Behavioral Science for Legal Professionals

Law school made you statute-literate. It didn't make you decision-literate.

Judgment and decision-making lie at the core of all legal work – yours, and that of the judges, counterparties and citizens on the other end of what you write. How those decisions actually get made is typically not part of a law degree.

That is what this programme offers. It teaches you the key theories and insights from the behavioural sciences that every legal professional should know.

Six modules, 20 hours

Interactive video lessons with case studies from litigation, transactions, and policy. Rolling start, six months' access.

Downloadable toolkits for everyday use

Practical checklists, templates, and exercises you can use in practice.

Applied assessments - No formal exams

Test yourself on realistic scenarios to sharpen your professional judgment.

Certificate with CLE/PO points

Earn credentials that demonstrate decision literacy to clients and peers.

Benefits of our Certificate Program

Legal training teaches black-letter law. It rarely teaches how the human mind actually reasons under pressure, fights uncertainty, and falls for hidden shortcuts and biases.

Behavioural science has spent decades studying exactly these processes. How biases tilt judgment in a predictable direction, why equally qualified professionals reach different conclusions on the same facts, how group dynamics push a team toward premature agreement, and much more. 

Our academy teaches you that body of work and turns it into plain-language guidance tailored for legal professionals, helping you spot the hidden biases and errors that slip into briefs, negotiations, and policymaking, so you catch pitfalls earlier and make better and more defensible decisions.

Litigators & Judges

How moral intuitions, confirmation bias and hindsight drive case file analyses and legal judgments, and how to catch and correct these processes in time.

Deal lawyers & In-house Counsel

How anchoring, loss aversion, and escalating commitment affects deal terms, valuations, and the decision to keep going.

Legislators & Policy Makers

Nudging, sludge, framing, and default effects: designing rules and procedures that are evidence based and align with real human behaviour.

Here is what we will cover in
the Certificate Program

1. Program Introduction

Meet your instructor, understand the structure of the program, and set expectations. We begin by clearing common myths about the brain such that you can start the program with a clean slate.

2. Foundations of Legal Cognition 

Explore the psychological building blocks of legal decision making. Topics include the unconscious mind, limits of attention and memory, and classic heuristics and biases. These foundations explain why no judgment is ever purely rational.

3. Litigating in Hindsight

Learn how hindsight bias, moral intuitions, motivated reasoning, and group pressures distort fact-finding and liability judgments. We also discuss how cultivating intellectual humility can improve courtroom reasoning.

4. The Psychology of Deal-Making

Examine the psychological processes that undermine negotiations and transactions, including escalation of commitment, anchoring, and groupthink. We also look at decision-hygiene practices that support more effective deal-making.

5. Designing Legislation & Policy

Study how cognitive effects such as framing, nudging, and default rules influence behavior. We explore both the power and the ethical limits of behavioral design, giving policymakers and advisors a critical lens on choice architecture.

6. Elective Deep Dives

Choose from a selection of advanced modules on specialized topics, from AI-assisted decision making to cultural and gender differences in negotiation.

Learning program contents

Your principal instructor

Niek Strohmaier, Ph.D.

Niek is an assistant professor at Leiden University's Law School and an attorney at a leading Amsterdam-based law firm specialising in corporate litigation, restructuring and insolvency. His PhD dissertation was on the psychology of legal decision-making. He studied Psychology at Utrecht University, where he completed his Master's degree cum laude, and started his doctoral research at Leiden Law School in 2016. Alongside it he completed Leiden's Advanced LLM in Law & Finance, also cum laude.
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Frequently asked questions

What exactly is this program about?

It is a deep dive into how legal professionals think and decide, and how hidden cognitive biases, noise, and group pressures can derail that process.
  • Beyond the buzzwords. This is not another generic “bias awareness” training. Here we unpack why those biases arise, how they appear in pleadings, negotiations, and drafting, and how decision hygiene can help improve your judgment and decision making.
  • Directly relevant to your role. Whether you negotiate deals, draft policy, argue in court, or sit on the bench, you’ll work with research and case studies relevant for the decisions you make every day.
  • Tools you can use immediately. You leave with a research-backed map of bias hotspots, increased self-awareness, and a decision-hygiene starter kit, including checklists, pre-mortems, and structured reviews, to protect your legal briefs, deals, and rulings.

Why should I take this program?

Every legal decision, whether drafting a legal brief, closing a deal, or ruling from the bench, depends on human judgment. And judgment is never purely rational. Decades of research in behavioral science reveal how even skilled professionals misread evidence, miscalculate risk, and fall prey to hindsight bias, groupthink, and other systematic psychological traps.

This program gives you the tools to recognize these pitfalls so you can:
  • Improve your advocacy by anticipating how judges, clients, and counterparts actually make decisions.
  • Negotiate and advise with greater confidence, knowing where biases skew valuations and risk assessments.
  • Form better judgments that stand up to scrutiny because they are grounded in behavioral science literacy and decision hygiene.
  • Differentiate yourself professionally, by combining legal expertise with a deeper understanding of how people perceive, reason, and decide.
In short: you learn about key insights from the behavioral sciences, translated for lawyers, judges, in-house counsel, and policy-makers who want clearer, fairer, and more defensible decisions.

Who is this program designed for?

Any professional whose work depends on legal judgment:
  • Litigators & judges. Weighing evidence, crafting arguments, and assessing liability.
  • Transaction lawyers & in-house counsels. pricing risk, negotiating terms, and preventing escalation.
  • Law- and policy-makers. Designing rules and anticipating how people will behave in the real world.
While some modules highlight courtroom scenarios and others focus on transactions or regulation, the underlying cognitive principles are universally applicable and relevant. Biases, noise, and group pressures follow you everywhere, from the negotiation table to the boardroom to the bench, so the full program is designed for everyone to benefit.

When can I start with the program?

Two different options exist: 
  • Individual enrolments (rolling start):
    Sign up any day of the year and begin immediately. Your six-month access window starts the moment you activate your seat, giving you plenty of buffer even if work gets hectic.
  • Group & enterprise enrolments (10 + seats):
    We’ll open a private cohort on dates that suit your firm, court, or department. All participants share the same live-Q&A schedule and discussion space, making internal knowledge-sharing easier.

How long does the program take to complete?

The program contains in total about 20 hours of interactive lectures and exercises.
  • Steady pace: Watch two modules per week (about two hours). You’ll finish in a bit over two months.
  • Accelerated pace: Watch one module each weekday (about five hours per week). You’ll finish in about one month.
Mix and match speeds as your workload allows, just complete the content within the six-month access window.

Will there be exams?

No, there won't be any formal exams. However, to earn your certificate, you will have to complete short quizzes and application-based tests throughout the program. These are not meant to be difficult, but are meant to ensure you’ve engaged with the materials and can apply the core concepts to your own legal practice.

Will I receive an accredited certificate upon completion?

Yes. Upon successful completion of the program, you will receive a formal certificate issued by the Behavioral Science in Law Academy. This certificate confirms your mastery of the course material and can be used to demonstrate your professional development.

In some jurisdictions, the program is formally accredited for CLE/PO purposes by the relevant authorities. We are also actively expanding accreditation in additional jurisdictions to ensure that participants worldwide can benefit from recognized continuing education credits. Where formal accreditation is not yet in place, we provide guidance on how to submit your certificate for recognition with your local bar association or professional body.

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