Are contracts written by lawyers for lawyers?

Posted on: 12 October 2019

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While I worked already for many years in the contracting field, drafting and negotiating agreements on a daily basis, it was at a conference in London in May 2015, that I had the “You can only see it when you get it” experience. I was triggered:

Why do all contracts look the same?
Why are they difficult to understand?
What is the impact on business relationships, particularly in terms of trust, opportunities, collaborative spirit, conflicts etc?
Why don’t we do this differently? And if so, how?

For the first time, I heard about contract simplification, visualization, and about what I know today as legal design thinking. As an example, when the same contract was presented in two different ways – traditional versus simplified, I was stirred to think about this new way of contract drafting. Was this simplification possible? Could I apply it at work, in my daily business?

Inspired by what I learnt, Jerry Linnemeijer, the legal counsel at Airbus DS Netherlands, and I, started our legal design journey. We had immense support from experienced practitioners Robert Waller and Helena Haapio, who as external consultants, helped us with the design and the language simplification of our General Terms and Conditions.

At the time, I realized that another saying turned out to be true: ‘Simple can be harder than complex’ (Steve Jobs). It took us quite some time and effort to simplify and de-legalese our company’s terms and conditions, to present only the essence of a provision, and make them clear, and easy to understand for any type of organization or person we work with. We launched the renewed set of terms and conditions in January 2017, triggering a new way to look at terms and conditions within our eco-system and empowering our customers, suppliers and employees to navigate the provisions with ease.

Unlike in the past, today, there are many practitioners and many examples to support you through your Legal Design journey. You will not be stepping into unchartered territory. IACCM’s Contract Design Pattern Library is one of the best places to start. This is a grand effort of IACCM (the International Association of Commercial & Contracts Management) in cooperation with legal design pioneers Stefania Passera and Helena Haapio. Here you can find everything you need to know about designing better contracts with lots of illustrations and real life examples from organizations worldwide.

And the nice thing is: when you get it and you see it, you see opportunities all around you. It makes me happy that the trend of designing better contracts is picked up very quickly now by a lot of organizations. I’m quite sure it is now unstoppable!