutely. So I've applied those concepts to my own business and life in general. I'm all about what you what you're saying, you know, why should I spend more time and energy? yeah You know, if I can get the same result, maybe even a better result with less time and energy. And so, again, like it's like streamline your operations, a leverage technology to automate, ah use all those digital tools to, you know, make your marketing easier.
Speaker: um And how how can you do that in your day-to-day operations? And now with AI, it's just incredible. Thinking about AI agents, I mean...
Speaker: The sky's the limit, right? So I think the only problem is you need to find the time to to think about this, right? So I'm fortunate to have designed ah a business where I do have this, you know, I do have the time to reflect and see how I can continuously improve and streamline and enhance the experience.
Speaker: But I think for many lawyers, again, this this is not necessarily an easy thing to do. So when we think, hey, you need to upskill, need to learn AI, you need to improve this and that. I mean, again, it's overwhelmed.
Speaker: It's overwhelming. When am I going to have the time? We are so overloaded. And I'll even use the term overburdened with data and information. I see this with my kids. You said, i have time to reflect.
Speaker: Kids today don't do that. They don't get a chance to reflect. We have to carve out time as parents. We have to carve out time specifically so that the kids can get some of that because it's not there. And I think that is so true, especially of lawyers today. They are inundated with work.
Speaker: Got to get this done. That's got to get out. You talked about deadlines and the volume of work and things like that. But in order to create, your mind has to wander. It really has to wander. And it's really tough to do that in today's legal profession. You need to press pause. And yeah, I mean...
Speaker: There's no other way. It's just like, you know, ah it's just like if you want to if you want to make space for the new, you're going to get rid of some stuff, right? Yeah. yeah What am I not going to Once you start letting go well, then the new can come. But until you let go, you're just going to be stuck with whatever you have.
Speaker: And letting go is hard for people. i think it is exponentially more difficult for lawyers because we are so type A about control and about making sure the thing that we need to get done in the way that we need to get it done gets done in exactly that way. i It's a really, really good point.
Speaker: Okay, um I want to talk about the three co-authors. How did the three of you get together? How did this idea come about? like talk to Talk to us a little bit about the early um or early conversations around the book.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm sure every author is going to have a different perspective yeah and a different story. That's why I'm talking to each each of you three separately. And so for me, well, I first met Olga, Olga Max, through one of the online events that we organized with Lego Creatives, where every, i don't know, three, every quarter, I think we would have an online event and we would showcase everything that was created inside, you know, the academy. So ah she was an attendee and she was mind blown because we had this special event on comic contracts.
Speaker: So think about something really creative. A contract in the form of of comics. Yeah. So this is how we met with Olga. That was years ago. don't know. Five years ago?
Speaker: Don't remember. It was quite some time ago now. Yeah. And eventually, you know, i I think she told me she wanted to write a book about this visual thing. She's, I mean, she's using visuals.
Speaker: It's just incredible what she's doing with, you know, how she is visual, whether it's social media, LinkedIn and, just day-to-day work. you know, it's super impressive. And I had this idea of also showcasing some of the, you know, research I've done and findings and insights and examples.
Speaker: And I think it just felt natural that we come together to do this, the three of us, with Lindsay, who has this other perspective from someone who is a practitioner as ah as well as working in academics.
Speaker: I don't know. It was just meant to be, but it took many years before the the the book was done because I think we all had our internal like solo endeavors. We were trying to get it done and we realized that would be easier if if we had the hello the inspiration, the motivation and the and the help of a trio than a solo, you know?
Speaker: Yeah. So that's how we came together and said, let's ah let's do it, the the three of us. Yeah. And ah it's it's been ah incredible. So far, the feedback has been absolutely amazing.
Speaker: um People say they really love it. It's really practical. You have lots of examples, case studies, checklists. all the background research.
Speaker: So any lawyer who wants to start using visuals in their practice to communicate more effectively, well, you grab a copy of the book and there's a ton of things you can do.
Speaker: Ton. You don't have to do everything. You can start up with one thing, yeah you know? So one of the things that I think lawyers hold themselves in high regard about, because it's true, is that they're effective communicators. They tend to be both orally as well as written effective communicators.
Speaker: um But then a book like this comes along and it kind of turns that thought process upside down a little bit. So talk a little bit about why you felt there was this gap and how visual design comes into play for something that most even lawyers, but certainly the general public would consider as like words on a page and it's a contract. Who cares? It's mundane. It's got a bunch of paragraphs on it. I'll never understand what it says. Why is visual design so important in that process? Well, it's so important because today the world is visual.
