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From Visualization to Legal Design: A Collaborative and Creative Process

American Business Law Journal, Vol. 54, No. 2, Summer 2017, p. 347-392

Gerlinde Berger-Walliser

Although the law remains predominately focused on the written word, a growing body of scholarship and legal practice reflect a dramatic increase in the use of visualization in virtually every legal context. Three starting assumptions underpin our ideas of implementing visualization ideas and techniques into what we call “Legal Design” that may aid contract simplification:

First, we examine the use of images in business documents and in statutes, rather than for advocacy. Moving away from adversarial settings offers several advantages. It permits us to illustrate the use of images in a broader range of practical legal applications. It also enables us to adopt the thinking, values, and methods of a non-traditional approach to lawyering and the law: “Preventive Law” or “Proactive Law” (combined here as “PPL”). Second, we offer guidelines for using images in conjunction with words rather than in isolation, since the law only rarely abandons its verbal expression. Realistically, visualization is almost always used in hybrid ways — combinations of words and images to enhance the effectiveness of communication. That seems unlikely to change, given the need for detail and refinement when the law is imposing duties on people. Finally, our method analyzes variables surrounding choices and consequences about the process of generating, transmitting, and using images to accompany legal language. Examining this dynamic can deepen our understanding of the information conveyed; it can also reveal the potential of visualization for creating spillover value for businesses or regulatory agencies that employ the images to advance legal and organizational effectiveness. Full article.



Folta to Oversee Professional Group

Westfair Communications – University of Connecticut management professor Timothy B. Folta has been elected to a five-year term overseeing the Business Policy and Strategy (BPS) Division of the Academy of Management. The academy is an organization of management educators, with more than 19,000 members in 120 countries. In addition to hosting conferences and supporting research, it publishes six research journals. The BPS division has more than 5,000 members.


Precarious Work: The Need for Flextime Employment Rights and Proposals for Reform

Berkeley Journal of Employment & Labor Law, Vol. 37, Issue 1 (2016)

Robert Bird

Millions of Americans are under intense pressure to balance work and family responsibilities. The feeling of overwork is rampant, with nearly half of employees feeling overworked or overwhelmed by their workplace responsibilities. This Article argues for a suite of legal protections that would allow working families, especially single-parent and low-income families, basic access to the rights and protections of flexible work. These protections include amending FLSA rides to better protect non-exempt workers from intrusions into their non-working time, as well as expanding the use of the FMLA to encourage more use of flexible leave. This article also recommends adoption of right-to-request legislation, enabling employees to request a flexible schedule and have that request meaningfully evaluated by their employer without fear of retaliation. Full article.

UConn Innovation Quest: CRISPR – X

CTStartup Podcast– You may not have heard of it, but CRISPR (that stands for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”) could change the face of modern medicine as we know it. Many startups are involved in trying to utilize CRISPR to cure diseases, but a couple of college students may have already beaten them to the punch.

UConn students Ryan Englander and Nandan Tumu are developing a way to use CRISPR as a means of fighting off certain kinds of cancers even after they’re developed. Could these two college students find the cancer breakthrough that has eluded modern medicine for so long?




Facebook Group Urges Preservation of Old Stanley Buildings

New Britain Herald – When it was announced that Stanley Black & Decker was planning to demolish all nine buildings it owns east of Curtis Street and south of Myrtle Street, some residents celebrated an opportunity revitalize the corner, while others were upset that their beloved city would be losing a bit of its history.


Turning Corporate Compliance into Competitive Advantage

University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, Vol. 19, No.2 (2017)

Robert Bird, Stephen Park

Compliance is a core concern for corporate governance. Firms devote tremendous amounts of money, personnel, and attention to ensure compliance with regulatory mandates — and yet compliance failures proliferate. This is because the current static and binary view of compliance hinders both efficient compliance by firms and effective regulation by government. Understanding the reality that compliance is both dynamic and driven by efficiency empowers firms to evolve past mere conformance and into wealth maximizing innovation. This Article develops an efficient investment-risk (EIR) model of compliance that captures the tradeoffs between cost and risk, parses the oft-commingled concepts of technical efficiency and allocative efficiency, and enables firms to obtain a competitive advantage through compliance. We also turn our attention to regulators, and highlight how the EIR model can enhance regulatory design, foster regulator-firm cooperation, and advance the mutual goals of business and society. Full article.

UConn Innovation Quest: EpiGo

CTStartup Podcast– The plight of EpiPen users has been brought into the public consciousness this past year, inspiring two young entrepreneurs to conceive of a smaller, better way to deliver life-saving epinephrine.

Join Chris and Eric as they talk about the inspiration and potential with two members of the four-person team behind this mobile and cost-effective EpiPen replacement.