Outlooks, Techniques, and Words

Jay A. Mitchell

(This essay was first published in Medium on February 12, 2020.)

This essay is a reflection by a law school teacher and corporate lawyer about learning from the design disciplines. It describes how design influences the author’s understanding of and approach to legal documents, his use of visual methods in doing legal work and engaging with students, and concepts and language he uses in talking about legal work and legal practice. The essay suggests that practitioners and teachers need not go all-in on “design thinking” to benefit from design. Instead, they can improve their advice and work-product, and their support of student and new lawyer professional development, through modest refinements in practice inspired by design mindsets and methods.

(Continue reading the article on Medium’s page here.)

Jay A. Mitchell is a senior corporate lawyer and founding director of the law school’s Organizations and Transactions Clinic. The clinic focuses on corporate and transactional practice. Its clients, all of whom are established nonprofit corporations. The clinic maintains a resource website, targeted to lawyers engaging in pro bono work, that contains more than 220 forms and model legal documents for nonprofits.

His book Picturing Corporate Practice, an introduction to corporate work written in collaboration with a graphic designer, features over 50 diagrams and other graphics, and encourages the use of visual approaches in carrying out a variety of activities across legal practice.