Play. Learn. Discover: How Creative Media Is Reimagining Public Understanding of the Supreme Court

0:00Welcome everybody to today's Legally Speaking Podcast Live, proudly sponsored by Clio. And today we are diving into a powerful question for modern legal world, which is how do you make the justice system more understandable, accessible, and genuinely more engaging for the public, especially young people? And my guest has built one of the most innovative answers to that particular question. So I'm excited to be joined by the wonderful Nicholas Monet, who is a lawyer, journalist and content producer. And he's doing incredible work in this space, which we're going to learn a lot more about today.

0:38So Nicholas, thank you so much for joining me today.

0:41Nicolas Monet:Thanks for having me. It's an absolute pleasure, absolute pleasure to have you on the show. So let's let's get into it. Let's tell a little bit more about your background and also So what sparked the idea to teach the Supreme Court using documentaries, storytelling, and actually video games? So the initial idea for, so actually this year is the 150th anniversary of the Supreme Court. So I'm working on a team at the University of Ottawa called Gérevision, and we had the idea a few years ago to kind of mark the anniversary to create this educational project, this vast public educational project about the Supreme Court.

1:19Nicolas Monet:And quickly, the question emerged of, well, how do you tell the courts in an engaging way, especially for young people? And quickly, there's this guideline that came up that was we want to tell the court through the stories of people who actually live it. So justices, lawyers or citizens. And so that's when the idea of the documentaries and video game came up. And it's actually something that we had dabbled with before, but like on a much, much, much narrower scope. So basically, yeah, so we just decided to go all in on storytelling. And plus, so this kind of common dilemma you have in this kind of project is having to choose between, sometimes having to choose between kind of play and narrative breadth and like the much harder educational content.

2:09Nicolas Monet:um so having different outputs it actually allows us to kind of cheat our way out of this dilemma so the game really has a play first mentality documentaries have a have a story first mentality and then the educational vignettes and interactive content have a learning first mentality so we try to kind of having both ways here yeah and you're covering it all and i think it's genuinely progressive it's exciting and i loved your approach to how you're you're taking this But why do you think traditional legal education often, I guess, fails to engage the public and especially the younger audiences?

2:49Nicolas Monet:Well, first, I think law is a tough subject to teach. It's complex. It can be dry. It has its own language. You kind of forget it when you're deep into it. But if you take yourself back to the first year of law school, it is really challenging. And because of that challenge and that complexity and that distance, a lot of people often have, I think, the initial reaction that it's not for them, that it's only for lawyers. They are interested usually, but we don't have the right tools to reach them. So I think that's how a project like this can come in, because I think it's our first job as a legal educator is to make them care about the legal system.

3:32Nicolas Monet:Show them how white law concerns them, why rule of law is important, why it's important to know about it. Plus, I think we live in an era where attention is kind of a rare commodity. Distractions are really strong. And again, especially for young people. So we have to rethink the way we think, we teach about, well, we teach in general, but especially about law and the institutions because of the difficulties I just mentioned. Because it's hard to compete with the phones, the netflixes the video games of the world so it's a pretty big challenge but you have to like kind of level the playing field um and i think we can do that by using similar tools so digital innovative immersive tools of course for different purposes but like meeting audiences where they are and today for better or worse that's online um yeah so i think that's where a project like us comes in i think that's where podcasts like yours comes in uh just trying to different ways to just make it more engaging and try to reach people.

4:33And you make a really good point there. It's about meeting the audience where they are, because things do change, don't they? And, you know, we were having this conversation 20, 30, 40 years ago, it probably wouldn't be digital first, but now we absolutely are in a digital first, you know, hyper-connected world. And so, you know, you have to understand that and hopefully get that education out there and connect people, build that trust. So no, I absolutely hear what you're saying. Okay. So when you first started showing this project to lawyers and educators, what reaction surprised you the most?

5:05Nicolas Monet:Well, I think there's, I guess, I guess there's a different surprise for each group. So I think for lawyers, and I include myself in this, is how little we actually know about the Supreme Court. I'm guessing it might be the same case in the UK, but in Canada, of course. So lawyers, of course, we know about the big cases. We know about the hearing works generally. But the court's inner workings, its history, we don't know that much about that because we don't learn any school. And when you're actually practicing, it's not something you're going to spend your time studying. And I think that's surprising considering it's the highest legal institution in the country.

