Visual representation of the law and legal process can aid in recall and discussion of complicated legal concepts, yet is a skill rarely taught in law schools. This work investigates the use of flowcharts and similar process-oriented diagrams in contemporary legal literature through a literature review and concept-based content analysis. Information visualisations (infovis) identified in the literature are classified into 11 described archetypal diagram types, and the results describe their usage quantitatively by type, year, publication venue and legal domain. We found that the use of infovis in legal literature is extremely rare, identifying not more than 10 articles in each calendar year. We also identified that the concept flow diagram is most commonly used, and that Unified Modelling Language (UML) is the most frequently applied representational approach. This work posits a number of serious questions for legal educators and practicing lawyers regarding how infovis in legal education and practice may improve access to justice, legal education and lay comprehension of complex legal frameworks and processes. It concludes by asking how we can expect communities to understand and adhere to laws that have become so complex and verbose as to be incomprehensible even to many of those who are learned in the law?

可视化的法律和法律程序可以帮助召回和讨论复杂的法律概念，但这是法学院很少教授的技能。这项工作通过文献回顾和基于概念的内容分析，研究了流程图和类似的面向过程的图表在当代法律文献中的使用。文献中确定的信息可视化（infovis）分为11种描述的原型图类型，结果按类型，年份，出版地点和法律领域定量描述了它们的用法。我们发现在法律文献中很少使用信息可视化，每个日历年中识别不超过10篇文章。我们还确定了概念流程图是最常用的，而且统一建模语言（UML）是最常用的表示方法。这项工作对法律教育者和执业律师提出了许多严肃的问题，涉及法律教育和实践中的信息维权如何改善诉诸司法，法律教育的途径，并使人们对复杂的法律框架和程序有所了解。通过询问来结束我们如何期望社区理解并遵守已经变得如此复杂和冗长的法律，甚至使许多从法律上学到的人也无法理解？