There is a skill and an art to explain legal concepts and procedures so people can understand their rights and know how the law operates. One approach to doing this that can be effective is to use words and pictures to tell and show what the law is.  These techniques are at the heart of the Graphic Advocacy Workshop taking place at the University of Richmond on Friday, October 31st.

For this workshop, legal design expert Hallie Jay Pope will explain techniques to combine graphics and illustrations, including comics, to show this approach to communicate the law, which should result in greater access to justice.  Pope is the Director of the NJ Legal Design Lab at Seton Hall Law School.  As a law professor there, she co-teaches the Housing Justice and Legal Design Clinic. This clinic uses design thinking techniques and community-based projects to explore problems of housing injustice in her geographic region.

Professor Pope previously worked at Harvard’s A2J Lab, a group that uses empirical research to study and improve the U.S. justice system.  One part of her work with the A2J Lab included enhancing written instructions on court procedures and legal concepts with illustrations.  A central “character” for the lab is known affectionately as “Blob” as seen here, smiling, after completing a set of legal tasks.

During Fall 2023 and Fall 2024, Richmond Law students had an opportunity to explore graphic advocacy concepts in the Comics + Law course.  Students could draw their own comics, use AI art, or choose to incorporate Blob (with permission Pope gladly granted). The range of projects are found in the Law Comics Archive, hosted by Richmond School of Law Library.  One of these is “Learning Legalese” by Mimi Mays (Law ’25), which the law school provided to incoming 1L’s as an introduction to many of the Latin terms unique to the study of law:

In the Graphic Design Workshop, Professor Pope will explain some of the projects she has done to use comics and visual storytelling to explain the law.  It’s an event supported by the Cultural Affairs Committee at the University of Richmond.  It’s open to all Richmond students and community members.  If you’re reading this before October 31, 2025, you can sign up for the workshop on Eventbrite. In addition to learning about the power of graphics to enhance how we understand the law, Pope will guide people through a project to envision the law.  The workshop concludes with a printing project using mobile print presses, provided by Jen Thomas, Book Arts Program Director at the Boatwright Memorial Library.

After the event, the Law Comics Archive remains online and we’ll add new comics over time, and the Book Arts Studio will host additional printing and graphics projects, especially in conjunction with university classes and student-led efforts at UR.