Contract Design in Action: A Practical Guide to Improving Your Terms of Use


Key Takeaways:

  • Terms of Use agreements present a significant opportunity for contract and legal design, enhancing user trust while ensuring legal protection.
  • Consider a redesign during major business shifts, based on feedback from users, or in response to changes in the legal landscape.
  • Implementing a user-centered approach when redesigning contracts does not require complex design software or mastery.

Contracts are essential to every business transaction, yet they are often relegated to the backburner when it comes to innovation. Among all types of contracts, Terms of Use represent one of the most overlooked opportunities for building trust, enhancing transparency, and increasing clarity. This is exactly what contract and legal design can do: it helps improve the user experience and transforms legal documents into tools for business, not just instruments for legal protection.

As more organizations recognize the benefits of clear, user-centered contracts, there’s a growing expectation that legal documents, including Terms of Use, should be not only legally accurate but also user-friendly. This shift reflects an increasing demand for transparency and accessibility in legal documents.

Terms of Use should reconcile legal protection and user engagement, offering a unique chance to transform how legal information is communicated. They often face customers directly and play a crucial role in the customer onboarding process. It’s become essential that Terms of Use are clear, user-friendly, fair, and designed with the end user in mind to ensure understanding and acceptance, minimize conflicts, and reduce claims.

Join Us: Register for our free webinar/CLE on How to Apply Legal Design to Improve Your Contracts with presenters Tessa Manuello, Linsey Krolik, and host Nada Alnajafi. Registrants get free access to the webinar materials and recording. Live attendees have a chance to win prizes and engage with the speakers in real-time!

When to Consider a Redesign

Redesigning your Terms of Use should be a proactive measure rather than a reactive one. Consider a redesign whenever there is a significant shift in your business model, products, or services. For example, if your organization is introducing new offerings or pivoting its market strategy, your existing Terms of Use may no longer align with the current landscape.

Addressing User Complaints

User feedback is essential in assessing the need for a redesign. If users frequently complain about certain terms, it’s likely because those terms are one-sided or unfair from their perspective.

Streamlining Contract Negotiations

Moreover, if you want to speed up negotiations, redesigning Terms of Use as part of the contracting experience and customer onboarding process is an effective strategy. By making these terms clearer, fairer and more user-friendly, you can facilitate quicker acceptance and foster a smoother onboarding experience. 

In addition, if your Terms of Use look like a block of black-and-white text (either as a downloadable document or integrated into a plain white webpage), you’ve missed a crucial opportunity to streamline the process. Terms of Use are usually read by non-lawyers, online. Visually engaging, well-structured terms can significantly improve user experience, helping users quickly understand key points and make faster, more informed decisions.

Additionally, keeping an eye on the legal landscape is crucial. Changes in regulations or case law can impact the enforceability or clarity of your existing terms, warranting an update to ensure compliance and protect both the organization and users.

The Benefits of Contract Design

Contract and legal design is a modern approach that combines legal principles with design methodologies to create clear, user-friendly legal documents. The goal is to bridge the gap between complex legal jargon and the needs of everyday users, making contracts and other legal documents more accessible and efficient.

While it’s widely recognized that few people read Terms of Use, some mindful users take the time review them, especially when issues arise. If users find them overly complicated, one-sided, and filled with jargon, it can strain the relationship between the service provider and the user. This is especially valuable for SaaS platforms, where users must accept the Terms of Use when creating an account or signing up for a new plan. This initial agreement establishes the relationship between the service provider and the user, outlining their rights and responsibilities.

There are tangible benefits to using contract and legal design, especially when applied to Terms of Use:

  • Enhanced User Experience: Well-designed Terms of Use provide a clearer understanding of user rights and responsibilities, leading to a more positive user experience and increased satisfaction.
  • Increased Transparency: Clear, accessible language and visuals promote transparency, helping users understand the terms more easily and reducing potential disputes over interpretations.
  • Faster Acceptance Rates: Visually engaging Terms of Use can lead to quicker acceptance during onboarding, helping organizations establish customer relationships more efficiently.
  • Reduced Misunderstandings: By clearly outlining terms and conditions, organizations can minimize misunderstandings or misinterpretations, leading to smoother interactions with users.
  • Strengthened Trust: Transparent and user-friendly Terms of Use foster trust between the organization and its users, enhancing brand reputation and encouraging loyalty.

