Reconceptualising rules as code with legal design patterns

Rules as Code (‘RaC’) describes the increasing push to digitise legislation that is rapidly emerging around the world. However, despite its growth, there remains no unified definition or approach to RaC. Additionally, there are growing calls for publicly available legal information and materials, which includes RaC, to be more accessible, useable and understandable. The use of legal design patterns is one developing strategy that can be utilised to enhance the communication of legal information to users. This paper argues that augmentation of RaC approaches with legal design patterns could enhance the usability of user-facing outputs. In doing so, we differentiate and conceptualise two prominent understandings of RaC, namely RaC as an output-based approach, and the more innovative definition of RaC as a process-based approach. We believe it is possible to augment both RaC approaches with the addition of legal design patterns to enhance the usability and understandability of RaC outputs. Additionally, this paper reconceptualises RaC itself from a loosely defined movement towards understanding RaC better as repeatable processes or approaches with defined steps. In conclusion, although further exploration of both RaC and legal design patterns is required, our paper provides a much-needed starting point for clarifying RaC as a definition and an approach, as well as for the development of legal design patterns in the context of encoding legislation.