February 08, 2019

FaegreBD’s Innovative Design Thinking Initiative Profiled in Harvard Law School’s The Practice

Faegre Baker Daniels’ innovative design thinking initiative has been profiled by Harvard Law School’s, The Practice, in an article that highlights the firm’s efforts and successes in training its 750-plus lawyers and consultants to “think like designers” and embrace visual advocacy to solve problems for their clients.

FaegreBD’s design thinking initiative began in 2017, when the firm entered into a partnership with the Stanford Legal Design Lab, an interdisciplinary program at Stanford Law School and the Hasso Platner Institute of Design aimed at training law students and professionals in human-centered legal design. Through the partnership, the firm collaborates with Stanford on legal design events, participates in design courses and creates design thinking resources for lawyers and clients.

In 2018, the firm launched its FaegreBD Design Lab to educate colleagues about design and create design resources for clients. The firm currently has design labs in its Silicon Valley and Minneapolis offices.

The FaegreBD design thinking team is led by intellectual property lawyers and “design catalysts” Kate Razavi and David Gross – who is also a member of the firm’s management board – and includes Libby Baney, Helen Chacon and Patrick Bottini. 

Over the past year, the firm has hosted design thinking events with the Silicon Valley Business Journal, and has been mentioned in The American Lawyer, as one of the leading law firms in the area of legal design. In addition, Razavi and Bottini have collaborated with graphic design professionals to develop a first-of-its-kind course at the University of Minnesota Law School entitled “Visual Advocacy.”

For more information on FaegreBD’s design thinking initiative, read The Practice’s full article.