5:41Nicolas Monet:And we don't know that much about it. So that was surprising. And in terms of educators, I think just how strong the initial interest was. There is in Canada, at least in Canada, a strong need for educational tools and law, because it's part of the curriculum in many of the provinces. But educators, and especially the high school, they don't usually have legal formation. They're not super comfortable teaching it. So they rely a lot on educational tools and resources like this one. And most of them are very good, but they're text-based or presentations in class. And so I think something that could be a bit different like this project, much more interactive, that could be used as a resource in class, outside of class.

6:32Nicolas Monet:That's something you've really had a strong positive reaction so far from teachers. So that's, I mean, it's a very good surprise, I'd say. yeah and you look it's great to hear that as well and i guess that leads nicely onto what we like to talk a lot about here on the show is is collaboration actually you know and breaking silos through that so you've brought together lawyers filmmakers professors game developers and technologists so what made that particular mix work so well um well i don't know i'm sorry if that's kind of corny but i think it's it's first of all it's having the right people all over the place so it's it's outside of there so of course having people with with talent and skills and expertise but especially having people when you talk about kind of breaking silos and and interdisciplinary collaboration it's having people that are open-minded and flexible and comfortable comfortable operating with other ways of working and work and learning from each other because you know lawyers we won't work as we usually do if we work with filmmakers and video game developers and same thing for the filmmakers and same thing for the, you know, educational technologists.

7:41Nicolas Monet:So it's having kind of the right team in place and the open-minded people. And I think another big component, and it's actually kind of based on this, that's our expertise in my team at Gerevision. It's having people with multidisciplinary expertise to translate between ways of working and languages. So I'm a lawyer and a journalist. We have members on our team that are lawyers and filmmakers, or people that are really well-versed in law and creators and graphic design. So kind of acting as the glue for the whole thing, like making sure that the machine is, you know, oil and the rays are turning because, yeah.

8:16Nicolas Monet:So making kind of basically acting as translators.

8:30Are you there? I am there. Yes, sorry, it just cut out for a moment, but I did get that. And again, thank you for being so thorough in your answer there. I guess just following on from that then, because we spoke off air about law being quite tricky. What's been the hardest part for you in terms of translating legal accuracy into actually creative media without losing the nuance of it all?

8:57Nicolas Monet:um it's something that i kind of mentioned uh at the top of our conversation but you can't you can't have everything you can't you can't have as much nuance as you would like and in a five minute video or even a series a five minute video than in an you know hour-long lecture or book so i think the hardest part it is something that took us like an enormous an enormous amount of time the actual editing because we had to ask ourselves very hard questions at every turn for every component like is what what really what does really matter to our targeted audience what is the most important things for them to learn if it's not essential if it's just a nice add-on most of the time you just it ends up on a cutting room floor because you just don't have the space um so that i think that's the biggest challenges the biggest challenge actually actually asking yourself yeah what's the what's the essence of the the topic of the theme you want to teach um but like i said we kind of try to cheat our way out of this a little bit with the additional content so the graphics the useful resources the text just finding other ways uh to convey the information so it doesn't work all of the time but it works some of the time

10:12not well not everything is always you know 100 i guess i guess perfect in that regard you're probably testing things all the time and and sort of you know experimenting but one thing you have been doing of course is featuring people who've actually brought their cases to the supreme court why was it important to tell their stories um well i think it comes back to our main guideline

10:33Nicolas Monet:which is uh telling the supreme court through the stories of people who live it and and that for for us right away it involved you know citizens that brought their case to the court um they're not their voices are not often heard in the legal world so i think that was but that was the part was first and foremost interesting to us. So I think amplifying those voices. And I think it also allowed us to deep dive in specific cases, which is something we wanted to do, but through a different lens. So we didn't have to really focus on the legal side of things, but more on the human side of things. So that's something that like telling citizen stories, it allowed us to do that and then um so one of the main goals of the project is is to teach a broad audience so about the supreme court so they know more about it but also why it's important to care about it and what goes on over it it's important to know what goes on over there and the concrete impact it has on canadian society as a whole so i don't think there's a much more efficient way to do that than through the stories of citizens just like them because it's you can they can see themselves through them a situation that situation that maybe they've encountered and encountered in their in their daily life or maybe they they kind of benefited from the result of a judicial decision in their life so that was uh kind of our in our minds when you were working on those documentaries as well yeah and obviously working very hard and you know you've had some great success and as you said off the back of it the feedback's been been great as well which is well received and how can law do a better job of representing and actually listening to lived experience um i mean if we're talking about especially experiences of of for lack of a better word let's call them like citizens or or ordinary ordinary people i guess in the in the legal system i think it's a question of amplifying their voices and giving them the opportunities to actually have the stage and have the microphone and talk about it you know when you look at professional development activities and now i'm talking especially in the legal world um so we look at conferences and and and formations and so on it will often be with you know other legal professionals um judges um business leaders uh but none of an ordinary citizens and i think there's a lot to be learned from their perspective like even like for first and foremost for a practical point of view from an individual case point of view but also for a broader kind of policy point of view because you know the legal system we are the main we are the main actors but it's not actually for us it's the for the people that are that are bringing their cases to court so we i think we have we always have to think about them for first and foremost and and having their voice amplified and listening to them I think that's a good way to go about it.

