Professor Camilla Baasch Andersen
Professor at the University of Western Australia, Pioneer of Comic Book Contracting
Camilla has been a professional academic in Commercial Law for almost 20 years, starting as a Resarch Fellow at University of Copenhagen, where she obtained her initial law degree (Candidata Juris - Master of Laws). She is currently a Professor at the University of Western Australia and has held posts at Queen Mary, University of London, University of Leicester, and visiting posts on three continents.
Camilla's research and work into the visualisation of contracts has attracted attention from national and international associations seeking her expertise in improving contract comprehension, perception and engagement.
Camilla has published extensively on comparative commercial law, international sales (CISG), commercial arbitration and legal design. For more information, see her UWA profile.
Doctor Colette R. Brunschwig
Senior Research Associate
Colette R. Brunschwig is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Zurich, Department of Law, Center for Legal History Research, Legal Visualization Unit (LVU). She is responsible for the LVU’s legal image database. Her research focuses on legal visualization (legal norm images, verbo-visual contracts, etc), legal audiovisualization (legal videos, legal animations, etc), and legal multi-sensorisation (legal virtual realities, humanoid robots for legal purposes). Colette's publications, postings, and presentations at national and international conferences strive to promote, expand, and intensify the ongoing debate on these subject matters. Most of her English language scholarship is available on her SSRN site.
Click here to view Professor Andersen and Dr. Brunschwig's Q&A made specially for the Comic and Creative Contracts Conference 2017. Dr Brunschwig answers questions regarding her research topics and shares thoughts on the current state and potential future of legal visualization, including comic book contracts.
Robert De Rooy
Commercial attorney and Non-Executive Director on the boards of several companies
Robert provides legal advice, facilitates strategic discussions and drafts contracts. Living in one of the world’s most unequal societies, he wants to make a meaningful positive difference to the vulnerable situation of so many in South Africa and elsewhere. From this the idea of Comic Contracts was born, the world’s first fully illustrated contract, designed to help illiterate people understand the contracts they sign, and for which he was awarded IACCM’s 2016 Innovation Award.
He was born in Cape Town in 1970, studied business and law at the University of Stellenbosch and the University of Leiden in Holland and obtained an MBA at the University of Cape Town. He lives in Cape Town with his wife, two teenage daughters and 4-year-old son, and tries to balance work and family with some cycling and surfing.
The Hon. Robert French AC
Former Chief Justice of the Australian High Court and Former Chancellor of the University of Western Australia
Robert Shenton French served as Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia from 2008- 2017. At the time of his appointment he was a judge of the Federal Court of Australia, having been appointed to that office in 1986.
He graduated from the University of Western Australia in 1968 having completed a Bachelor of Science in physics, and again in 1971 earning a Bachelor of Laws. After being admitted in 1972 and practicing as a barrister in 1983, Robert was appointed as the resident of the National Native Title Tribunal in 1994. Since then, Robert's reputation as a jurist has grown, being appointed as a jurist in many capacities, culminating in his appointment as Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia in 2008.
Amongst his other achievements, Robert is an advocate for indigenous rights, having founded the WA Aboriginal Legal Service in the early 1970s, and as an educator, giving guest lectures and speeches on matters of public law. He continues his career as an educator serving as the 15th Chancellor of the University of Western Australia.
Helena Haapio
Contract Innovator & Proactive Law Pioneer
Helena works as Associate Professor of Business Law at the University of Vaasa, Finland, and as Contract Coach for Lexpert Ltd. She helps lawyers and clients use contracts and the law proactively to achieve better business results, balance risk with reward, and remove unnecessary problems. As the co-leader of the Nordic School of Proactive Law and of the ProActive ThinkTank, she works with colleagues and designers to transform contracts from legal instruments to valuable business tools. She has for many years promoted the use of simplification and visualization in commercial contracts. She also acts as arbitrator.
After completing legal studies at the University of Turku and Cambridge University, she served for several years as in-house Legal Counsel in Europe and the United States, focusing on cross-border contracts. She has designed and conducted training on Proactive Contracting, Contractual Risk Management, and Contract & Legal Design worldwide. Since her doctoral dissertation on Next Generation Contracts, her research focuses on enhancing the functionality, usability, and user experience of contracts. Her mission is to fundamentally change the way contracts and the law are designed, communicated, perceived, and taught.
Su-Hsien Lee
Co-CEO, WA’s Individualised Services Inc.
Following a brief career as a lawyer, and with post-graduate qualifications in Human Rights Practice, Su has extensive experience with systemic policy and advocacy in the disability sector.
Having worked across a number of disability advocacy organisations, including in senior management roles with service providers, and two short-term secondments to the Department of Premier & Cabinet and the Treasury Department, Su-Hsien has a comprehensive understanding of the disability support system and what it takes to facilitate people’s authority over their own lives and lifestyles. Su-Hsien currently utilises her legal training and skills when supporting people and families who choose to self-manage their disability funding and want to hire their own workers to understand what their legal considerations are as potential employers. This work led Su-Hsien and WAiS to UWA and the potential benefit of comic contracts by people self-managing.
