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This two-module sequence sits at the heart of the LLM in Law and Digital Innovation, guiding students through a full design thinking process applied to real legal and access-to-justice challenges.

In Design Thinking for Lawyers I (Semester 1), students develop the foundational skills of human-centred legal design: conducting user research, building empathy and persona maps, identifying systemic pain points, and generating creative solutions. Working in interdisciplinary teams, students engage directly with external partner organisations from the outset, grounding their learning in live legal and policy problems.

In Design Thinking for Lawyers II (Semester 2), students advance to prototyping, testing, and handover. Teams co-design minimum viable prototypes with their partner organisations — producing journey maps, decision trees, and working digital tools — and implement solutions using no-code legal technology, including our generous partner Checkbox.ai, a leading platform for automating legal workflows and building guided legal applications. The module culminates in a partner-attended presentation and a professional handover package, enabling partner organisations to adopt and govern the designed solution beyond the life of the course.

Throughout both modules, students engage critically with scholarship on legal design, design justice, and legal automation — asking not only whether a solution works, but who it serves and who it might exclude.

2025–2026 Project Partners

In academic year 2025–2026, students worked with two outstanding community organisations:

• Mercy Law Resource Centre — a Dublin-based charity providing free legal services and advocacy to people experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity.
• Disabled Women Ireland — a national organisation led by and for self-identified women, girls and non-binary/genderqueer/gender non-confirming people, advancing rights, inclusion, and access to justice.

We are grateful to both organisations for their commitment, generosity, and partnership.

Seeking Partners for 2026–2027

We are now seeking project partners for the academic year 2026–2027. If your organisation works on access-to-justice, legal services, policy, or rights-based challenges and would be interested in collaborating with our LLM students to co-design innovative legal tools and interventions, we would love to hear from you.

To express an interest in becoming a project partner, please contact abigail.rekas@universityofgalway.ie.