What if a legal service or document was easy to read, visualised and practical? If the language was understandable—for everyone? Legalese was clarified and illustrated, and the end-user was at the heart of the design?
As the legal and technological landscape has become more complex, interest in legal design has grown. Legal design has been a topic of discussion among experts around the world for some time, but now the public’s attention has turned to user-centredness in a new way in Finland too – so much so that people are already demanding it. The legal profession is faced with expectations of comprehensibility, transparency and consideration of the end-user’s point of view. Fortunately, thanks to legal design, we are now in a position to meet these expectations.
So what is legal design?
At first glance, legal design may seem like nothing more than pretty pictures and icons pasted on top of a document containing the original jargon. But legal design is much more than that, although the use of visuals is undoubtedly an important part of it. It is therefore not just a moment of decorating a Christmas tree, but a journey undertaken by a multidisciplinary team from the first meeting with a client to the end of the assignment.
The starting point for a legal design project is to identify for whom and for what purpose the service or document is being designed. Legal design benefits both private and public sector organisations. The end-user may be within the organisation, or it may be our client’s customer, and the design itself can be information, product, service, organisational or system design. For example, a privacy policy, a non-disclosure agreement or even a website dealing with a legal process can be designed. The subject matter and the way in which the final product is implemented can therefore vary, as each project is unique.
One of the purposes of legal design is to facilitate collaboration between experts and clients, so it benefits us all: the better the understanding between the parties, the more meaningful the relationship is for both, and the better the result.
What can we find at the heart of a legal design project?
What all projects have in common, is a methodology that builds on an iterative, interactive and creative way of working and problem-solving. At its best, a legal design project is a fun journey that starts with identifying the end-user’s pain points or, in other words, by empathising. Empathy is one of the best tools in achieving a better legal product—after all, we are all human! By understanding what causes frustration and bumps in the road and by putting ourselves in the shoes of the end-user we gain valuable perspective.
The iterative working model is all about working on different versions in several stages, each one bringing us closer to a final product that could not have been created without the prototypes that preceded it. So indeed, it’s about trial and error! And the delivery of the final product to the client doesn’t mean the end of the assignment; the legal design project is sealed by a feedback session, an important moment to support learning and development for everyone concerned.
Legal design is not only about substance, but also about creating a new culture of collaboration and innovation. Legal design projects consist of a multi-professional team that makes the most of everyone’s skills and perspectives and constantly evolving tools. A successful project may therefore have involved, at its best, graphic designers, lawyers, coders, language experts, legal technology specialists and professionals in the client’s own field, such as economists.
How does legal design projects benefit our clients?
The aim of legal design is to create legal services and products that everyone can understand. However, it is not the answer to everything and should not be forced into every process. For example, collaboration between lawyers is sometimes best achieved through approaches and concepts specific to the profession.
But what about those without a legal background? Those who need our legal advice and who should understand what they are committing to—the end-users? Those who are not familiar with the law often perceive it as a code language that only lawyers can understand (and it is sometimes challenging for them too). It is not necessarily just a question of comprehensibility. In addition to a lack of knowledge, many people do not have the energy to deal with the obscure contracts, processes and inhumanly long procedures. From the point of view of the function of the legal system, this is not appropriate, is it?
When done well, legal design saves time, improves the customer experience and reduces the number of errors in both documents and their interpretation. This can even save parties from litigation, which in turn saves money! Not to mention the fact that a well-designed document is much more pleasant to read as the reader is not overloaded with information. There are many ways in which visualisation can be used alongside linguistic design itself. User-centricity is taken into account through summarisation, readability and perception. Information is balanced and a hierarchy is sought in the document.
Through legal design, we want to support lawyers in the practice of law, translate complex legalese into practicalities for the end-user, and enable creative and effective solutions for our clients. The broader goal is to improve everyone’s understanding of the rules and systems that apply to them so that both firms and their clients can navigate the legal system strategically and wisely.
Why should legal design be in every lawyer’s toolbox?
Legal design is a set of many mindsets and methodologies. In a lawyer’s toolbox, it can therefore be a productive process, leading to the launch of a new service, or a research method for generating data and insight on a particular topic. The implementation of design thinking in law makes our field more multidimensional and more human, giving us a more ambitious and creative way to illustrate things and to resolve the confusion, frustration and friction that law can generate.
At Castrén & Snellman, we implement legal design through projects, training for clients and staff workshops. We have formed a multi-professional team where everyone brings their own vision to agile projects. Internally, we use legal design to create different types of documents. Among other things, we have designed legal model documents, information security guidelines and a legal technology interface called Signe.
