Transform Your Legal Department with Legal Design

Severine Chaudru, Senior Legal Counsel, Steelcase Inc., France

According to Daniel Pink in a Whole new mind, ’Mastering of design, empathy, play and other seemingly ’soft” aptitudes is now the main way for individuals and firms to stand out in a crowded marketplace”. Legal design, which is the application of the design thinking process to the legal world, can develop such aptitudes in lawyers and revolutionize legal departments. Tim Brown’s, chair of IDEO and board members at Steelcase Inc. and with many design awards, defines design thinking as follows: ’Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” Soon after design thinking started to be applied to the legal world, it was named ’Legal Design”.

Severine Chaudru leads the EMEA Legal & Compliance team. The team helps the business throughout EMEA, whether it is for contracts of all types - distribution, partnership, purchasing, corporate, litigation - they work hand in hand with the in-house employment lawyers. They are also responsible for anti-corruption, competition law and RGPD compliance and are active on environmental issues - circular economy. Before working at Steelcase 13 years ago, Severine was a derivatives lawyer working for 10 years in leading banks – including for 6 years in London.

Steelcase: Organizations around the world trust Steelcase to help them create places that help people work better, be inspired and accomplish more. The company designs, manufactures, and partners with other leading organizations to provide architecture, furniture, and technology solutions – accessible through a network of channels, including over 800 Steelcase dealer locations. Steelcase is a global, industry-leading, and publicly traded company. In Europe we were mainly a B2B brand, but since 2020 we have developed our own e-shop with seating and desks. We also sell through Amazon and other retailers.