Speaker: i mean, the it's no longer the web one zero when we had those, you know, websites at the time it was block of text, right? Because yeah we didn't have tools to present the text differently. And I think as lawyers, we have been stuck a little bit in this old era. I call it the typewriter era. yeah We kind of got stuck there, you know, using typewriter machines and all you could do was underline could you i think you couldn't even do bold. I don't know. I think you could do all caps. and Not on a typewriter. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah i don't I don't even remember underline. I remember the all caps. You had to hold two buttons down in order to get the all caps. Yeah. I don't know. Too many folks who are listening remember that. Yeah. But yeah, there was a time of typewriter and then typewriter got better. you become like a kind of an electronic machine.
Speaker: And then eventually we started to have like the computers and laptops, you know, and now we have so many software, you know, laptops, whether they are inside the laptops or online. So now we have so many tools available.
Speaker: And i think as lawyers, we just kind of just got stuck in this era and we kind of keep We're using the same strategies, again, underlining in all caps, black and white, because I don't know, that's what we've always done. And that's, you know, that's what we feel is the way to communicate legal information, right? It's black and white, ye have small font, all caps for the important sections. right Make sure you read this because it's in all caps. Make sure you read it. being shouted out. We want to make sure you can hear us. It actually makes it more difficult to read because it's just bigger.
Speaker: Bigger, it's actually more difficult to read, actually. So there are other ways you can enhance that information. So you can use a text box. You can add a little bit of a shading for that text box to stand out.
Speaker: yeah You can, you know, make your headings bigger, much bigger. It doesn't have to be like 12 15. twelve or fifteen It can be you size ah So it stands out. So it's easier to scheme and scan because at the end of the day, ah most people are not going to read a document from a to Z.
Speaker: I would presume, i mean, possibly if you're negotiating and you have ah you know you have a counterpart, another lawyer, they're going to read everything because that's the job. but They have to review everything, every single word and comment.
Speaker: ah They have to read everything. But and when you think about the business people who are eventually going to you know sign the contracts or have to use the contract or buy the contract, they're not going to read it. they're going to scheme and scan But because nothing is skimmable or scannable, they're just not going to use the documents. We've been doing some research lately on the contract handoff gap. So after the signature, what happens to the contract?
Speaker: And everybody tells us, well, nothing happens. The contract stays in a drawer. Hopefully I can find it when I need it. oh Exactly. great Oh, you have a folder somewhere. It's no longer a drawer. Now it's probably a folder, a digital folder, and and nothing happens.
Speaker: and so and then they are And then lawyers are being pulled back because something happens, and usually it's it's pretty bad. And from the research people told us it's, so you know, like a a major issue and usually involves money, you know, like a revenue, like, whoa, wow, what's happening now? We have a major problem. And then lawyers are being pulled back.
Speaker: So they have to, you know, fix the problem. But how about, again, like how about we have a more proactive approach to doing contracts? And it's not just contracts. It's anything. You think about compliance, privacy, you know, how can we communicate...
Speaker: this really critical piece of information in a way that's going to stick with people. So we don't have to be pulled back. So people can just use the document they have been provided to solve problems, to um yeah to to to make better decisions, to comply or you know to...
Speaker: ah to just build better relationships because a contract is about a business relationship. If it's a policy, it's about compliance. So compliance with the regulation, whether it's internal, external, law, whatever.
Speaker: So, yeah, so I don't remember the question. you but but Yeah, yeah yeah there you answered it perfectly. um you right it's really yeah no it's it's's It's really around the visual aspect of that and and why it's so important. Communication is visual and it's not about making lawyers, designers, or even less artists. It's not about that. It's just yeah leveraging those tools so I can communicate better, more effectively.
Speaker: So yeah, there's lots of techniques in the book. I don't know if this is something you want to explore. I know we have a webinar coming up. so We do. get it out and we'llll We'll get it. Well, i mean I do want to explore a couple of aspects of the book. goal You said that to go a little deeper, you said that there is research in the book. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Is there any research around the way that the brain interprets information that you can, again, without getting too ah in the weeds on it, I'd love to understand a little bit about that because I, you know, like we eat with our eyes first. We do that. We, you know, like I think about the way that I met my wife.
Speaker: I saw her first. I saw her first when we're married now, 23 years later, and then we have two kids. So there's a lot that we do that impacts our lives that is about our eyes, including the things that we read and lawyers read and write all the time.
