Legal Design Summit Blog

LDS Blog #2: From Proposals to Program - Creating the Legal Design Summit 2025

Legal Design Summit program is live! In this blog we pull back the curtain and share how we created the program - from our approach to what we learned along the way.

How we built the program

First, thank you to the brilliant team: Akvilė, Danielle, Katie, Marielle, Mia, Sade and Serena. For their collective effort over the last six months. It was a pleasure to work with a group of committed volunteers who, each in their own way, brought energy, creativity and curiosity to the process. Say hello and a big thank you when you see them in Helsinki! Building on the momentum of a remarkable 2023 Summit, we set out to do something bold for the fifth LDS: create an ambitious, advanced and future-looking program. To get there, we collaborated across the LDS team, embedded design thinking into our methods, and co-created with our community. Step-by-step, here’s how we built the program:

1. Brainstorming workshop

We kicked things off with a workshop with the LDS team to explore what our audiences needed and brainstorm possible themes. We mapped the legal design landscape through three lenses - the past, present, and future - and explored how those themes met the needs of different audiences, for example academics, practitioners, and participants new to the scene. One interesting thing we highlighted was the opportunity to create a stronger feedback loop between academic research and how legal design is being applied in practice. In addition to being good fun and a bit of an icebreaker for a new team, the workshop also gave us clear direction for the types of proposals we wanted to attract, highlighting themes from AI governance to access to justice to re-designing democracies. The workshop also identified opportunities for new content - this blog being one of them!

2. Call for speakers

We launched a public call for speaking proposals at the end of April 2025. This was open for one month and required submission of a Google form. The form included a series of questions, from motivations for speaking to a short summary of the proposal itself. We received over 70 proposals! The overall quality of the proposal was extremely high and we were impressed with the depth and breadth of the ideas and concepts. Thanks again to everyone who took the time to submit a proposal.

3. Reviewing proposals

To ensure fairness and quality, we designed a collaborative and robust review process. Every proposal was reviewed independently by at least two team members, using pre-agreed criteria and a shared scoring framework. We prioritised proposals that aligned with themes identified in the workshop and presented new, interesting, and original ideas. We welcomed proposals that were critical of legal design, as we highlighted this as an important intervention for the movement to continue building momentum. We dismissed proposals of a commercial nature. With 22 sessions to fill, we created an exhaustive shortlist of the top performing proposals. It took several brainstorming sessions to discuss the ideas and boil the number of proposals down. Making final decisions was definitely the hardest part of the process. In some cases, we noticed several strong proposals orbiting the same theme, so decided to combine their ideas into joint sessions.

4. Designing the program and confirming speakers

Once we had our shortlist, we started shaping the full program. We clustered the final set of proposals to find subtle narratives and identify themes that complemented each other. This was critical as we wanted to get the pacing and flow just right - making sure attendees would have a meaningful and engaging arc across the two days. Equally, we ensured a healthy balance between keynote speeches (20 mins) and fireside chats (30 mins), as well as coffee and lunch breaks. We confirmed the final speaker list at the end of May. Where we grouped proposals together, we scheduled calls to facilitate introductions, explain our rationale for creating joint sessions, and discuss their session. One team member commented that: “Creating fireside chats was one of our favorite parts of the process and we loved seeing speakers embrace the LDS spirit. One highlight was a panel meeting for the first time and immediately using a Miro board to find the common threads between their proposals and working collaboratively to brainstorm their session.”

What we created

We think we’ve created an exciting, innovative and diverse program. There are some familiar faces and, of course, returning legends. However, the majority of the program includes new people and perspectives ready to challenge and expand what legal design is and can be. Here’s the unfiltered breakdown across the two days:

• Day 1 is pure legal design, with a focus on its role and value across the profession. We’ll look at how legal design is shaping policy making, transforming legal services and grappling with generative AI - the sector’s biggest disruptor.
• Day 2 is about impact, and what legal design can do for people and the planet. The future of law is as much about social and nature value as it is about technology innovation, so sessions touch on big systemic issues, including sustainability, justice and education.

