The legal design lab network is an inter-university project between instructors from law and design schools across four universities that began in 2019. Stanford University’s Legal Design Lab had developed a course on court and justice innovation, that they then worked with three other universities — Universidad de Los Andes (in Colombia), Universidad Francisco Marroquín (in Guatemala), and Universidad Anáhuac -Querétaro (in México) — to teach in sync.

The instructors shared class planning, syllabi, partnership plans, and other class resources. The students in the class were all working with local partners, and they had opportunities to share their insights and work product with students in the other universities. This case study presents the narrative of the various university courses, and the insights and recommendations they have for a successful class network for other universities who may want to teach in a similar model. 

The 2019 class network was a ‘prototype’ meant to explore what a more permanent network could be. The overall experience of the professors and students was positive, especially as it was the first time teaching an interdisciplinary course between law schools and design schools in the three universities. Still, each of the Mexican, Colombian, and Guatemalan schools had different difficulties along the course. These difficulties and lessons learned would make a second iteration of the course much better. The first versions of the class helped build cornerstones of more interdisciplinary, hands-on, and experiential courses in each of the universities, and the network can grow to accommodate more synced courses and independent development.