Speaker: So what is it around that and the psychology of it that you can share? Yeah, well, I mean, I'm going to do my best. It would be easier with a visual, actually. Sure. I recommend you join the webinar. We'll add the supplies so we can show the visual.
Speaker: ah But yeah, the way we gather information is through our senses, right? So the eye, but it could be the you know smell. I mean, although with a contract, but oh the contract smells fishy. I don't know.
Speaker: Or old because it's been sitting in the folder for 20 years. Who knows? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so that could that could that that could be important. But yeah, usually you capture information with your senses.
Speaker: And what happens is as you capture this information, if the information is clear, then there actually three steps. If the information is clear, then passes the first step, which is like the first threshold, which is like, okay, you can clearly capture that. You know, that smell of opening the folder for 20 years can clearly capture that, right? And then goes into the working memory. That's the second step. And then it goes into the long-term memory.
Speaker: yeah So what I'm trying to say is if at every step along the way, the information is not clear enough, you're you're just going to start, you're never going to reach long-term memory. Never.
Speaker: yeah So this is why when you think about ah driving, You know, driving, we have those um traffic lights, right? It's pretty much universal now around the world. Sure. You have red and orange and green.
Speaker: Yep. It's simple. It's easy, right? you So you would get that information. It's clear. Oh, it's red. I have to stop. Right? So, yeah and we have internalized this now because it's a common practice, right?
Speaker: um But if the information is not clear, if you read a sign on the road, and sometimes it happens, you read a sign, like, this is a bit weird. i Think about the parking signs.
Speaker: i've i've I've lived in places where the parking signs are really complicated. You're like, you're about to park here. so It's got a paragraph and not like, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah you know that. In New York, you have that. Sure, yes.
Speaker: we haven We have them in San Francisco. I went to college in Berkeley. I got my share of parking tickets because maybe those signs were a little too complicated for my brain to absorb his pipe cycle. just know what to do. So you do nothing or you hope for the best. And so that's a little bit what happens with contracts and policies because they are so dense, black and white, small fonts.
Speaker: No meaningful hearings that really stand out. Maybe you you don't even have a table of contents. Nothing is clickable. So it's just you have a ton of cross-references and you have to jump back and forth. And it just makes it so difficult just with your eyes to and your brain to understand you know what is what is going on with this contract. you know It's it's creatingit overload Yeah.
Speaker: So there's no way that your brain is going to be open to receive that piece of information and start working with it let alone remember it.
Speaker: So what are we doing with the the visual design? Oh, it doesn't have to be visual or design. it's just like what we' done with icons and colors and dividers and just font size.
Speaker: It's just making sure that the important information really stands out. So, cognitively, then you're not overwhelmed. yeah You go into cognitive flow. So you it's easier to read because it's easier to read. You don't get frustrated.
Speaker: And because you don't get frustrated, you don't have those negative emotions, it's actually it can actually become a a pleasant experience. it It can be really positive. yeah Because you're going through the document and maybe you have a navigation table and you can navigate a document.
Speaker: And it just makes it so much easier to review, to process cognitively. Hence, it's become so much easier to remember because also you may have diagrams. So diagrams are proven to be a lot more engaging to the brain. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Speaker: So you have a diagram next to the text. So you you keep your legal text, but you have a diagram alongside the text. So most likely the brain is going to go to the diagram and you mean, oh, that's clear. That's much clearer than reading a you know a text.
Speaker: ah If you think about a delivery ah delivery, or if you think about, I don't know, anything that is process-based, I mean process like a renewal or a termination.
Speaker: um Even like prices, if you have different kind of prices for different yeah categories, so much easier. You have a table, you can easily compare. So you can do those side by side comparisons.
Speaker: yeah If you have a ah like a joint partnership agreements, instead of having all the obligations kind of mixed up, you have like ah columns with side by side obligations, you know, party A do that, party B does that. So you kind of have...
Speaker: you know, ah understanding of how also how related the obligations are. Yeah. Right? So it's all of those things. One of the things that really struck me about what you just said, and it's so true, we've been reading our entire lives. I just think about listening. I'm reading for fun.
Speaker: Okay. I'm reading a fiction book or a nonfiction, I'm reading a novel, whatever it is. The chapters that tend, the opening part of the chapter is always easier for me to read because it it's got a lot of white space, generally speaking. It's got a chapter number that might take up a big portion of the page. And then it's got like two simple paragraphs that start and it's like, you go, then you turn the page And if the text is really dense, I can feel my brain go, okay, I got to work through this. Yeah. It's more I work really got to work. load.
