https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9560-2308
ABSTRACT
This short piece introduces a working game designed for legal problem solving where students use LEGO® to create visual representations of legal analysis. We explain its structure and rationale which is based on the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method and our own five-stage guided approach to problem solving in contract law. We comment on LEGO® models built by students during workshops exploring issues in contract law. In their feedback, students reported that the method helped them to understand contract law doctrine, navigate problem questions and think about their analysis of legal issues. We suggest that, with further investigation, the method can be a viable pedagogical technique to assist with the identification and understanding of a wide range of legal information, and to discern relevant connections between doctrine and fact patterns to achieve successful abstraction, application, and ultimately the construction of complex legal analysis. The method also builds confidence, social interaction skills and reinforces competence in legal problem solving.
Introduction
This paper outlines an experimental working game delivered in a workshop designed to assist students with problem solving and the construction of legal analysis in contract law by building models using LEGO®. The method under exploration is an attempt to enhance the fourth stage of analysis of our “information management” approach to contract law problem solving which arises from our experiences teaching contract law.Footnote1 To promote strong learning outcomes, students are typically required to demonstrate comprehensive knowledge and persuasive application skills. The workshop is designed to foster these skills through playful activities based on the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) method,Footnote2 drawing on visualisation and legal design techniquesFootnote3 as applied to traditional problem solving. Specifically, we are exploring whether the open-ended and instructional use of LEGO is a pedagogically viable technique to learn how to manage legal information and construct detailed legal analysis.Footnote4 Photos of the LEGO models referred to can be accessed in the Figshare repository corresponding with this paper.Footnote5
Workshop design
We designed a two-hour workshop involving several LEGO-building exercises that move from open-ended exploration of legal concepts to legal problem solving in a more structured way. We presented the workshop as two scenes with acts within, students as actors improvising on a script, and ourselves as narrators facilitating the process. The theatre metaphor provided a framework for the creative process reinforcing the idea that we play with a (serious) purpose guided by an adopted legal problem scenario.
At the beginning of the first act, we as narrators introduce the workshop to students by explaining three theoretical pillars which underpin the method: LSP, design in legal education, and our own guided approach to problem solving in contract law.Footnote6 In the higher education setting, time-constrained students need to appreciate that the activity is not infantilising, but it is a serious method for achieving tangible learning outcomes.
The short introduction is followed by the first “ice-breaker” scene borrowed from Alan WheelerFootnote7 in which students are asked to “build a duck” with seven LEGO pieces. This individual build only takes a few minutes and involves students rummaging through a large pile of LEGO in front of them. The build itself warms up the hands and makes students familiar with the pieces available. In the share and discussion phase, students say a few words about their ducks and how it tells something about them. Students were surprisingly open about their dispositions. One student explained a delicately balanced wingless duck as a metaphor for them “just about getting by” (s08), while another commented on their bright yellow duck with eyes facing backwards as representing their generally cheerful persona with some fears about the upcoming exams (s01). The exercise established a relaxed, open and honest atmosphere, and also helped to discover some visual metaphors that students returned to in their subsequent models.
In the second scene of Act 1, we asked students to build a “representation of contract”. The instruction was intentionally vague to avoid the impression that there is one right answer. Explaining their models, students touched upon some critical aspects of contract such as its inherent symmetry between parties represented by an arch (r11); its common perception as a formal written document represented by linear white long bricks which can be translated to other forms of communication shown by a computer screen (s12); or the inequality of bargaining power represented by brown bricks piled up in front of one of the two parties (s15). One model incorporated an open door inviting a party to enter into a contract, a metaphor which the students reused in subsequent models (r13); another used a Batman minifigure standing on top of an arch as a representation of the courts enforcing the contract made between two parties (r17). It was interesting to observe that students made references to theoretical and critical aspects of contract law unprompted. The ideas were deep and varied, and the discussion on these fundamental topics was lively and informative.
The second act of our workshop focused on legal problem solving. We explained that the exercise is designed to reinforce stage four of our five-stage guided approach to legal problem solving, that is, the stage in which students construct detailed legal advice in response to a problem scenario combining the informational building blocks of a legal doctrine.Footnote8 We provided students with a short problem scenario on the topic of unilateral contracts with three relatively straightforward stages: making, accepting and revoking an offer. Students were also given a crib sheet with a few relevant cases in which we spelled out the central issue, the outcome, the underlying legal principle and a relevant judicial comment.
