How luck am I?
I got to start off my morning speaking with Legal Design great, Hannele Korhonen. Even though it was the morning in Ontario (the afternoon for Hannele in Finland), our discussion about Legal Design and how it can be effectively used in regulatory Compliance was anything but a “snoozefest”.
Check out our entire chat here
Legal Design Uses in Regulatory Compliance
Hannele and I talked about the intersection of Legal Design and Compliance and all the benefits to highly regulated industries including reduced risk, reduced regulatory penalties and fines, reduced chance of litigation, reduced reputational damage and increased employee understanding. In regulatory Compliance, the “user” is usually the employee who needs to comply with the law or regulation.
Legal design is a powerful tool for enhancing understanding and remembering regulatory compliance requirements. Finance, government, and other highly regulated industries have rigorous reporting and disclosure requirements, and employees and stakeholders overlook compliance requirements because they forget about them. Failing to disclose or report a matter is unintentional. The employee simply forgets to do it. Legal design helps educate employees enjoyably and memorably and embeds compliance into everyday work. Legal design mitigates the risks of fines and other non-compliance ramifications for business.
Legal Design and Regulatory Compliance with Kerri Salata, Blog
Legal Design in Compliance Training
Legal Design can be effectively used in regulatory Compliance to create better policies and procedures and useable forms, but ultimately, there’s no point having a great, visually stunning and easy-to-understand policy unless employees know it exists, where to find it, and what it says. Compliance training should not simply regurgitate the policy. The goal is to create a small memory trigger that will help the employee remember to look up the policy, find the information they need or report an issue.
Comply With Me, our Banking and Securities Compliance Corporation, uses Legal Design to create regulatory training for the “user”. We have our own PIXAR formula of storytelling designed to keep the user’s attention. By creating characters that tell a story about the law or regulation, a storyline, and using short blasts of information, we help the information “stick” in the user’s brain.
The user might not remember the perfect, legally-designed policies, but they will recall interesting characters or storylines, especially if an effort is made to make the training memorable.
Big Thanks!
A big thanks to Hannele Korhonen and the Lawyers Design School for allowing me to be a part of Legal Design Thinking IRL.
*This post is not legal advice.