An international team of experts have joined forces to simplify laws and legal documents, making them clearer and easier for people and organisations to follow.
The complexity of rules often hinders rather than helps users, reducing innovation and competitiveness, and increasing compliance costs.
Members of European Legal Design Action (ELDA) want to make laws and legal documents more accessible in practice.
ELDA brings together experts in law, communication, design, and technology with policymakers and businesses to co-create tools and solutions that make law understandable, actionable, and easier to comply with.
They aim to improve top-down policy- and lawmaking, ensuring that future laws and guidance are designed with clarity, usability, and compliance in mind from the outset.
ELDA is a "COST Action", funded by European Cooperation in Science and Technology. The aim is to build legal design capacity across Europe, equipping a new generation of experts with the skills and tools to develop and apply innovative solutions.
The network now brings together 170 people or organisations from 38 countries, including lawyers and language experts. The main proposer was Ebru Metin (TalTech Estonia), but the project was also spearheaded by Helena Haapio (University of Vaasa, Finland and CEO of Lexpert).
As well as scholars from the majority of European countries, the network includes global members, from South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, New Zealand, South Korea, United States, as well as institutional partners from the European Parliament and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. Others can join the network if they wish as of mid-June 2026.
Professor Joasia Luzak, from the University of Exeter Law School, a member of the network, said: "It is crucial laws are aligned with the needs of society. Those which are "top down" often don't meet the needs of people and organisations using them. We want to reduce barriers and complexity, opening up the law, so people can better understand what the law says and costs of compliance are lower. The problem now is that legal drafting is inconsistent in quality and technical terms and legal jargon are often unnecessarily used.