Speaker: Yeah. And now that's reading for fun, by the way. Now you put that into a contract situation and contracts are the lifeblood of the business. I work in this business, in this world, 24-7 now. Now you're creating risk.
Speaker: You are creating risk if that provision isn't understood properly or somebody misses something because their eyes glaze over because there's too much dense text on that <unk>p on that on that paragraph or on that page or whatever it may be.
Speaker: And so part of what I understand your book to advocate for is if you change that with visual design impact, you you can actually de-risk the potential for the business. Am I going too far with that? No, absolutely. There's been a ton of research that proves that using the methodologies that we have in the book, that you reduce or time for review, contract reviews, is get faster. Yep.
Speaker: ah Negotiation, also negotiation times, do you reduce that a lot. yeah Yeah. 50% is a like um pretty common. 50% time reduction when you use those techniques.
Speaker: Wow. And after signature, you have you empower people to use the document. So instead of letting you be pulled back in those signed contracts,
Speaker: people are empowered to use a document to problem solve. Think about managers, operators, whoever needs to make a decision, solve a problem,
Speaker: If they can use the document that was provided, isn't isn't it better than just calling you or emailing you or sending you a Slack message like urgent Friday nights?
Speaker: yeah Oh, I need your help. We have this disastrous thing going on. I don't know what to do. I need legal to to set to save me, you know? yeah So we want to empower people to use the documents.
Speaker: So it's all this empowerment. Yeah. And so to empower people, you have to understand how the brain function and cognitively, again, this dense black and white small form doesn't work.
Speaker: doesn't work, conively and even for lawyers. I mean, we are we are more used to it in a way. So we've kind of trained ourselves to overcome that hurdle. But still, even lawyers, we have the same brain. Everyone has the same brain. And it's just easier if you communicate that information in a way. So I like to say that you layer that information. I really like that. It's coming from the IZone norm as well. So last year,
Speaker: There was an ISO standard released. It's a global organization and they have this norm now for plain language. And one of those sub chapters is dedicated to plain legal language.
Speaker: And layering is one of the techniques that is advocated in that norm. And layering is also a visual technique. like You layer your agreements. think of, you know, like a cake. You know, you have, if you have just a piece of cake with just a little munchy thing, I don't know, it's not so exciting. But when you start to layer your cake with cream and jam and chocolate, but it's more exciting. So it's a little bit the same for your agreement. You layer So you can layer in different ways. We talk a lot about that in the book.
Speaker: But what is great about it is is a very kind of low risk technique in the sense that you keep your existing text, but you just layer it better.
Speaker: that's And to me, that's Probably one of the most powerful things, change management, we were talking about this at the at the beginning, is a really difficult thing. It is particularly difficult for lawyers and particularly difficult for people who've been engaging with muscle memory in a particular act for years.
Speaker: It's really hard for them to change that. It's the world I've been in for the last 14 years, and that has a lot of like psychology behind how you get people to change their habits and so forth. Mm-hmm. This doesn't require them to completely relearn how to draft a contract, but it adds a component to it that makes the contract that much more digestible.
Speaker: um Obviously, we cannot have a conversation in 2026 without talking about AI. We can't do that. so we're gonna How do you see this fitting together in a world now where technology, I don't have to read the contract. That's... true let's Let's put that in heavy quotation marks because it scares us and it should as lawyers. but But I don't have to read the contract. The AI will summarize it for me and will tell me what's important. Let's just say that it's doing well. How does this how does this fit together?
Speaker: Yeah, well, I think there are a couple of things we need to mention about AI and this thing, right? This legal design, visual literacy thing. I think the first thing is usually the machines are fed with all the legacy boilerplate templates, right?
Speaker: And usually nothing is really done when we, you know, set up the machine to change that, right? Because that's that's what we know. That's what we've done. So the...
Speaker: immediate risk that we actually get more of these unreadable texts, you know, being generated by the machines and being put in front of the eyes of the clients and business users who, you know, it's just faster friction.
Speaker: Yeah. So there is a way to set up the AI machine so that, again, you can layer the agreement and AI can do that for you. I mean, I do that all the time. I mean, I used to do it manually, but I mean i have to admit, it was quite a lot of work to do it manually. yeah Now you do it with AI.
