The Legal Design Summit 2025 & BrainFactory – a “Re-Up”

After ten hours of flying, an eight-hour layover, a seven-hour timezone change, and one missed flight, I finally made it to my second Legal Design Summit in Helsinki. In 2023, I reluctantly left Helsinki after buzzing with excitement about the like-minded community I had just met and the interesting work being done across the globe to improve access to justice using legal design techniques. The momentum of the event had been fueling my professional interests and writing over the last two years, but it was time for a “re-up”.

After its 2024 hiatus, the Legal Design Summit was back this year with a specific focus on exemplifying the tangible benefits of legal design along with the integration of AI-techniques into the practice. This year, a global community of lawyers, designers, risk management professionals, legal designers and consultants from private, public and not-for-profit practices descended on Helsinki. It was unmistakable that the Legal Design Summit is growing and gaining force.

What is the Legal Design Summit?

The Legal Design Summit is broken up into two distinct segments: the BrainFactory and the Conference. The BrainFactory is a series of practical workshops, in which professionals apply their legal design knowledge to work through various problems. The Conference segment is where experts lecture in the legal design field. There is a more informal, third segment as well: the social element that includes Finnish music, hours of dancing, life-long connections and a welcoming professional community.

The Legal Design Summit has traditionally been held in the mecca of Design Thinking, Helsinki, Finland. “Efficient” is how visitors to Finland would likely describe the country. From its architecture and transit system to its judicial system, Finland embraces design thinking and integrates it across all industries. In Helsinki, courts adopt legal design principles, lawmakers integrate it into their drafting processes, legal academics develop the knowledge, data and subject-matter expertise and practitioners (lawyers and law firms) apply it in their practices. It makes sense that the Legal Design Summit is held in Helsinki.

The BrainFactory

In the past, the BrainFactory consisted of a three-day intensive course, working through the legal design framework to solve one legal challenge. However, the extensive programming meant only around 40 people could attend. This year the organizers reimagined the BrainFactory into a one-day event consisting of both morning and afternoon workshops, that could accommodate 125 participants. The demand for access to the BrainFactory workshops quadrupled this year.

When asked what it was like to manage multiple workshops involving over one-hundred participants, BrainFactory Lead, Laura Hartnett,* said:

“We were so pleased to quadruple participation and still have a waiting list. It really shows there’s a demand for legal professionals around the world to get their hands into the legal design methodology and apply it to a multitude of scenarios.”

Many of the BrainFactory workshops were co-created with practitioners, academics and some of the mega firms like DLA Piper and EY Law, in different parts of the world with various areas of expertise. Topics included legal design writing, contract design, advancing people-centred justice, organizational design for legal teams and leveraging AI to master legal design concepts. “We specifically set out for even the presenters to collaborate and learn from one another in addition to the participants,” reflected Hartnett.

Reflections on BrainFactory Workshop on Legal Writing

Personally, I was struck by the quality of the BrainFactory workshops I attended. Of particular note was the “Legal Design Writing: Telling the World and Getting Heard” workshop led by some of the most well-respected academics in legal design across the globe:

• Michael Doherty, Professor of Legal Design, Lancaster University (who is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Legal Design Journal);
• Helena Haapio, Contract Strategist, Lexpert Ltd (affectionately known as the “mother” of Legal Design);
• Lisa Toohey, Professor, UNSW Law & Justice (Editor of the Legal Design Journal);
• Michael Blasie, Dean and Professor of Law, KIMEP University (known as the nation’s (USA) foremost expert on plain language laws focussing on legal document design; also teaches the judiciary how to improve their judgment writing).

Throughout her lecture, Helena Haapio reminded us that our writing can push traditional views of, “this is how it’s always been done,” and highlighted the importance of challenging legal documents that do not consider the reader. Our BrainFactory workshop lecturers invited us to discuss and address our ‘monsters’ (i.e. fears in writing), which was uncomfortable but important to acknowledge. We then made commitments and were asked to start writing, which we did, right there and then. It is rare that one can attend a writing workshop with the “best of the best” in legal design academia across the globe but for those of us lucky participants, it gave us the encouragement to continue to spread the word about the benefits of legal design.** The immediate call to action to participants to confront our fears and start writing was a powerful way to put theory into practice. This BrainFactory workshop was only one of many that the 124 other participants attended.

It Was Electrifying

Hartnett called the results of the BrainFactory “electrifying,” as each room was buzzing with anywhere from 20 to 50 participants, breaking off into groups, working through legal design challenges in AI, writing, organizational design, and contracts among others. Participants were swapping contact information and pledging to keep in touch to support one another long after BrainFactory concluded. Following the BrainFactory were two packed days of learning and legal design exploration (also co-hosted by Hartnett).

See You There

If you haven’t attended the Legal Design Summit, mark it in your calendars, follow them on social media, and I look forward to meeting you there where it promises to be even bigger and better next time.

The best part is that I left Helsinki exhausted but full of memories, life-long friends, and a wealth of legal design topics that will fuel my writing for years to come. This experience was a crucial “re-up” to continue to spread the word about the benefits of legal design and its potential to improve access to justice. This is an essential event for anyone who is serious about designing the future of law.

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*In addition to being the BrainFactory Lead and co-Presenter for the LDS 2025, Laura Hartnett is a former management consultant, litigator at national and international firms, and in-house corporate attorney. She is currently a legal design consultant in the United States working with legal teams to improve the practice of law. Her passion is making the legal experience better for both clients and attorneys by improving the processes and systems that deliver legal services. You can find Laura on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurahartnett/.

**As a special note to these academics, while this is not my legal writing project, thank-you for allowing me to expose my “monsters”, and I am taking my commitment to myself seriously.