In the first scene of Act 2, students had access to “everything in the box” to build a representation of one sub-issue arising from the problem scenario. In groups of three or four, they then combined these models on a large base plate to create a full representation of the problem scenario. Understandably, students were drawn to the narrative aspects of the problem scenario, but represented it in multiple creative ways. They captured the combination of sub-issues in one snapshot (r18), created a cartoon strip with still images of the stages (s19), or even played out the problem scenario’s narrative moving the protagonist minifigure around (r27). They adapted their individual models to create a coherent whole. One group included a hinge at the end of their cartoon strip to represent alternative outcomes (s23), while another group arranged the individual models in a geometrical shape to bring out an underlying abstract structure (r24).
We included a transition scene in one of the workshops where students were asked to simplify their combined models by removing plates, minifigures and complex shapes. One group kept the most powerful visual metaphors of the notice board (for unilateral offer), the arch (for contract formation) and the hinge (for alternative outcomes arising from revocation) (s28), while the other group created a Star Wars-style “occupier tank” in which representation of sub-issues has become highly abstract (s31).
In the final scene of Act 2, students were only allowed to use bricks in expectation of attaching legal meaning to colours and shapes to build a highly abstract representation of the constitutive informational building blocks of legal advice. Students who moved from the scene with “everything in the box” directly to the scene with “bricks only” seemed to stay in the problem scenario’s narrative. They produced a narrative representation in 2D (r29), bargained to keep some special bricks to be able to stay in the narrative (r33) or resorted to represent the idea of process by building a long flight of stairs (r31). Students who experienced the transition scene either simplified their model even further (s35) or indeed used shapes and colours to represent the informational building blocks packed inside a sub-issue (s32). It was interesting to see that when asked about how they would link this sub-issue to the next, students added an extra black brick to their model diagonally explaining that black was the colour they have chosen for representing facts, and that they would follow the narrative structure of the problem scenario to combine sub-issues in one model (s34).
Student feedback and discussion
After the workshops, we asked students to complete an online, anonymous feedback form compiled in Microsoft Forms. Students emphasised that the workshop was a helpful way to approach and understand contract law doctrine. In particular, students spoke about how they found it useful to “break down” and “visualise” the legal problem scenario and the process of problem solving. As one said, “I found the visualisation of the problem question the most helpful for me as we were able to break things down in a more simple way that presented the initial framework rather than all the detail in the content at one time which can get overwhelming”.
Students linked the use of LEGO to promoting creativity and leading them to consider different approaches to problem solving. As one put it, “I was able to tackle problem questions in a completely different way […] using LEGO made it easier to understand”. They also commented on the benefits of “visualis[ing] the connection between core aspects of contract law”. During the “share and explain” stage students indeed pointed to visual representations of rules in their models and discussed relevant cases illustrating them. Students also reported that building with LEGO enabled them to acquire and express their understanding of contract law doctrine. As one student said, the exercise helped “to visualise unilateral contracts in a way that has stuck in my mind”, or as another put it, to “create a visual representation of my thoughts”.
Students also said they saw the method as “a good starting point with de-constructing the large amount of knowledge […] when revising” and showed an interest in “interactive workshops [as] a good way to make student[s] more engaged”. As one said, “[n]on-formal learning is a lot more effective thus memorable”.
Initial findings and preliminary conclusions
Student feedback on the workshops was reassuringly positive. Overall, students told us they enjoyed the workshop and found that working with LEGO is a helpful technique to understand legal doctrine, navigate problem questions and think about constructing legal analysis. In particular, students reported that visualisation helped them to “break things down”. It was also encouraging to see signs of abstraction and the beginnings of successful construction of legal analysis using LEGO – although this is an aspect we will focus on developing in subsequent workshops.
In particular, the “build a duck” ice-breaker made students talk, share and open up to each other. This built a rapport in the room and set the scene nicely for the subsequent builds. The “build a contract” stage encouraged students to draw connections from LEGO models to different theories and perspectives of contract law. The “problem-solving builds” suggested to us that there is sufficient pedagogical value in using LEGO to model legal analysis that warrants further investigation.
