Making sociolegal research more social by design: Anglo-German roots, rewards and risks

In this moment of ‘social distancing’ the need for sociologically-informed approaches to understanding, responding to and shaping our changing world has never been clearer. This paper makes the case for a sociologically-informed approaches to legal design. It argues, firstly, that sociologically-informed approaches allow us to conceptualise legal design as aform of social relations, and that this opens the door to understanding the roles of legal design in social relations, and the potential of legal design to work for particular forms of social relations. Secondly, it argues that sociologically-informed approaches emphasise the social dimensions of doing legal design, focusing on one emergent field of legal design—that is, the application of designerly ways in a sociolegal research context.