Visualisation of Law: A Look Into the Future – The Visualisation of Complex Concepts

Lawyers are becoming more aware of the benefits that technology affords the practice and operation of law. Technology use is no longer something out of the ordinary, but an essential part of the modern legal dynamic.

Coinciding with the advancement of technology in legal practice is an increased awareness of the benefits of presenting information visually, multi-channel communications1 (seeing, hearing, reading) and visual modality in education.2 In many situations, visually presented information results in an increased understanding and memorisation of content and can augment the learning experience.3

As information is the lifeblood of lawyers, the visualisation of information can provide benefits beyond that of words alone. Examples of visual techniques being used in legal settings can be found graphics in contract and courtroom-based VR.

1. Contract Visualisation
Transactional law benefits from information design methods to make contracts clearer and more user-friendly.4 Contract visualisation practices undertake a range of approaches; from the low-tech use of graphics in ‘comic contracts’5 to sophisticated techniques using specific computer programmes. One common approach is to use a mixture of words and graphics to articulate contract clauses. There are many programs and services (some of them web-based) that assist users to apply visual components to different parts of a contract. In many applications, there is the use of an input window that contains pre-selected fields for population. The tool then generates graphics to accompany text for specific clauses,6 for example a Term Clause, Payment Clause, and Liquidated Damages Clause. This approach sees the reader achieve faster and more accurate comprehension by visually linking clauses using the icons.

2. Courtroom Virtual Reality
Using virtual reality to articulate complex concepts is not a new the law. In 1997 the Queensland Police Service developed what was considered to be the world’s first virtual crime system. Called the Interactive Forensic Imaging System, the technology enabled police to produce a 360-degree image of a crime scene by linking a series of conventional photographs together.7 The result was an interactive walk-through experience, similar to that which is now commonly used in the real estate industry. The system had two benefits. First, it was used in the courtroom to simplify the presentation of large amounts of photographic evidence and to create a walk-through of a crime scene for the jury. The jury could ‘see’ the crime scene without undertaking a crime scene visit. Secondly the process allowed police to review a crime scene long after the event to verify visual information in a more realistic format than that of single shot pictures.8

The rise in augmented and virtual reality in the training sphere has set a new precedent for what can be accomplished in information dissemination. Virtual reality as a similated environment has the potential to provide assistance to the court process in much the same way as 3D animated graphical representations have done previously.9 Technologies like Microsoft’s HoloLens, Facebook’s Oculus Rift, and Samsung VR Gear are bringing the virtual and augmented reality experience to the general public. Used for gaming, education, business, and industrial applications these technologies introduce new ways of relating to data that is both visual and interactive.

Visualisation of information can not only enhance text, but also supplant text as the dominant form of communication when the situation is appropriate. As visualisation technologies and multi-channel communications become more prominent in society, lawyers should reconsider their reliance on the written word. Visualisation technologies are already making an impact. And like most things technology related, we are only at the start of a wave of innovation and disruption that is seeking to reshape the practice and administration of law.

An edited version of this article originally appeared in the October 2020 edition of the Law Institute Journal.

Fabian Horton
Principal Solicitor
Connect Law
(03) 5265 1539
fabian@connectlaw.com.au
connectlaw.com.au

Fabian Horton is a lecturer at the College of Law Australia and director of ConnectLaw. He is the foundation chairperson of the Law Institute of Victoria, Technology and the Law Committee.

1. Young and Asensio, ‘Looking through three ‘I’s: The pedagogic use of streaming video’ in Banks, Goodyear, Hodgson and Connell (eds), Networked Learning (Proceedings of the Third International Conference. Sheffield March 2002) 628.
2. Walter Barbe, Michael Milone. ‘What we know about modality strengths.’ (1981) 38, Educational Leadership, 378.
3. Robert E Horn. ‘Visual Language and Converging Technologies in the Next 10-15 Years (and Beyond)’, (A paper prepared for the National Science Foundation Conference on Converging Technologies (Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno) for Improving Human Performance. 3-4 December 2001)
4. Stefania Passera, Helena Haapio ‘The Quest for Clarity – How Visualization improves the Usability and User Experience of Contracts’ in Huang W & Huang M (eds.): Innovative Approaches of Data Visualization and Visual Analytics, (IGI Global 2013) 191
5. Helena Haapio, Daniela Alina Plewe and Robert de Rooy. ‘Next Generation Deal Design – Comics and Visual Platforms for Contractin’ in Erich Schweighofer et al. (eds.), Networks. Proceedings of the 19th International Legal Informatics Symposium (IRIS 2016). 373–380.
6. For a full report on the software see Stefania Passera, Helena Haapio & Michael Curtotti: ‘Making the Meaning of Contracts Visible – Automating Contract Visualization’ in Erich Schweighofer et al. (eds.) Transparency. Proceedings of the 17th International Legal Informatics Symposium (Wien. 2014) 443.
7. The original software used was Apple QuickTime VR. See Karen Downey, “Leading the Way in Investigative Technology” Queensland Police Bulletin (342) 17 <https://www.police.qld.gov.au/corporatedocs/reportsPublications/bulletin/Documents/
   Leading%20the%20way%20in%20investigative%20technology.pdf>
8. Queensland Police Service, New Initiatives and Technologies, 1998
9. < https://www.police.qld.gov.au/aboutUs/history/8000.htm> Access 16 October 2016
10. See Ma Minhua, Zheng Huiru, Lallie Harjinder. ‘Virtual Reality and 3D Animation in Forensic Visualization’, (2010) 5. 55. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 1227–1231