We highlight several preliminary conclusions from our initial findings. First, modelling legal analysis using LEGO seems to be a viable pedagogical technique that may help students identify and understand a wide range of information from legal doctrine, including case names, principles, binding and non-binding judicial commentary, that pertain to a particular legal issue. In this vein, LEGO analysis complements and builds on compartmentalising and categorising techniques, such as mind-mapping. Second, the method may help students discern the relevant connections between doctrine and fact patterns and achieve successful abstraction. Students can find themselves trapped in the narrative or, equally, trapped in the doctrine. Modelling legal analysis using LEGO helps students transition from the narrative of the problem scenario to identifying the relevant legal rules and then back to the problem scenario in the application of those rules. Such skills could sensibly improve application and relevance, in addition to argument and synthesis of various sources. Finally, the method appears to consolidate several associated transferable learning skills. Talking about the doctrine, sharing with others and working as a team build confidence, social interaction skills and encourage self-reflection on one’s own learning.
These findings remain preliminary and we continue seeking to establish the pedagogical value of the technique. In the workshops, we observed that students may need more help with creating a purely abstract representation of legal analysis to avoid relying heavily on the narrative of the problem scenario. We also observed that more time may be needed for the students to perform the abstraction process and perhaps also an opportunity to reflect on their models. We have plans to create a separate, more structured activity that involves colour-coding and highlighting a problem scenario before moving on to modelling with LEGO. We are also considering selecting more complex, contentious issues inviting multiple rule applications and greater depth of analysis which allows more bricks to be used in the model.
We are also intending to address questions of scalability of the workshop model to a greater number of students; how the method could supplement curricular teaching; the application of the method to other assessment types such as essay writing; and finally exploring how the psychology of learning and cognitive science might underpin the method, considering its adaptability to students with diverse learning styles and neurodiversity. We welcome any suggestions for areas of improvement or interest in using LEGO to model legal analysis and we look forward to reporting further on this method.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our students at the University of Surrey School of Law and the Department of Law and Criminology of Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL-LAC) for giving up their time during a busy schedule to participate in the workshops and for providing feedback afterwards. We are also extremely grateful for the comments and suggestions from colleagues at LEGENDFest 2023: the inaugural workshop of the Legal Educational Games: Evaluation, Network, Dissemination (LEGEND) network (Leeds, 5 September 2023), the Contract Ed Talk (13 December 2023), Connecting Legal Education (8 February 2024) and RHUL-LAC Scholarship cluster seminars (6 March 2024).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Marton Ribary and Antony Starza-Allen, “Computing Legal Analysis: A Guided Approach to Problem Solving in Contract Law” (2023) 33 Legal Education Review 143.
2 See Johann Roos, Bart Victor and Matt Statler, “Playing Seriously with Strategy” (2004) 37 Long Range Planning 549; Johann Roos and Bart Victor, “How It All Began: The Origins of LEGO® Serious Play®” (2018) 5 International Journal of Management and Applied Research 326.
3 Our initial idea to use LEGO to model legal analysis was inspired by the work of Professor Amanda Perry-Kessaris, University of Kent, and others working with LEGO in higher education, who have explored how making models can assist with the visualisation of complex ideas. See, for example, Emily Allbon and Amanda Perry-Kessaris, Design in Legal Education (Routledge 2022); Chrissi Nerantzi and Alison James, The Power of Play in Higher Education: Creativity in Tertiary Learning (Palgrave Macmillan 2019); Chrissi Nerantzi and Alison James, LEGO® for University Learning: Online, Offline and Elsewhere (Zenodo 2022).
4 Our reference to “analysis” is sufficiently broad to capture the application involved in answering problem questions. It is not intended to refer to specific analytic methodologies or formal legal reasoning.
5 Marton Ribary and Antony Starza-Allen, Images of LEGO® models supplementing The Law Teacher (Vol 58, 2024) article “Legal Problem Solving with LEGO®” (Figshare, 2024) <https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25585650.v1>.
6 Ribary and Starza-Allen (n 1).
7 Alan Wheeler, “Using Lego® Serious Play® in Higher Education with Law Students: Encouraging Playfulness and Creativity within Library Workshops” (2020) 20 Legal Information Management 222, 225.
8 Ribary and Starza-Allen (n 1) 161–66.