Reinventing legal – a discussion on the appeal of legal design

Welcome to Legal Take Matters, a literate podcast dedicated to creating conversations about trends, technology and innovation for modern law firms and companies big and small.

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Ari Kaplan

Welcome to Reinventing Legal. I'm your host, Ari Kaplan, and I have the privilege to speak today with Ebru Metin the founder and CEO of Legal Design Turkey, a social enterprise focused on humanizing legal services and systems. Hi, Ebru. How are you?

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Ebru Metin

I'm good, thank you Ari. How are you?

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Ari Kaplan

I'm doing well. I'm looking forward to this conversation. So, everyone tells us about your background and the genesis of Legal Design Turkey.

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Ebru Metin

So, I'm a non-practicing lawyer based in Turkey. I used to work as in-house legal counsel, corporate governance analyst and a contract manager. But then I discovered my passion for legal innovation. And later on, I established Legal Design Turkey. The part about your question, the genesis of Legal Design Turkey actually stemmed from a community that I built during the pandemic.

So, it was quite an interesting journey.

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Ari Kaplan

The Legal Design Turkey launched in November of 2020. What role did the pandemic play in its creation?

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Ebru Metin

So, I was working as a contract manager at a university technology transfer office. And then during the pandemic, I created a co-learning community for legal design. The same time when the pandemic was really picking up and people were always staying at their homes. So, in the beginning, we were just starting this LinkedIn group but then we started meeting online.

So, people are actually looking forward to Thursday evenings because we were just meeting and discussing legal innovation and legal design and how we can contribute to reach more. And I can say that because of the pandemic, it's really the meetings are very persistent. Maybe I can say like this, and people are very eager for meeting up because it was their way of socializing and later on, what we did is that we applied for a program, UNDP, Turkey's Social Innovation Support Program, and our solution was selected as one of the winning solutions.

And we were awarded with an award from the UNDP Turkey - Pilot Project Award. And then after Legal Design Turkey became an established business social enterprise, the company. And since then, we are working on a project with their VP.

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Ari Kaplan

Has legal design. Turkey began to meet in person in addition to its remote activities.

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Ebru Metin

Actually, we met for the first time six months ago, and we met again a couple of weeks ago because we organized global legal hackathons Turkey Edition and then we met in Istanbul. All of our members meet there, and we have a lovely after dinner after the events.

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Ari Kaplan

How does your new position as the director of the Build Legal Design Lab at Bar-Ilan University Law School in Istanbul relate to your work for Legal Design Turkey?

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Ebru Metin

So Legal Design Turkey is the first company in Turkey that is focusing on legal design. It was actually a very important thing that I am saying because since there are no other actors in the market, we have been creating awareness and doing a lot of campaigns informing people on legal design. So, when the Istanbul University, they announced that they will be creating four new labs under the law school, which are big legal design labs, big legal tech lab, the Privacy Innovation Lab and one for the crypto assets on blockchain.

We just wanted to partner with big university, so we did like strategic collaboration and then I became the director of this big legal design lab where we also called it iBuilt Real with the abbreviation because of the work that I do in Legal design Turkey also opens new doors like the one with the university.

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Ari Kaplan

How would you describe the legal technology market in Turkey?

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Ebru Metin

I would describe it as immature because we have maybe 30 to 40 legal tech products. So, we are 85 million plus maybe million people living in Turkey. And the legal tech market is a little bit underdeveloped. And I believe this is because of the regulation of the legal services. It is very traditional, and it is not liberal. There are several bans that also prevents people to go into legal tech like the marketing ban or people who are lawyers cannot deal with trades and sometimes in order to create a legal tech firm, you need to become a trades person.

So, these are the factors that are limiting for legal tech to improve in Turkey.

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Ari Kaplan

You practiced law for several years in Turkey and have also performed legal work in the UK and in Spain. What was it about those experiences that inspired you to pursue a career in legal design?

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Ebru Metin

Well, my experience in Turkey is actually I worked as an in-house legal counsel. And the experience that I had in efficiencies and the limitations of working in in-house just made me look for something else. And when I worked in UK and Spain, my UK experience relatively are a little bit small, but they also gave me a perspective of what can be done outside an -house organization or how they do their work differently.

So, it's made me to seek out for different opportunities. But the real experience that made me pursue a career in legal design is my last job in Turkey, where I worked as a contract manager, because then I get to know many innovations in the contract management area. It led me to, you know, seek out for the other innovations in the legal fields.

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Ari Kaplan

What are some practical applications for legal design?

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Ebru Metin

In our case, maybe I can explain it from my own experience is that since we won an award from the UNDP Turkey, we were also granted with the pilot project and we were working on a project with UNDP Turkish Minister of Justice and Union of the Turkish Bar Association. The project is about domestic violence survivors. So we were working on this Access to Justice project where we created brochures, posters where we enable woman living in Turkey to access to their rights, to have an easier access to justice, and also to understand their rights So what I can say that the practical application for legal design is that one is one way is to enable easier access to justice. And in my other experiences with especially corporate law firm, corporate legal departments, is that especially with the compliance documents and contracts, if they are designed and if the aim is to create user centred documents, they actually have better results. So, these are the examples that I can give.

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Ari Kaplan

Is legal design more commonly used in law firms or in corporate legal departments?

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Ebru Metin

From my perspective in Turkey, it is very, very new. So I would say that especially law firms, they use visualizations a lot, but I wouldn't consider a visualization as a legal design if the legal design method is not to use not only visualization methods are use and corporate legal departments, I think they are more looking out from a perspective that they would like to create efficiency or have efficient processes.