Speaker: It's... It's just so much faster. i think what used to take me like three days or sometimes three weeks, depending on the project, now you can do it in three hours or even three minutes or three seconds, depending on that the quality of your prompt.
Speaker: yeah So you have to also learn the prompt to use. So that you can you you can generate documents that are more digestible, comprehensible, usable.
Speaker: yeah And the other thing is, so that's one thing. And the other thing is, well, I think I've talked about many things already in that one thing, but... ah I don't remember. I think I had three things, but I think I've kind of bundled the three things into this one this is where piece. So yeah, think about, you know, think about what kind of agreements would be beneficial to to kind of redesign. And usually yeah I would say, usually it would be more like customer facing documents. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: or documents that are very useful for operators, business operators, business units, who you know and try to think how you can. And and if you get a lot of requests for clarifications, a lot of questions, whether it's in the negotiation phase or post signature,
Speaker: Well, those contracts are crammed for redesign. So in down the road, it's going to save you time because you will not get so many questions for clarification or help, blah, blah, blah. So i try to start with those documents and play with AI.
Speaker: And once you find out something that really worked for you, then set up the AI so it's automat automated. You don't have to do that. yep AI is a great tool. It's a great tool. Oh, yeah. And you were telling me, okay, now people are going to use AI. So, yeah, now we're seeing this, that people, who so non-lawyers, yep receive the contract or have a situation to deal with.
Speaker: And instead of reading the contract, they're gonna they're going to ask AI to summarize it or cannot do that. where there are still ah problems with with if the contract was not redesigned in the first place. And the reason, the most important reason is we don't necessarily realize it, but when we draft a contract, it's a very linear process and we have all those cross references within the document, sometimes referring to documents that are appendix or other kinds of documents.
Speaker: And when you actually look at it, individually, you will have some contradictions. in Individually. It happens all the time. And it's very hard for lawyers to believe that, but it is true. I mean, I say it all the time. No, they draft perfect contracts. No, and there's never any contract. You have IP mentions in different parts of your contracts. Yeah.
Speaker: So then there there is a high risk of contradiction. And the machine is going to have to pick one side or one answer. So the machine will possibly give you the wrong answer because the contract was not actually clear in the first place yeah because the information is a little bit scattered. So when we talk about layering or architecture, we want to make sure that all the information is regrouped And if there is redundancy, that we eliminate the redundancy so we don't get into those ah problems where maybe we have two sections that actually do not really say the same thing.
Speaker: And the AI is going to have to pick one or maybe the AI is going to hallucinate. So you're going back you're going back to the need for the visual design aspect. Yeah. Because you're at judgment.
Speaker: Cleaning the data kind of thing, you know, like making sure all of your data is regrouped. All your sections are regrouped. All of the mentions for terminations are all regrouped.
Speaker: I mean, whatever it is. And and that you you clean up. the It's the just cleaning up the data before you put it in the machine. Yeah. Otherwise, the machine is going to make a mistake.
Speaker: It's inevitable. Yeah. Agreed. Oftentimes, ah a labor of love like this where you're you're putting something creative out into the world, it's a very personal thing to do.
Speaker: um You chose to work with two other people. What was the creative process like for the three of you? ah You're all very educated. ah You're very accomplished. I'm sure you had very strong opinions between the three of you. like How was that process? How did it come together?
Speaker: Well, you know, as I've said, when when we decided to join to write this book, we I think we all came from the desire to bring something to the world of law that would be yeah like, it's pretty new, man. yeah quite surprising I would call this revolutionary in the law I really would yeah yeah and we have this we had this desire because each one of us, Lindsay, Olga and myself we use it in our everyday in our to day we use it and we want to see more lawyers using it
Speaker: And so it really came out of a desire to bring this into the world, to share, you know, what we have discovered, what what we have been doing, what we have seen work. Because there are a lot of ah case studies from other experts from all around the world, by the way.
Speaker: ah So we we have 20 plus case studies of other ah practitioners who are using this methodology. And... um And I think we had, you know, we had like each of us had some kind of, don't know, preferences, you know, ah maybe Lindsay was language. I was moved towards visuals. Paul Gammoth was leadership. So it was kind of an easy way to sort of divide the the the work or the chapters, you know, and um and have everyone, knew you know, ah yeah, everyone kind of, yeah, and just...
Speaker: do it, you know, get it done. And then well it was ah it was quite a it was quite some work, I have to admit. ah um I'm sure. don't know how much time it took to to make this book er come true, come to the world.