John McGuire
CEO of Meinhardt Aus & NZ, formerly Aurecon's Chief Innovation Officer
John is an experienced business leader, with over 30 years of experience consulting and contracting in Australia, the Middle East, and the United Kingdom. He has been involved in a wide range of projects, specifically in healthcare, forensic and specialist containment laboratories, and is highly regarded and recognised for his creative and innovative design approach to engineering and project leadership. As a mechanical engineer, John is well known for creative approaches to design innovation and sustainability. He is a periodic guest lecturer in building environmental design at the Schools of Architecture in both the University of Western Australia and Curtin University. He has previously worked at the Design Innovation Research Centre at the University of Technology Sydney looking at how Design Led Innovation can be applied in Aurecon.
Notable projects with which John has been involved include the Fiona Stanley Hospital in Western Australia, the AUD 450 million Austin & Repatriation Medical Centre Redevelopment in Victoria and the Auckland City Hospital in New Zealand.
Stefania Passera
Designer, Consultant and Researcher
Stefania Passera (MA, D.Sc.(Tech), Aalto University) is a designer, consultant and academic specialized in legal information design, helping private and public organizations make their documents (contracts, policies, T&Cs, contract briefs) user-friendly, clear, and effective. In her doctoral dissertation she explored how visualizations can enhance the usability and user experience of contracts.
Furthermore, as the initiator of Legal Design Jam, Stefania leads a hands-on workshop that brings together different stakeholders to give an extreme user-centric makeover to a chosen contract.”
Robert Sikoryak
Illustrator and Author.
R. Sikoryak is the cartoonist responsible for Masterpiece Comics, Terms and Conditions, and The Unquotable Trump (all published by Drawn & Quarterly). He continues to adapt the classics for various anthologies, as seen in The Graphic Canon, The Best American Comics 2015, and Fable Comics.
His comics and illustrations have appeared in the New Yorker, The Onion, GQ, MAD, SpongeBob Comics, and Nickelodeon Magazine, as well as on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He’s done storyboards and character designs for Augenblick Studios on various animated projects. More recently, Sikoryak has recently released 'Terms and Conditions', a graphic novel illustrating, word-for-word, Apple's infamous Terms and Conditions - highlighting the enormity, density, and complexity of the legal document.
Sikoryak is in the speakers program of the New York Council of the Humanities, and he teaches in the illustration department at Parsons The New School for Design and at The Center for Cartoon Studies. Since 1997, he's presented his live cartoon slide show series, Carousel, around the United States and Canada.
Loui Silvestro
Illustrator, Visual Recorder and Animator.
Loui is quick to synthesize content into meaning and illustrates live at seminars and workshops. He views every assignment as an opportunity to create something special. His gift is not just in the ability to draw, but to listen, summarise and visually communicate complex ideas with an appropriate sense of humour. Loui works not only in Australia but his work is requested internationally.
Recently, Loui has been working together with Professor Andersen and creating comic book style contracts; visual representations of rights and obligations that are easy to digest and comprehend. Loui's work has seen him draft work for the UWA Engineering students and for the National Hardship Register - work that can be seen and accessed right here on this website!
J. Kim Wright
Legal System Change Entrepreneur: ABA Author, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, Coach, Consultant, Connector, Catalyser, and Nomad
After first being licensed as a lawyer in 1989, J. Kim Wright embarked on a journey, leaving her house and office in 2008 to promote the profession as one about peacemaking, problem-solving, and healing.
What was thought to be a 3-month journey has become almost two decades, covering five continents. J. Kim has taken part in numerous initiatives, conferences, and events, promoting a fundamental shift in the legal system that is now known as Integrative Law. Among her long list of notable achievements, she authored two ABA best-selling books, 'Lawyers as Peacemakers: Practicing Holistic, Problem-Solving Law' and 'Lawyers as Changemakers: The Global Integrative Law Movement'. She has appeared at dozens of institutions, lecturing on over 35 topics in integrative law. Her most popular course, Conscious Contracts, was delivered to hundreds of lawyers and law students across five continents. J. Kim Wright spoke at the inaugural Comic Book Contacts Conference, providing her insight into the emerging area of innovative law tackling language barriers and providing tools for lawyers and those that are not. Click here for J. Kim Wright's website.
Peter Corner
Alternative Contracting
Peter finished a Master of Historical Research from Leicester University in 2012 specialising in banking and diplomatic history, partly inspired by having worked for a bank. Peter now uses the experience with rendering very long and complicated historical contracts comprehensible to do the same with modern contracts.
Peter first became involved with visual contracting by working as a research assistance for Professor Camilla Andersen of University of Western Australia, who pioneered comic book style contracts.
Peter enjoys the way working on visual contracts allows him to combine his professional skills with a lifelong passion for painting and art.
