Goals of the Legal Design Workshop: Legal Design has evolved from a niche concept into a recognized discipline, yet demonstrating its impact on legal processes, rules, and institutions remains a substantially underdeveloped area of inquiry. The effects on legal research, practice, and education are, and should be, varied, requiring diversified methods and criteria of evaluation. Several challenges account for this gap. Some stem from the absence of a shared understanding of what legal design is and what falls outside its scope. Others arise from the open-textured multi- and interdisciplinarity of this nascent field — where information design, UX design, and service design, among others, operate in productive but often unresolved tension. Further complexity is introduced by the discipline's international dimension and the divergences across legal traditions (e.g., common law vs. civil law systems) and legal domains. Compounding these difficulties, a persistent divide separates academic scholarship from professional practice: the two communities frequently operate with different conceptual frameworks, priorities, and languages. 

This workshop is conceived as a structured space to bridge that gap. By bringing together researchers, practitioners, educators, and students, it aims to collaboratively develop a preliminary methodological toolkit — one that accounts for the discipline's internal plurality and assembles methods and documented examples of measurable impact, understood broadly and not confined to empirical or quantitative approaches.

✍️ Call for Papers ✍️

Call for Papers:  We invite researchers, legal practitioners, designers, and PhD candidates to submit their work for presentation and discussion during our interactive sessions. We are specifically looking for contributions that demonstrate how Legal Design is measured, tested, and implemented.

Themes of Interest:  We welcome submissions on (but not limited to) the following topics:

• Empirical Studies in Legal Contexts: Contributions presenting and critically evaluating the application of legal design methods across different legal domains — from small-scale usability testing to large-scale empirical studies. 

• Methodological Innovations: Proposals of new frameworks for integrating design methods and thinking into legal research, education, or practice, including approaches to driving organizational and systemic change within institutions.

• Theoretical Foundations: Reflections on the disciplinary status of legal design and its relationship to established academic fields. Contributions may draw on the history of other emerging legal disciplines to examine how legal design might consolidate its own theoretical identity and scholarly legitimacy.

• Impact Systematization: Critical assessments of what is currently known about the impact of legal design interventions, alongside identification of gaps that warrant further investigation. Submissions are encouraged to engage with the question of what counts as evidence of impact and under what conditions it can be meaningfully measured.

Submission Guidelines and Further Information: To maintain the interactive spirit, we are not looking for long-form essays, but rather "Action Abstracts." Format: A 500-word abstract outlining the problem, the design intervention, the method, and the observed or expected impact. Presentation Style: Selected papers will be given a 15-minute "Lightning Talk" slot followed by a moderated deep-dive discussion. Contributions may be published or unpublished material. 

Publication: We will not publish conference proceedings, but original unpublished work may be submitted through a fast-track to the Legal Design Journal.

Submission Deadline and Details: Please send your abstract in PDF format to legalhackathon[at]unisg.ch with the subject line “CfP: St. Gallen Legal Design Workshop” by July 1, 2026.

If you want to attend without submitting a paper, contact the organizers. 

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!  

Important deadlines:

Call for abstracts: July 1, 2026

Acceptance of abstract: August 1, 2026

Submission of full papers for the workshop: October 4, 2026, which will be shared with the workshop participants prior to the event

Workshop: November 4, 2026

Submissions of your full papers to the Legal Design journal (optional): January 22, 2027

How to get there? If you come from abroad, the Zurich Airport is the closest to St. Gallen. From there, a direct train to St. Gallen leaves every half an hour. From the main station in St. Gallen, you can walk to the MLE-Haus (uphill!) or take the bus number 9.

Where to stay? There are hotels and hostels within St. Gallen near the main station. Airbnbs are also readily available in the city.