What does winning the Legal Innovation Oscars mean?

If someone told me that the world would stand still for almost two years as the result of a pandemic, that meanwhile Villa| Visual Law Studio, created in 2019, would not only survive but would REALLY grow, to the extent of becoming the number 1 in Brazil and one of the top Legal Design studios in the world. That back to normal life,? we would attend one of the most sought-after legal innovation awards in the world, competing against 30x larger legal tech entrepreneurs, including some of the largest existing law firms, as well as several multinational legal departments, and we would ultimately be WINNERS! !!!! I would say, no, you must be out of your mind.

It would be easier to believe in unicorns, as my daughters would have liked. Only this time it was all actually true. In fact, a unicorn knocked on our door, we hopped on it, and so far, this venture has been one of a kind, to say the least. At this very moment, I am writing from my flight—from S?o Paulo to Mexico City, where we are bringing Visual Law to Los Hermanos, then to Orlando, talking to local offices, and finally, to LAS VEGAS, Vegas Baby, where the CLOC 2022 will take place and where we will accept the award in person at the Gala event. Finishing in Las Vegas, our expedition sets off for the Big Apple, NY, where we will conclude our road trip and Villa's international debut.???

Winning the Legal Innovation in Operations award organized by CLOC (Corporate Legal Operations Consortium), the Oscars for Legal Innovation Worldwide, for the Legal Design & Visual Law project implemented in TIM's cell phone contracts means a lot, really a lot. Personally,? it is the greatest expression of professional achievement over these 20 years in the industry. For our team, it means that there are no limits except those we create ourselves, and since we don't design limits at Villa, it means we can get anywhere we want. For our client, Telecom Italia, or as we all know it, TIM, is the outcome of combining boldness, planning, and commitment to the client. Congratulations TIM! We did it! We created the first actual “Easy Contract” in the world.

It took Villa and TIM teams over 1000 hours of work in a project that ran for more than a year, involving the global president of the company, the CEO in Brazil, the Legal Board, and stakeholders in almost all major areas of the company, such as sales, marketing, revenue, IT, IR, etc. We followed the five steps that we often address in our Visual Law project classes: 1. Pre-Project; 2. Briefing; 3. Prototype; 4. Development; 5. Delivery.?

A 5-7 person working group was assembled, under the guidance of Guilherme Kimus, Adriana Moreira, Regina Barros, Kethellyn Siqueira, and I. A focusing group of around 25 people with representatives from the abovementioned areas and a review panel with over? 50 members were also created. The sponsorship of the company's top leadership, namely its chairmen Pietro Labriola and Alberto Griselli, and its legal director Jaques Horn, was thorough and steady. Everything was carried out without fanfare, focusing on the actual result, turning a set of four thirty-three-page documents into a single two-sided one, 100% digital document, and truly having a significant impact on how legal communication is both received and perceived by people.?

Ultimately, the perfect environment for ideas to bloom and high-level projects to be developed has been created. The results, well they are only just beginning. Getting to see and listen to enthusiastic and contagious sales agents and customers stating that they started offering/hiring their telecommunication services through the new format has given us an endless source of strength to move forward with the purpose of taking Contrato Fácil to all consumers in Brazil. On the other hand, collecting real statistics using data mining and advanced jurimetrics to demonstrate how Legal Design has supported the improvement of the results has further strengthened our position that Visual Law goes far beyond a fancy design, instead, it is directly related to legal efficiency.?

We genuinely believe that we are helping to pave the way for other legal practitioners, companies, and institutions to see and understand that there is a new way of doing Law that can be more empathetic, understandable, and accessible to all. We understand legal inclusion as a premise of fairness. There is no justice when the law, its foundation pillar, is impenetrable to the vast majority, or when contracts, policies, and legal texts are conceived from the inside out, with a perspective of perpetually opposing poles, with a stubborn vanity and pretentious pomp. Get ou of here, Legalese! It is about time we start something new, time to bring the law closer to people, where it rightfully belongs. Welcome to Visual Law. Welcome to Villa!?

Rui Caminha.