Signe is a contract tool that not only provides our clients with automated documents but also with legal design. With Signe, our clients can have automated contracts in a single, standardised and designed format. Legal tech and legal design should therefore not be seen as separate concepts, but as complementary ones.
In legal design, we see an incredible potential to take law to a new level. There is a lot to design, from privacy policies, user terms and conditions, and non-disclosure agreements to various legal interfaces and systems. There are many uses for legal design, so for lawyers, it’s a world of possibilities! A world that takes us towards a more understandable legal world where we at Castrén & Snellman want to support our clients—with a focus on user-centricity.
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Latest references
Fortum – AI workshop
We delivered two AI workshops for Fortum Corporation’s Mergers and Acquisitions team, with both legal and business professionals participating. The sessions combined fundamental AI principles with custom use cases for commercially available AI tools tailored to Fortum’s needs. We also presented a bespoke solution merging AI with a script-based tool developed by our Legal Tech team, enabling a more automated way of working. Our experts conducted the training drawing on their legal background and leading experience in this emerging field of legal technology. Participants particularly appreciated the clarity and relevance of the implementations demonstrated. ‘C&S delivered an excellent, well-structured series of workshops, with directly applicable takeaways,’ says Sabina Hautaviita, Legal Counsel for M&A at Fortum.
Case published 9.3.2026
VR – Supreme Court decision clarifies working time practices
We successfully represented VR Group before the Supreme Court in a case concerning the meal break practice of commuter train drivers. On 6 February 2026, the Supreme Court ruled in VR’s favour (decision KKO:2026:12), confirming that VR had the right to amend the commuter train drivers’ meal break practice in 2021 by rendering the break unpaid in accordance with the applicable collective agreement. This decision clarifies the interpretation of collective agreements and employment legislation as well as the limits of the employer’s right to direct work. Over 250 commuter train drivers challenged the unpaid meal break practice which VR introduced in April 2021. Before the change, meal breaks had a long history of being paid. The change was based on the train drivers’ collective agreement, which allows for meal breaks to be organised either as paid or unpaid time. The Supreme Court ruled that the scheduling and managing of breaks falls within the core area of the employer’s right to direct work. This increases the threshold for an established practice becoming a binding condition for the parties. Merely following a practice consistently and over a long period of time does not make the practice binding; instead, the employer’s intent to commit to the practice must be clearly evident from the employer’s conduct or other circumstances. As both alternatives – paid and unpaid – for organising meal breaks had been retained in the collective agreement despite other amendments over the years, it could not be considered that VR had intended to commit to the paid break practice and waive its right to direct work as regards break scheduling. It was also significant that the employment contracts explicitly referred only to the collective agreement as regards working time. The Supreme Court deemed that the employees’ paid meal break was not an established term of employment and that VR was entitled to change the practice based on the collective agreement. The employer had the right, by virtue of its right to direct work, to unilaterally change the meal break practice by choosing to apply the other arrangement permitted by the collective agreement.
Case published 3.3.2026
CapMan Growth – Investment in Kuntokeskus Liikku
We are assisting CapMan Growth in its significant investment in Kuntokeskus Liikku, a Finnish gym chain known for its high-quality self-service facilities and excellent value for money. The investment will further strengthen Liikku’s position as a market leader and support the continued execution of its growth strategy. Liikku is one of Finland’s leading fitness chains, with more than 70 locations across the country serving nearly 90,000 members. The company’s concept is to offer high-quality self-service gyms at an exceptionally competitive price point which, combined with strong operational efficiency, provides a solid foundation for profitable growth. The company’s main shareholder is COR Group, a long-time partner of CapMan Growth, and a Finnish health and wellness conglomerate known for active ownership and long-term value creation. CapMan Growth is a leading Finnish growth investor that makes significant investments in entrepreneur-led growth companies with a turnover of €10–200 million. CapMan Growth is part of CapMan, which is a leading Nordic private equity investor engaged in active value creation work. CapMan has been listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange since 2001.
Case published 27.2.2026
Terrafame – Environmental and water management permit processes concerning the company’s entire operations and the KL1 side rock area
Castrén & Snellman successfully assisted Terrafame Ltd in environmental and water management permit processes concerning the company’s entire operations and the KL1 side rock area, on which the Supreme Administrative Court issued its decision on 12 February 2026 (KHO 366/2026 and 367/2026). The changes made to the decisions of the Vaasa Administrative Court as a result of Terrafame’s appeals, enable the company to implement its new strategy and develop its operations as planned. The decisions of the Supreme Administrative Court brought the nearly ten-year-long permit process to a close.
Case published 20.2.2026