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Lawyers need to be reflective about their practice areas, and for those in the family law space, humour helps disarm some of the trickier aspects of the job.
“Shining a light on the more uncomfortable aspects of family law is a necessary step in changing them, because the best way to innovate is to follow the pain.”
While doing research for his business’ “1-Click Disclosure” product – which allows clients to get financial disclosure documents faster – he and his team created an art project called “THE JOY OF DISCLOSURE”, which he describes as a parody of the “sheer absurdity that family lawyers and paralegals face day in, day out.
“Each piece takes a pain or frustration shared on social media by a family lawyer, and presents it from the perspective of a dementedly happy lawyer, in an American Kitsch style. It started as an internal joke and then grew organically from there,” he recounted.
Lawyers need to be reflective about their own practice and the experience of their clients, Mr Wight told Lawyers Weekly.
“Humour is a wonderfully disarming way to start a conversation about something – particularly things that people don’t usually talk about. Shining a light on the more uncomfortable aspects of family law is a necessary step in changing them, because the best way to innovate is to follow the pain,” he explained.
“Innovation isn’t just for the geeks; although people often equate innovation with technology, in my experience, empathy trumps technical capability every day of the week.”
Besides just being a lot of fun for him on a personal level, Mr Wight said that, professionally, it provides him with a highly novel way of doing design research for the business’ legal tech products.
“For lawyers, it not only makes for an enjoyable form of therapy, but feeds into a real-world product that can actually make a material difference to their daily practice,” he said.
Looking ahead, Mr Wight said his ambition for creative outlets such as “THE JOY OF DISCLOSURE” is to “remove the dysfunction around financial disclosure that currently creates a drag on even the most amicable matters”.
“Our end goal is to enable a client to go from having absolutely nothing, to having a balance sheet, disclosure schedule and supporting documents ready to provide to the other side 20 minutes later,” he mused.
“We’ve already got this down to a few hours, so ultimately, we’d like people to look back at ‘THE JOY OF DISCLOSURE’ to remember how things used to be, rather than lament how they are.”
Source: THE JOY OF DISCLOSURE
Jerome Doraisamy is the managing editor of Lawyers Weekly and HR Leader. He is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in New South Wales, and a board director of the Minds Count Foundation.
You can email Jerome at:
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Jerome Doraisamy
