{"id":63076,"date":"2015-01-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rockcontent.com\/blog\/lawyers-visual-content\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T03:22:58","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T06:22:58","slug":"lawyers-visual-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pingback.com\/en\/resources\/lawyers-visual-content\/","title":{"rendered":"How Lawyers Can Benefit From Visual Content"},"content":{"rendered":"

When most people think about studying law, they think fat, leather-bound tomes and densely worded texts. The formal, technical and sometimes incomprehensible nature of the wording used in legal documents even inspired it\u2019s own term, “legalese,” as if it were written in a different language entirely. However, some in the legal profession see a role for graphics and design to clarify what words alone cannot. Margaret Hagan<\/a>, a fellow at Stanford Law School, the creator of Open Law Lab<\/a> and a lecturer at the Stanford d.school<\/a>, says that graphical representations of law can help regular people grasp concepts and experiences that are currently buried in dense language. “Law right now tends to be communicated abstractly, which most often leads to confusion and intimidation,” she says. “Graphics can help illustrate the law in more comprehensible & accessible ways.” <\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>
Image by Margaret Hagan via the Visual Law Library<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hagan grew up sketching; She filled her school journals with illustrated notes, trying to make sense of whatever her teachers were saying. She thought of the drawings as juvenile and silly until her law school professors and colleagues began to take an interest in them. She started putting her drawings online and gaining confidence that visuals had a place in law. “Then when I took a class at the d.school, I realized that being visual was a real power \u2014 whether it’s in persuading people in a group you\u2019re working with about the strength of your ideas, or about pitching your concept for funding and support.\u00a0From there, I started blogging and hunting down examples of how law and design could be combined,” she says. Hagan is currently working with a small group of designers, developers and lawyers to create a visual, interactive resource to train lawyers how to represent unaccompanied immigrant children. Representing kids requires breaking down and explaining difficult concepts at the simplest level, creating a unique opportunity for Hagan and her team to develop new graphic forms of communication. “The biggest challenge is in balancing the complexity of explaining the law in a responsible and comprehensible way (the traditional ways that lawyers tend to present the law), and the intuitive, graspable way that users, want law to be presented,” she says. “We\u2019re working to find this balance by using interactivity to give a bird’s eye view map of a legal process, like, applying for a visa, that are very simple and clear, but then to layer more information on as needed, and also to allow for customization of the map.” <\/p>\n

One thing that often gets overlooked is how much the legal world leans on precedent\u2014and not just in case law, but in its own traditions of presentation, too. When visuals appear in legal settings, they\u2019re often treated almost suspiciously, as if they’re somehow less serious than straight-up text (which, let\u2019s be honest, has always seemed a little arbitrary). But law, like any language, evolves. What\u2019s considered \u201cofficial\u201d or \u201cproper\u201d can change over time, especially as new tools make things clearer for more people. Hagan\u2019s approach, mixing visuals with interactivity, isn\u2019t just about making something pretty; it\u2019s quietly radical, nudging at the boundaries of what counts as legitimate legal communication. <\/p>\n

Whether this shift toward the visual will catch on outside the academic and tech-savvy corners is still up in the air. There’s undeniable momentum\u2014law students and younger lawyers are increasingly comfortable with digital tools and less attached to doing things the \u201cclassic\u201d way. Even a quick look at some of the comments on Open Law Lab shows people asking for cleaner, visual explanations of everything from contracts to criminal procedure. Does this mean legalese is doomed? Probably not. But the fact that folks are asking, and experimenting, suggests that the way information gets delivered in law is going through its own slow-motion shake-up. <\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>
Image by Margaret Hagan via the Visual Law Library<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To help aspiring designers interested in visual law navigate these potential pitfalls, The Program for Legal Tech + Design<\/a> at Stanford, of which Hagan is a member, created the Legal Design Toolbox<\/a>. The site provides resources, tools and inspiration for those hoping to create law graphics. However Stanford is not the only university working with graphics to explain law; The Yale Visual Law Project is experimenting with using video to better educate the public on the consequences of law and how to make more effective arguments. A faculty member at the University of Baltimore’s School of Law has also created a US Supreme Court mapping program<\/a>, that tracks relationships between the court\u2019s cases to visually demonstrate precedent. Ravel<\/a>, a startup created by Stanford Law grads, is seeking to bring the power of visual networks and timelines to a broader audience of lawyers, students and scholars. Ravel promises that their tools will speed the process of legal research<\/a> by using visual cues to show important relationships between court cases and an interactive way to analyze and annotate texts. Dense legal text is likely here to stay, but the rise of legal illustrations and visualizations may make the law more accessible and understandable than ever before. <\/p>\n

Allison is a graduate student in journalism at Stanford University and a 2025 AP-Google Journalism and Technology scholar. She formerly worked as an editor at the PBS NewsHour<\/a>. You can follow her on Twitter @anmccartney<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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When most people think about studying law, they think fat, leather-bound tomes and densely worded texts. The formal, technical and sometimes incomprehensible nature of the wording used in legal documents even inspired it\u2019s own term, “legalese,” as if it were written in a different language entirely. However, some in the legal profession see a role […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sem-categoria"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Lawyers Can Benefit From Visual Content<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pingback.com\/en\/resources\/lawyers-visual-content\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"pt_BR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Lawyers Can Benefit From Visual Content\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When most people think about studying law, they think fat, leather-bound tomes and densely worded texts. 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