We also created something new: The LDS Gallery

We received so many incredible proposals this year, but unfortunately couldn’t fit everyone on the shortlist into the program. So we’re launching a new platform. A new space to showcase the important and inspirational work that the legal design community is shaping around the world. The gallery will be a digital exhibition, initially launched with a select group of contributors, with the aim of exhibiting legal design projects, experiences and case studies. The response so far has been very positive. When confirmed, one contributor said: “I’m excited by this new feature and truly appreciate the opportunity to showcase my work in this innovative format.” Our ambition is that the Gallery becomes the Louvre of Legal Design, and look forward to sharing the first iteration with you soon.

Final reflections - what we learned

• This was less about building an event schedule and more about writing the next chapter in the legal design story
• The quality, ambition and range of perspectives across the ecosystem is genuinely incredible and inspiring
• Embedding design thinking into our approach was our most valuable tool

Thanks again to everyone involved - see you in Helsinki in September!

LDS Blog #1: The Legal Design Summit: What we stand for as a global movement

The Legal Design Summit began as a movement focused on the end-users of legal services. Thus, the initial focus of the event, founded in 2016, was on contract design, user-experience in various legal services, and the wider interlinks between technology and law.

While legal design is still about all of these things, over the years, the Summit and the associated movement and community have grown towards a more ambitious agenda. The aim is no longer simply making law more usable but redesigning the whole legal system. What started off as a user-centric revolution in law is today a globally significant non-governmental organization aiming for transborder solidarity, deliberative democracy, social innovation and practical justice outcomes.

To reflect this changing vision ahead of the 2025 event, it was time to clarify what the Summit stands for. As a community, the Legal Design Summit is committed to four core values: selflessness, inclusion, courage, and authenticity. In what follows, I will explain how each is reflected in our activities.

Selflessness

Selflessness means that we believe in collective action and support as the most important tools in achieving our shared goals. We see each other and the world with empathy and never put personal gain before the interests of the community.

The Summit, organized by volunteers and relying on self-funded speakers, is not about personal profit or monetary value, but about a value of a different kind: collective imagination for better futures. This is no longer limited to simply end-users or other human beings but encompasses non-human beings, the environment, and even the future of life on earth.

Inclusion

By being inclusive we strive to create a space where different perspectives and backgrounds come together, and where diversity is celebrated – both in organizers and speakers. While legal design is still dominated by lawyers from Western countries, both legal and non-legal professionals from all over the world are increasingly and importantly involved in the community.

By organizing the Summit free of charge and with a focus on globally relevant themes, we aim to foster an accessible, international and multicultural community where anyone can participate in shaping the future of law.

Courage

Courage means that reaching for the impossible is in our backbone. We are curious about the world and passionate about improving it by innovatively combining practical and academic knowledge. When faced with a problem to solve, we ask: how hard can it be?

This means that we do not steer away from wicked problems – be they functional or theoretical. Nor do we accept the status quo as it is. There is always room for improvement, and it is up to brave people to rise to the challenge.

Authenticity

Authenticity means that the Summit is dedicated to making a difference through creative, outside-the-box design thinking. We strive to make an impact by showing up as our authentic selves and by remaining honest and open about our core mission.

By welcoming anyone from any background into the community, we aim to expand possibilities for legal design across all areas of law and society. This means remaining open towards what legal design can be, as well as its limitations – while staying true to the common core of design-thinking.

The value of collective imagination in turbulent times

As our guiding values show, the Summit stands for an important message. The Summit is not about monetary value, even if it often translates into it – many fantastic careers have taken off in its wake. Instead, it is about scaling ideas for a better world. When a diverse group of open-minded people with different perspectives come together, the outcome is bound to be valuable. Yet the value of such an outcome cannot be expressed in monetary terms, as its primary aim is not to create profit. Instead, it creates a path for a world where well-being and social justice are a reality for more ‘users’ – both human and non-human.

One of my personal key learnings from being involved in the Summit for the past few years is that a group of dedicated and imaginative people working for the same end goal can achieve – if not anything, almost anything. As we look to the upcoming event and beyond, the Summit invites everyone to join this community towards a world that is more just by design.