Bliss. On the plane back from Helsinki to Paris, we reflected on the Legal Design Summit 2019 and couldn’t help but feeling overjoyed.
Simply happy.
Not just because of the legendary after party at Dottir where Annti Innanen proved one more time that you can be a brilliant lawyer, founder and a DJ.
Happy that the day started with a 600-people crowd religiously nodding at Dan Jackson:
“ 6 years ago, when you talked about Legal Design, people looked at you as if you had 3 heads – or 4. Today, it’s a recognized methodology for innovation in the legal industry. Large law firms from all over the world flew their lawyers to Helsinki for the BrainFactory to learn and practice.”
By the way, the event was entirely free, thanks to a stellar team of 40 volunteers led by Pilvi who’s been living for legal design since 2016, and very cool sponsors that have been supporting legal design for a long time.
Why? As Dan reminded us:
“The legal design community is all about sharing”.
Happy to hear Dan stating what we might have forgotten, within “the legal world” which has been an industry for a long time:
“Originally, law was a very radical idea. It’s actually quite logical for law to be a medium for creativity.”
Amen.
But can you imagine the level of happiness when in the same day, you hear that, plus Cat Moon:
“law is the platform; it’s more important to innovate in law than in any other area. Simply because if law falls apart, our entire society falls apart.”
So much for the mission.
And the whole crowd spontaneously applauded: happily booting our boots on, even our silver Mary-Jane high heels, to climb the “mountains of legal innovation” with Cat! Always reminding ourselves that innovation leaders are guided by humble curiosity.
Do we even need to state how happy we were when Margaret Hagan herself guided us all to the next level, beyond cool individual legal design projects: reaching systemic impact. We’ve been reflecting a lot on impact and means to bring about lasting change.
Of course, she has the answer: creating more value by sharing insights, results and metrics from each. I project on a strategic blueprint for and by the community.
Riding the happiness wave with Michael Doherty on how to bridge legal culture and design culture (aka, our daily job!!), Swedish judges Andrea Linblom and Ylva Norling Jönsson shaking the judicial system, all for the best, and Hallie Jay proving that cause-centric design works, for good.
It’s an impossible task to quote all the fantastic and inspiring speakers and participants, but what we can say is that the overall energy and spirit of that day was truly special – for real.
Where else do you get spontaneous, generous feedback and unconditional support from strangers? Where else do you talk neuroscience with millennials at 11pm, debating the dual-process theory? Where else do you get a lovely gift from a participant, Dorra, who flew all the way from Tunis?
So, bliss is no exaggeration. We’re flying back to Paris super-charged with learnings, strategic thinking and joy.