Speaker: You, you um Olga, Olga coined or or described the ABA who partnered with you on on this book as kind of the ultimate legal fraternity. And and she was very, you know, very intent on on ensuring that they would partner with you on it.
Speaker: But as you think about how the the practical application of the concepts and theories in this book get rolled out, as you think about the webinar that we're going to be doing on October 29th, and granted, it's one hour. It's just a piece of the education around this concept. What do you hope people take away from that webinar?
Speaker: Well, the webinar is going to be different because right now we're having a conversation and, you know, you get insights, you get some spark of, I don't know, creative ah bits here and there. But the webinar will have slides.
Speaker: So we'll be able to show you in a more tangible way. what you can do with it, ah with with this methodology, with with the book and the concepts inside it.
Speaker: So what I would love for people is to start opening their eyes to new ways of communicating legal information. yeah And it's not just contracts, although the book is pretty much you know focused on contracts, but the principles work just the same, even if you think of an email communication.
Speaker: You know, the way we communicate by email is so dense. And again, we have this underline and maybe maybe you even put all caps in email. I don't know. You should do that. But I wouldn't recommend that. But even for emails, I mean, you can use those strategies yeah for your everyday communication to communicate better with your client in a way that feels more like 21st century.
Speaker: Yeah. You know, that does not turn off your clients. We're like, okay, these lawyers are weird. rather That's what clients think. Lawyers are weird. yeah Yeah. The way they communicate and the language and the legalese. Yeah.
Speaker: Try to communicate in a way that is more business friendly, but still legally compliant. Yeah. Human friendly. and hopefully Hopefully we can say human friendly over time. You know, I think about um my first year contract class in law school.
Speaker: And one of the phrases that um was very commonly used, because in in in your In your law school classes around contracts, you're looking at what went wrong because there's a lawsuit that came out of it. And that's the decision that you're reading. And the decision tells you what went wrong, what was missing from the contract, how it could have been better, how it should be interpreted, any of those kinds of things. But one of the most common phrases during that class was a meeting of the minds.
Speaker: Was there a meeting of the minds here? And to me, what what this book and the concepts and this of this book can enable in any kind of contract is a meeting of the minds. Because if if the premise is true, and I believe it to be true, which is that visual design is more is a more effective way of communication, the more effective you can be in your communication, the more somebody will be able to understand that. The more the people can understand each other, the more there'll be a meeting of the minds. And therefore, or maybe we're looking at no more contractual litigation moving forward. well well Absolutely. It does reduce litigation. i mean, we have yet to see a legal design contract in courts. We have, this is unheard of.
Speaker: Wow. Wow. That's quite a stat. so Yeah. Yeah. It is unheard of. Like those contracts, they are meant to support the negotiation process and the post signature ah relationship, right?
Speaker: So thinking about, you know, It's thinking proactively about the problems that arise or could arise as a lawyer would do, but just communicating that in a way that is not just, okay, worst care scenario.
Speaker: It's just like communicate that in a way that is more... Yeah, I think business friendly is the word, and i you know, like because people who are going to use this document, they're not lawyers.
Speaker: yeah They're most likely business owners. Yeah. yeah Right? So we and if we don't do that, we just, I mean, the documents, as I've said, in the research we've been doing, people say the documents, they are signed and we don't use them.
Speaker: Yeah. So why do we spend so much time? It's there's the lifeblood of the business. We go to litigation, but how many contracts actually go to litigation? Very few. Very true. It's all about the value you want to bring as a legal professional, someone who works in-house or a law firm.
Speaker: What is the value you want to bring? And I think this is really practical. This is actually very accessible. It's also very cheap. I mean, you can do it in inside words. Yeah.
Speaker: You have icons in words. It's a good way to start. It's cheap. It costs zero. Maybe it takes a bit of the time. So maybe you have someone on your team who helps dedicated to that, you know.
Speaker: and and And then you're going to see the result. Like people are going to love it. yeah And it doesn't have to be super creative. It doesn't have to be. Well, ah I am personally very excited to be a part of getting this information out there. As we mentioned, we'll be doing a a webinar on October 29th that will get into a little bit more of the practical application of the concepts in the book. So we'll encourage folks to to join in for that webinar.
Speaker: And Tessa, thank you so much for your time today, your insights. Thank you for writing this book. Once again, it is Visual Literacy for Lawyers. You can find it on Amazon. And I'm excited to see what this brings for our profession as we move forward.
Speaker: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, everyone. All right.