13:34Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think we fully support that here as well. I mean, a word that goes hand in hand, obviously, with law and legal education is trust. So, you know, how can immersive experiences help rebuild public trust in courts and sort of democratic institutions, do you feel?

13:54Nicolas Monet:um well i don't think you can trust an institution that you don't know anything about that you don't know much about um so to to trust an institution to critique it in an intelligent in an informed way you have to know about it um so that that's i think that's how the kind of the educational part comes in and like the multi the multimedia immersive thing i think it it helps educate in a more engaging way and also especially with the video game and like i said the the immersion part of it it helps you i think well in some ways literally see yourself in some ways in the institution um i mean the video game you're virtually you're virtually in the court you can explore it jump on the the podium if you want i mean and there's a there's a quest through that and everything um but i think that is key in in building trust if you want people to kind of see it as their institution because that's it's what it is is the court it's i mean it is the court of the people so um so i think that's the yeah the immersive part of it for sure it helps foster trust in that way uh so when you when you see yourself in it and when you learn about it i think you make a great point it's fully understanding it first so then you know where you probably can form an opinion around trust specifically in terms of whether it's you know be working for you etc etc um you were touching on it there and touched on it um sort of throughout the conversation but what role do you see more genuinely for interactive learning in the future of legal literacy um i mean circling back i think it's to our discussion i i think we have to we have a you know technology is evolving rapidly and it gives us a lot of opportunities for different things, for creating content, both for all kind of different purposes.

15:49Nicolas Monet:And I think it's a really big opportunity for education. I don't think, I mean, I think we'll have to work on all fields with all the different ways. I don't think we'll see the end of traditional teaching in classrooms. And I think there's a lot of value in that. And it's probably going to remain the main component of teaching. But I don't see why we wouldn't explore and kind of leverage the other tools we have with just to teach content. As long as I think the important thing is that it's based in very, very, very, and very rigorous and serious content, you know? So the content is rigorous, but then with the medium and the form, I think you can be very creative about it.

16:30Nicolas Monet:So we can reach different types of audiences. People have different ways of learning just to have a broader reach and in many ways and having fun with it, having fun with it, teaching it and having fun with it, learning it. So I think interactive learning in general, there's a lot of potential for all of those reasons about that. And you are being very creative with what you're doing. And I think, again, a great point. I think fun and learning go hand in hand. If you can kind of get the balance correct, then the level of people's actually understanding, willingness to participate, hunger for more, it all just goes up and up and up doesn't it it's it's all about it's all about caring uh it is something so it's it's actually working with with uh educational specialists it's something we learned we learned very quickly because i mean we i was talking about multidisciplinary expertise i don't have any expertise per se in education and and and uh yeah creating educational content but especially as adults but for for kids as well we learning as a very strong uh effective component so you need to create an uh an emotional connection with the subject in order for for us to be more receptive and to retain the information in a much more efficient way we have to show people why they should care about the teachings um and that's where the interactive learning the interactive component can be very very useful i think in our case yeah no i completely agree and then with sort of you know a highlight moment i guess i'd like to go to now if you had to well if you had to show every law student one part of the supreme court experience which moment would you choose and why uh that's a good question uh well i mean i i could see the video game because it's the the most i think special and distinctive part of it and i just think it's a lot of fun but if let's say if i'm talking about the the docu course and the video content i think it would be that the documentary is about ordinary citizens i mean just to remind them the impact that they can have on, you know, you see these, you see these, we see these stories when we, when we talk with a client, we kind of will conceptualize the story, kind of build a case in our head, what are the strong points, the weak points, but if you, if you see it, so that's what we see it as in the legal lens, but, you know, when you look outside of the concepts and technicalities, these are extraordinary human stories.

19:04Nicolas Monet:So there's a really strong human aspect to law. And it's something that we kind of know coming in, but I think we kind of forget through our education and through our, you know, the kind of hardships of practice. So I think that is something I would kind of show to the students, I think, to remind them of it. And so they think about it first and foremost. And I think if I'm, I'm cheating a little bit, but I think also the, all the content about the interviews with the justices. Because we develop, I think, a particular relationship with judges in law school. Like we tend to revere them or at least see them as these great authoritative figures because they are.

