Episode 12: Legal Research by Design with Jose Torres

There is no legal design without the “legal”. Making law better by design, therefore, always requires proper legal research and legal analysis. The traditional ways of finding and creating legal information, however, do not seem to go well along with the iterative and future oriented design approach. Where legal analysis traditionally looks back to tell “what was wrong”, design seeks to find solutions that are fit for purpose and usable in practice to actually fix the problem. But traditional law and design thinking are not at odds with each other, even if it may seem like it. Like our guest in this episode, Jose Torres, points out, design is an empirical research method that helps lawyers not only to find the right solutions, but also to ask the right questions. Jose Torres is a legal design veteran, who currently works as a partner at the law firm Lexia Abogados in Bogotá, Colombia, leading the legal design, crypto and fintech practice. Jose tells us how design techniques can be used as legal research methods, and how to build a design minded legal research team. Jose also shares many interesting insights from his previous legal design cases, such as how to use regulatory sandboxes, and what he learned from the design case featuring Colombian cleaning ladies. Tune in to hear more!