This article explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is shaping and redefining legal design, making it more accessible, efficient, and scalable for the modern era. It offers practical insights that could help professionals prepare for and thrive in this evolving landscape. Text that follows dives into:
- How AI tools are currently being implemented to optimize legal workflows.
- The implications of this shift for legal professionals and businesses.
- Why the convergence of AI and legal design is likely to be the next major trend.
It’s happening. While some people may still be debating whether AI will ever truly play a role in legal design, the truth is, it’s already being done. If you take a closer look, the integration of AI into the legal world isn’t a distant possibility — it’s unfolding right before our eyes. Legal design, traditionally centered around optimizing documents for human consumption, is now evolving to cater to the needs of AI systems. This isn’t just a passing trend; it’s shaping the future of how we create, interpret, and interact with legal documents.
A design challenge
For decades, legal professionals have meticulously crafted documents with human readers in mind. You’ve seen it in contracts, terms of service, privacy policies — the use of bold fonts, different sizes, strategic placement of information, and even color choices. All of these design elements were intended to make documents clearer, more navigable, and easier to understand for human users. But as AI systems begin to play a larger role in legal processes, these human-centered design elements are proving to be a bit of a paradox.
Here’s why: AI systems do not process documents the way we do. They aren’t looking for key points highlighted by a bold heading or a shift in color that signals importance. They focus on different aspects of the document — spacing, patterns, and structural consistency. What a human may find intuitive, a machine might find chaotic or incomprehensible. For instance, while AI can measure spacing between paragraphs with precision, it struggles to understand why one paragraph is more important than another or how different parts of a document connect to each other contextually. Essentially, AI might treat a beautifully designed legal document as noise because it doesn’t know how to interpret the underlying meaning as we do.
What makes a document intuitive for humans can confuse AI systems. The design principles we cherish—like visual hierarchy and color-coded emphasis—might turn into roadblocks for machines trying to interpret meaning. It’s a collision of priorities we must address.
Designing for both humans and AI
How do we balance two worlds—one rooted in human intuition, the other in algorithmic logic? Do we double down on human-first design, risking inefficiency for AI? Or do we pivot entirely, crafting documents optimized for machines but alien to humans? The answer lies somewhere in the middle. The solution isn’t to choose sides—it’s to create a harmony between the two. Picture a document as a shared workspace where humans and AI collaborate seamlessly. Each element must serve a purpose: structured data for machines, meaningful context for interpretation, and clear communication for people. This isn’t about stacking solutions; it’s about building bridges.
Here’s how we can structure it
Machine-Readable Framework
This foundation ensures AI systems can swiftly analyze data, draw insights, and execute tasks.
Relational Map
This midsection focuses on clarity—connecting the dots between data points to give AI the context it needs to make informed decisions.
Human Experience Design
The final touch brings the document to life for human readers, with visuals and layouts that inspire trust and understanding.
By embedding these interconnected components into legal documents, we empower both humans and machines to navigate them effortlessly. This isn’t just about coexistence—it’s about enabling meaningful collaboration between man and machine.
Why AI legal design is the future
The reality is that AI is not just a tool; it’s an active collaborator. In fact, in the near future, AI might become the primary user of legal documents. When you think about it, we’re already seeing this shift in other industries — AI is already handling more complex tasks and analyzing larger volumes of data faster and more accurately than humans ever could. Legal design has been somewhat slow to adapt, but we’re at the precipice of a major transformation.
For example, a 2021 survey by Gartner found that 70% of legal departments were already leveraging AI in some capacity for contract analysis, document review, and compliance tasks (Gartner, 2021). Tools like Kira Systems and Luminance are leading this shift, allowing legal professionals to automate the review of contracts and legal documents by identifying key clauses, risks, and opportunities with unmatched speed and precision.
We’re already seeing this transformation in how AI is being used in the legal field. Law firms and legal departments are adopting AI-driven tools to streamline contract analysis, drafting, and legal research. AI can process large amounts of legal data to predict case outcomes, flag potential risks in contracts, and even automate repetitive tasks like document review. These tools are becoming more sophisticated, and soon they will be a core part of every legal team’s workflow.
But here’s the catch: as AI becomes a bigger player in legal design, we must adjust our strategies to accommodate the unique way machines process information. It’s no longer enough to create documents just for humans. AI needs to be part of the equation.
The evolving role of legal designers
Legal designers are not only tasked with improving the user experience for humans but also ensuring that AI systems can effectively interpret and process legal documents. Legal design needs to evolve to include AI-friendly elements. This means designing documents that allow machines to pull out key data, understand the relationships between clauses, and make decisions based on that information.
Legal designers, especially those working in AI-related fields, need to understand both the technology and the user. We need to collaborate with AI experts to understand how these systems work, what data they need, and how we can best design documents to meet those needs. Additionally, we must ensure that documents remain human-friendly, as clients and legal professionals still need to be able to trust, interpret, and interact with the documents in meaningful ways.
The challenge for legal designers is to find a way to integrate AI into the legal design process without sacrificing the human-centric aspects that have made legal documents so effective in the first place.
The path forward: evolving with AI
The future of legal design isn’t about choosing between humans and machines. It’s about integrating both into a seamless process. As AI continues to develop, so too must the way we design legal documents. It’s clear that AI will be the primary user of legal documents in the future, and we need to be prepared for that reality.
Legal design needs to evolve, not just to accommodate AI, but to embrace it as an essential part of the design process. By considering AI as a user and designing with its needs in mind, we can ensure that legal documents remain both accessible and functional for everyone, whether human or machine.
So, the next time you look at a legal document, remember that its design is no longer solely about making it easier for humans to read. It’s about making it easier for both humans and AI to collaborate, understand, and act. AI-driven legal design is the future, and we’re already on the path to making it a reality.
REFERENCES
Gartner. (2021). Gartner Survey Finds 70% of Legal Departments Are Using AI for Contract Review.
- Kira Systems. (2025). https://kirasystems.com/
- Luminance. (2025). https://www.luminance.com/
- Legal Trends Report. (2024). AI Adoption By Legal Professionals Jumps from 19% to 79% In One Year, Clio Study Finds.
- The National Law Review. (2024). What to Expect in 2025: AI Legal Tech and Regulation (65 Expert Predictions).
- Reuters. (2025). Law school trends to watch in 2025.
- Legal Dive. (2024). AI’s first serious foray into legal may be contract review.
- LegalOn Technologies. (2024). The State of Contracting in the Age of AI.
- Thompson Reuters. (2024). Corporate Legal Departments See Use Cases for generative AI & ChatGPT, New Report Finds.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Izaias Cavalcanti is a Legal Product Designer fueled by a passion for discovery and driven by the same boundless curiosity that inspired
Da Vinci. With 25 years of experience across design, engineering, and product leadership, Izaias is dedicated to pushing the limits—both his own and those of his colleagues. His journey has shaped him into a visionary problem solver, adept at bridging diverse perspectives and fostering collaboration across teams and cultures. Always seeking new frontiers, Izaias aims to inspire those around him to think bigger and achieve more.
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