Legal Design
JD x Graduate Certificate in Legal Design
As a lawyer, you need to understand the needs and goals of your clients and the context for the legal work you are doing.
To provide you with the big picture in a specific area of expertise, Northeastern University School of Law offers a range of certificates that are interdisciplinary, bringing together the unique strengths of our law school and global university, and our leadership in experience-based education.
With a JD x Graduate Certificate in Legal Design, you’ll multiply the options open to you as a lawyer and develop real expertise.
Legal design is a rapidly growing and influential area within legal education, other legal institutions and law practice. It involves both innovations in the field of legal service delivery and encompasses a number of other structured creative processes, from system, service and experience design, to social practice art and legislative theater. As this new interdisciplinary field has taken hold in the profession, its influence and reach is expanding. No longer solely the province of technologists making law-related apps, or law faculty exploring new pedagogies, now law firms, courts, government agencies and NGOs are deploying legal design as more and more legal institutions seek to make themselves more adaptive to human needs and responsive to social change.
The interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate in Legal Design encompasses courses and experiences that will provide you with opportunities for in-depth study and practice of legal design and its application in specific contexts. Northeastern University School of Law is an undisputed leader in the field of legal design, having established the first staffed legal design lab at a U.S. law school with the NuLawLab in 2013. Training provided through this certificate, including coursework, a legal design co-op and a practical legal design capstone project or paper, will prepare you to expertly apply legal design methods as innovation in the legal profession accelerates, and position you for the increasing number of postgraduate jobs in the field.
Sample Courses
Art, Context, Action
Community Economic Development
Design for Behavior and Experience
Designing Infographics
Experience Design
Game Design Fundamentals
Information Design
Laboratory Seminar in Applied and Critical Legal Design
Law and Technology
Master Class in Legal Design
Prototyping for Experience Design
Psychology of Play
Public Practice Art and Activism
Serious Game Design
Web Creation Boot Camp
Related Clinics
Community Business Clinic
Domestic Violence Clinic
Intellectual Property Law Clinic
Housing Rights Advocacy Clinic
Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Clinic
Sample Co-ops
NuLawLab at Northeastern University School of Law
Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights Legal Design Initiative, Washington, DC
Federal Trade Commission, Office of Policy Planning, Washington, DC
National Whistleblowers’ Center, Washington, DC
Public Knowledge, Washington, DC
>> Requirements
Additional Legal Design Opportunities
NuLawLab welcomes student involvement.
Centers and programs across the law school are actively using legal design methods in their work and many frequently partner with NuLawLab.
- The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project conducts research into the nature and extent of anti-civil rights violence and works with members of a diverse community – prosecutors, lawmakers, victims – that is seeking genuine reconciliation through legal proceedings, law reform and private investigations.
- The Center for Public Interest Advocacy and Collaboration seeks to enhance the role of law and legal practice in achieving social, economic, and environmental justice in all dimensions.
- The Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy engages in study, promotion, implementation and constructive critique of rights-based approaches to economic development and social transformation.
- The Burnes Center for Social Change advances real-world impact by teaching individuals and institutions the skills needed to design and implement innovative and equitable solutions to our hardest problems.
Additional Degrees
JD/MBA with D’Amore-McKim School of Business
JD/MS with College of Arts, Media and Design
JD/MPP with the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs
For more information, contact:
Dan Jackson
Executive Director - NuLawLab
Northeastern University School of Law
102 Dockser Hall
da.jackson@northeastern.edu