Passas launches Ludus, free legal games
The Granada-based digital law firm Passas has launched Ludus, a collection of free legal games available at passas.io/en/legal-tools. The tool lets users find out whether they need a lawyer, whether a claim is worth pursuing in court, what the law requires of an artificial intelligence product, or which country’s courts would decide a cross-border dispute. The games run directly in the browser in Spanish and English, require no sign-up, and the firm states that no data entered by users leaves their device.
Several of the games are built specifically to tell users when they do not need to hire the firm. The Scales places what is at stake on one side and the cost of pursuing it on the other, applying the minimum fees Passas publishes on its website along with the firm’s own rule of declining any case where costs would exceed 20% of the amount claimed, before telling the user whether the firm would take the matter on. A separate game, La Consultilla, explains whether Spanish law requires legal representation for a given procedure and outlines which routes individuals can pursue on their own.
Six games, two to nine minutes each
Ludus currently offers six games, each taking between two and nine minutes to complete. Alongside The Scales and La Consultilla, Green Light checks an artificial intelligence product against applicable law before launch, while The AI Radar maps every obligation under the EU Artificial Intelligence Act onto a timeline for businesses. The Inspector tests a player’s ability to distinguish GDPR infringements from compliant practice in an office setting, and Where to? follows twelve travellers to illustrate which court, which law and which authority would decide a cross-border case.
Guillermo Passas Varo, founding partner of Passas, said: “Ludus brings together play, learning, the gladiator school and Ancient Rome, the cradle of law. We created it because we realised that the law is incomprehensible to ordinary people, and to some lawyers.”
Legal gamification has precedents in Spanish academia, notably the Ludoteca Jurídica at the University of Almería, a teaching initiative launched in 2018 that applied play-based learning to legal education in the classroom. Passas said it is not aware of another law firm in Spain that has applied this approach to the general public.
“Not knowing the cost is what is not serious”
Passas Varo addressed criticism that gamified legal tools might be perceived as unserious. “We have been told that these little games and arcade machines are not serious. What we think is not serious is a client not knowing what their case will cost or how it is going. That is why we built The Scales, which estimates what a lawsuit could cost you, even if you are ordered to pay the other side’s costs, so that you can decide whether the investment is worth it. We make video games that help people understand the law and the legal profession, and we also practise law in a transparent, fully digital way, with Lean methods.”
Passas is a fully digital law firm based in Granada. Founding partner Guillermo Passas Varo and David Sánchez Lorenzo, of counsel, are both members of the Granada Bar. The firm advises on artificial intelligence, data law, litigation and cross-border matters for clients across Spain and Europe in Spanish, English, German and French, and publishes its fees on its website.