A Five-Step Process to Redesign Contracts

Over the years, I have developed and validated a niche method in contract and legal design, focusing on five key techniques that align with the core activities of lawyers: writing documents, communicating legal information, and delivering legal services.

This process has been tested and adopted by legal professionals worldwide, who find value in using these techniques in their daily work. The beauty of this niched approach is that it is accessible to all legal professionals. Here’s the 5-step process I use and teach:

The redesign process begins with enhancing contract flow and structure through document mapping and information architecture. This approach organizes information for clarity, aligning content with user expectations.

2. Optimize Language for Readability

Legal documents often contain jargon that alienates users. Simplifying complex phrases and explaining legal terms clearly makes Terms of Use more accessible, reducing misunderstandings.

3. Visual Features and Elements

Incorporating visuals like diagrams and flowcharts enhances understanding and information retention. Visual strategies clarify key concepts and engage users.

4. Document Navigation Techniques

Effective navigation helps users quickly locate important information through navigation bars and other interactive features.

5. Process Mapping and User Journeys

Analyzing legal workflows and mapping user journeys help identify pain points and identify improvement opportunities, ensuring efficient legal service delivery.

The techniques can be applied one at a time or all together, depending on your needs. Whether you choose to implement a few changes or go for a full redesign, each step will help improve the functionality and user experience of your Terms of Use. The more techniques you integrate, the greater the impact on clarity, accessibility, and overall usability.

Proven Results Without Complex Software

Implementing these techniques and principles does not require expensive design software; it can be done using tools like Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. Working with Word or PowerPoint is ideal for lawyers since these tools are widely used, familiar, allow easy modifications, and enable counterparties to redline.

However, since Terms of Use are typically online and rarely negotiated, using tools like Canva makes contract and legal design more effective by releasing terms in a web-friendly format, creating a smoother interaction between the website and the Terms of Use.

Whatever tool you choose to use, the most important factor is applying the right techniques. By understanding how to implement these five techniques, you can significantly increase the usability of your Terms of Use and achieve better outcomes.

Use Case: Redesign of the Contract Nerds Terms of Use

Together with Nada Alnajafi, we are currently applying this approach to the redesign of the Contract Nerds Terms of Use. By focusing on document mapping, optimizing language, and integrating visual to signal importance or clarify important concepts, we aim to create a more user-friendly and accessible document that meets the needs of Contract Nerds’ audience.

Follow Along: We are going to share the new and improved Contract Nerds Terms of Use with you all during our November webinar.

We are redesigning the Contract Nerds Terms of Use to showcase contract design principles in action.

What’s New?

The new Terms of Use for Contract Nerds have been redesigned to be fully online, visually engaging, and on brand. The focus was on improving the document’s functionality, making it easier for users to quickly find the information they need and use it to make informed decisions.

This redesign is advanced and includes many features, as it’s also intended to educate the community on both the process and the value of the approach. However, you don’t need to create an advanced redesign to see improvements. A simpler redesign can still make your Terms of Use far more functional and user-friendly. Even small adjustments can significantly enhance usability and make the document easier to navigate.

User Feedback Needed By October 31, 2024!

During the Contract Nerds webinar “How to Apply Legal Design to Improve Your Contracts”, I’ll showcase the Contract Nerds’ Terms of Use and explain all the features we chose to use in the redesign, backed by feedback from the Contract Nerds community and extensive usability testing.

Redesigning Terms of Use documents presents a unique opportunity to enhance user engagement while ensuring legal protection. By adopting a niche and user-centric approach to contract and legal design, you can easily transform your contracts into practical tools that serve your users’ needs, while legally protecting your organization.

Learn More: Ready to build more trust, enhance clarity, and add value by leveraging visuals in contracts and legal documents? Discover the Visual Lawyer Bootcamp program with Tessa Manuello.

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