Living Contracts: Beyond Document-Centric Interaction with Legal Agreements

TL;DR

This paper proposes 'Living Contracts', innovative interfaces that enhance user interaction with legal agreements by providing educational, interpretative, and proactive information, addressing challenges of complexity and ambiguity in traditional contract reading.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of Living Contracts and demonstrates their potential through design probes and qualitative study, expanding beyond traditional document-centric legal interactions.

Findings

Participants face barriers like complex language and legal uncertainty.

Living Contracts can help interpret legal language and inform users about rights.

Prototypes show potential for improved human-contract interactions.

Abstract

User interaction with legal contracts has been limited to document reading, which is often complicated by complex, ambiguous legal language. We explore possible futures where contract interfaces go beyond single document interfaces to (1) educate users with legal rights not stated in the contract, (2) transform legal language into alternative representations to aid information tasks before, during, and after signing, and (3) proactively supply contractual information at relevant moments. We refer to these future interfaces collectively as Living Contracts. Using residential leases as a case study, we created three design probes representing different possible Living Contracts. A three-part qualitative study (N=18) revealed participants' barriers to interacting with contracts, including interpreting complex language, uncertainty about legal rights, and the pressure to sign quickly. Participants' feedback on the probes highlighted how Living Contracts have the potential to address these challenges and open new design opportunities for human-contract interactions beyond document reading.