So, we will see more and more examples of legal design applied to processes in the corporate legal departments in the near future. But so far it is the law firms that they are getting close enough to try legal design.

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Ari Kaplan

How important is it for a legal design team to have specialized education and expertise to implement this work product?

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Ebru Metin

In our case, the Legal Design Turkey I am the only official person in the company, and we have community members, and we have a community coordinator. We have lawyers and law students in the community as volunteers. Therefore, the project that we did with you on the IP, I was the one who was working, and our community coordinator also joined me in, and we have a designer that we outsource design work.

So, I can say is that having a specialized education is not a must. But for example, if one of us has had design skills, then it would be easier, but I wouldn't say anyone with a legal background can apply legal design after learning, it's learning the method, learning about design, thinking, learning about visualization or other skills.

They can do it. the most important thing here is to be open to new things. So be open minded and maybe motivation.

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Ari Kaplan

What needs to happen in the legal profession for legal design to be more common part of the practice of law?

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Ebru Metin

For me, a legal design is experimenting, and I feel like it's it's also seen by legal decision makers like GCs and law firm partners, it's also seen that way. So, if there will be a regulation or like a standard common practice where it says that okay, legal service providers, you need to provide user centered services or you need to use usability standards in your services or things like that, that it would become a common part of practice law.

But then it relies on the motivation of the decision makers if they want to experiment or not.

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Ari Kaplan

You've been named as one of ILTA's influential women in legal tech for 2022. What aspect of your work do you think most likely influenced that recognition?

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Ebru Metin

In my case I applied for the call and there were like a couple of questions asking me about my background and what I did in terms of legal innovation. So, I believe being a woman entrepreneur coming from Turkey, the work I did with Legal Design Turkey as being the first social enterprise and legal design, my work with European Legal Technology Association that I am an ambassador to is one of the other things,

And since the pandemic I have been doing a lot of lectures and I have like these speaking engagements for especially young university students about legal innovations. I think these are the things that really influence this recognition.

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Ari Kaplan

You also serve as an ambassador of the European Legal Technology Association. Why does ILTA have an ambassador program and what are your responsibilities in that role?

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Ebru Metin

The last number was 44 or 45, I can't remember, but it is supported plus ambassadors that we have, and each ambassador is responsible of their region. And so why does that have this ambassador program? Because then you have someone in that region having local knowledge and also having the knowledge of US processes, so you act like a bridge.

So, each ambassador has a bridge, and my responsibilities are to be the contact point in my region for ILTA. I also created a Turkey chapter, so we have two other founding members. We have we have been present in Turkey. So, and also the thing is like there are local members who can always contact us and, you know, like they need something.

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Ebru Metin

We also help them with communications with ILTA and other local legal tech market players, actors.

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Ari Kaplan

What is the connection between legal tech and legal design?

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Ebru Metin

In my own experience, I see two connections. So, when you are applying legal design, it is the solution that you prototyped. You can also create a legal tech solution. Like, for example, if you're working on a problem with refugees, for example, then you want to do an open app, let's say that this is a legal tech hub. So, it can be a result of legal design application.

And the other way around is that when you are developing a legal type product, you can use legal design methodology to create the most useful product for your users. And the key between these two examples is I think the term usability. So how usable your product is.

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Ari Kaplan

You've had a number of interesting roles. What advice do you have for professionals interested in changing their careers?

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Ebru Metin

I really did a lot of different things besides the ones that I mentioned. I also acted as a protection coordinator and the corporate governance analyst. And what I would say is that I have been always an experimenter. I like to experiment things. But I would say for people who would like to change their careers is not to be afraid of changes because everything is changing so rapidly because of the technology nowadays.

I remember, for example, from my parents' time, it was very well regarded when you work at the same company for quite a long time. But now I feel that we're having different experiences coming together in one person is also very valuable. So, I would say not to be afraid of change and being well prepared in self-awareness, knowing what you want.

These are the two key things when you want to make a change in your life.

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Ari Kaplan

How has the ability to travel again affected your work?

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Ebru Metin

After two years, I have first traveled for two short legal design workshops that we did at Istanbul University on children's rights. But the biggest travel is upcoming, because I have been accepted to a program by U.S. Department of State and Fortune Global Woman Mentoring Program. So, I will be arriving, coming to US in May.

I'm very much looking forward to it actually, because my sponsor companies, AIG and my mentor will be Lucy Fatal. So, this will be a very big chance and very meaningful one.

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Ari Kaplan

This program is called Reinventing Legal. How is your work ultimately impacting that objective?

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Ebru Metin

What I can say is that I hope that this session is inspiring for the ones who are listening to it. First of all, what I can say is that most changes come in my case, in my personal experience. Most changes come with the interactions, like the people that you met, the places that you have been, and the things that you read or listen to.

You know, these are the things that lead you to make a change in your life. And I believe very much legal is a platform or a place where it also creates this kind of interaction. And my work, how it ultimately impacts this objective is that it enables me to be in this kind of platforms. Because this is the work that I'm very passionate about, it helps me to interact with people a lot like this.

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Ari Kaplan

I'm Ari Kaplan, and I have been fortunate today to speak with Ebru Metin, the founder and CEO of Legal Design Turkey, a social enterprise focused on humanizing legal services and systems for this episode of Reinventing Legal. Ebru, thank you so very much.

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Ebru Metin

Thank you. Ari. It was a pleasure.

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