Marton Ribary and Antony Starza-Allen (Surrey) presented initial insights about using LEGO® and visual metaphors for assisting law students with problem solving in contract law.

Marton Ribary (RHUL) and Antony Starza-Allen (Surrey) presented to an international audience of contract law academics. They reported about their experimental workshop design which uses LEGO® and visual metaphors for unlocking students’ creative powers and help them to approach problem solving in contract law with confidence. Their paper, “Unlocking creativity: Legal problem solving in Contract with Lego®”, was presented in the “Contract Law and Innovation I” panel of the 17th Annual International Conference on Contracts (KCON XVII) held at the University of Bristol Law School between 20-21 June 2024. Apart from describing the workshop format and showcasing images of LEGO models built by students, Marton and Antony shared initial insights about how the activity relates to the idea of engineering legal knowledge, computational methods and the development of professional skills such as simplifying terms and talking to clients with confidence. Their approach develops the “constructing legal advice” stage of their guided approach to problem solving. The details of the workshop design is the topic of a recent piece Marton and Antony published in the “Policy and education developments” section of The Law Teacher 58 (2024) under the title “Legal problem solving with Lego®”.