19:43Nicolas Monet:But they're also, you know, humans first. And we don't know a lot about them, how they work, how they think, how they perceive their judicial role, kind of the dynamic between them in a court like the Supreme Court, where there's a bench of nine justices. So I think that's an interesting part of it for students as well. Yeah, no, I think it's all fascinating, but I like the point that you picked out there particularly. Okay, then. So let's sort of look to the future of legal knowledge. Again, we've touched on it throughout the conversation, but do you think every sort of apex court should eventually have its own immersive learning platform?

20:19Nicolas Monet:Of course. I mean, I'm kind of advocating for my own interests here, but I think that's all right for a law podcast. But sure, I mean, for all the reasons we discussed, I mean, when it comes to public trust, for legal education, just for democracy and rule of law as a whole, I think it's important for the kind of the widest audience possible to know more about Apex Court. And I think immersive learning, storytelling, and a project like ours, I think it's a good way to go about it. Yeah, and again, we're here for it. We always like to look forward with the content and discussions that we're having and you're absolutely doing that i guess a bit of a reflection moment for you now what's been the biggest aha moment since launching the project um that's another really good question i i don't know if it's the biggest uh i mean yes i think one of the highlights and one of the things that we've discussed the most within our team is uh as one is seeing the the gaming community experience with the game and make it their own because it's it's not a community we're part of and it's it's really uh it's a really big community but we all with their own kind of codes and languages so the first few days of the launch the games we all sent each other like the youtube videos of gaming influencers kind of stream their playthrough of the game with live commentary uh commenting on both on the gaming sides and the law sides and asking questions about the supreme court as it was just it was cool to see like how a project like this could reach uh kind of a different audience and how that audience could also kind of you know disseminate and and use a project how do you want to and kind of make it their own so that was a cool thing to see yeah and i can just imagine that as well because there'll be some super cool communities i mean it's funny it's funny you know you're working on this project for two years and you know for these two years it only exists within your head and then you launch it and then it becomes something else and then yeah so seeing people from all over the world kind of just like yeah live streaming themselves playing with it and having fun with it that was it was nice to see yeah no and obviously the hard work you're seeing paying off as well which is what it's all uh what it's all about how do you hope legal professionals will use supreme court experience in their own teaching or outreach?

22:42I think, I mean, I think first and foremost,

22:48Nicolas Monet:I think I would like to use it how they would like to in their own ways. One of our goals was to make a very flexible tool. So there's a lot of content, but it's all in open navigation. So you can go through the platform, choose the topics you like, go at your own pace. So I think educators and lawyers and legal professionals, you can, as soon as you kind of explore with the platform a little bit, you can kind of, again, make it your own and use it in different ways. So I would really like, I would be really curious to learn and see how, like, all the different ways people actually use it. Although one thing I would say, and I think one thing that is very interesting is when educators find a ways to find a ways to make both the games and the docu course interact i think that's kind of where you get the richest experience so kind of leveraging both the game the documentaries and the additional content in in a teaching experience um yeah i think that's that's kind of the ultimate way to go about this yeah and look this has been a fascinating discussion and i love just how sort of progressive it is the work you put in how well it's been received And I think also the opportunities ahead with this as well in terms of learning and general education.

24:08So thank you so much. I think you've been a great example of showcasing what happens when creativity, technology and legal education will come together and meet. So Supreme Court experience proves that there's something really powerful in this, that legal knowledge doesn't just have to be distant or difficult. It can actually be immersive, human, which you've touched on and absolutely accessible to everyone, which again is something we promote here on the show and really important to us in terms of improving access to justice more generally. So to everybody watching or for folks wanting to know more, Nicholas, where can they go to find out more about you or indeed Supreme Court experience?

24:40Feel free to share any websites, any social media handles too.

24:44Nicolas Monet:Yeah, so it's all on supremecourt.ca. So you can, and there you can find both the video game and the docu course, which is with the documentaries and you can find everything uh and and all the social media platforms at at supreme court experience for the project and at at jury vision for the for our team and because we have other different projects as well uh so stay tuned for the rest of it yeah and i mean they're just fantastic resources for lawyers educators students anyone basically who's curious about how justice works behind the doors of a supreme court you put an immense amount of hard work into it along with the team so from all of us here on the legally speaking podcast proudly sponsored by clear thanks so much for joining us today but for now over and out thanks rob