nach oben

Erschienen in:

2022 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

Layered Contracts: Both Legally Functional and Human-Friendly

verfasst von : Robert Waller, Stefania Passera, Helena Haapio

Erschienen in: Liquid Legal – Humanization and the Law

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Einloggen

Aktivieren Sie unsere intelligente Suche, um passende Fachinhalte oder Patente zu finden.

search-config

KI-gestützte Suche

Aus

Abstract

This paper addresses a debate that frequently arises when contract simplification is discussed. For business users, a clear contract is one that helps them understand the deal, implement its terms and encourages a productive business relationship. Legal teams, on the other hand, often worry about their responsibility to protect their client against excessive risk and potential litigation. For them, a clear document is unambiguous and legally watertight, resulting in complex documents that can be hard for non-lawyers to use. In this paper we discuss a layered approach that can reconcile competing definitions of clarity, functionality and user needs, and we speculate about the role of information design and emerging technologies in the development of human-centred layers to traditional contract wording.

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Vorheriges Kapitel How Will People Enter the Legal Job Market in Ten Years’ Time?

Nächstes Kapitel Injecting Humanity (Back) into Talent Development

Unlike the previous version of the Terms (effective date March 7, 2016), the new Terms begin with “Thanks for using Medium. Our mission is to deepen people’s understanding of the world and spread ideas that matter.”

See bolded section under the heading Disclaimers—Service is “As Is”.

For US law, see, e.g., American Bar Association, Business Law Section, Warranties and Online Sales https://www.americanbar.org/groups/business_law/safeselling/warranties/.

See e.g. Kwakkel (2018a, b) for examples.

The text on the top of this layer makes it clear that this is not the full license, by stating: “This is a human-readable summary of (and not a substitute for) the license.” Clicking on the word “Disclaimer” reveals more: “This deed highlights only some of the key features and terms of the actual license. It is not a license and has no legal value. You should carefully review all of the terms and conditions of the actual license before using the licensed material.”

What is and is not part of the contract and what role each layer should play in contract interpretation in our examples is beyond the scope of this brief chapter. For making the interpretation of images in contracts more predictable, see Haapio et al. (2020). See also Annola et al. (2022).

https://translate.google.com/; https://www.deepl.com/translator.

https://www.deepl.com/en/blog/announcing-glossary-support-for-deepl-api.

https://openai.com/blog/dall-e/.

Apart from GPT-3, there are many other promising language models. See, e.g., 10 Leading Language Models For NLP In 2021, https://www.topbots.com/leading-nlp-language-models-2020/.

For OpenAI Codex, an AI system that translates natural language to code, see https://openai.com/blog/openai-codex/.

See e.g. the OneNDA initiative, https://onenda.org/.

Annola V, Haapio H, Koskela M (2022) Interpreting images in contracts. In: Corrales Compagnucci M, Haapio H, Fenwick M (eds) Research handbook on contract design. Edward Elgar

Arbel YA, Becher S (2022) Contracts in the age of smart readers. George Wash Law Rev 90(1):83–146

Baasch Andersen C, de Rooy R (2022) Employment agreements in comic book form – what a difference cartoons make. In: Corrales Compagnucci M, Haapio H, Fenwick M (eds) Research handbook on contract design. Edward Elgar

Ben-Shahar O (2009) The myth of the “opportunity to read” in contract law. Eur Rev Contract Law 5(1):1–28. https://doi.org/10.1515/ERCL.2009.1CrossRef

Brown TB et al (2020) Language models are few-shot learners. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.14165.pdf

Corrales Compagnucci M, Haapio H, Hagan M, Doherty M (eds) (2021) Legal design: integrating business, design and legal thinking with technology. Edward Elgar

Corrales Compagnucci M, Fenwick M, Haapio H (2022) Digital technology, future lawyers and the computable contract designer of tomorrow. In: Corrales Compagnucci M, Haapio H, Fenwick M (eds) Research handbook on contract design. Edward ElgarCrossRef

Creative Commons (n.d.-a) Attribution 4.0 International. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode

Creative Commons (n.d.-b) Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Creative Commons (n.d.-c) Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Creative Commons (n.d.-d) Choose a License. https://creativecommons.org/choose/results-one?license_code=by&jurisdiction=&version=4.0&lang=en

Creative Commons (n.d.-e) Frequently asked questions: what does it mean that Creative Commons licenses are “machine-readable”? https://creativecommons.org/faq/#what-does-it-mean-that-creative-commons-licenses-are-machine-readable

Doyle P, Passera S (2021) Contract design and simplification – is this now a must-do? Int In-house Counsel J 14(56):1. https://www.iicj.net/subscribersonly/21july/iicjjuly5-contracts-pauladoyle-worldcc-usa.pdf

Haapio H (2013) Next generation contracts: a paradigm shift. Lexpert, Helsinki

Haapio H, Passera S (2021) Contracts as interfaces: visual representation patterns in contract design. In: Katz DM, Dolin R, Bommarito MJ (eds) Legal informatics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 213–238CrossRef

Haapio H, Annola V, Koskela M (2020) Ten ways to make the interpretation of images more predictable. Contracting Excellence Journal, 5 November. https://journal.iaccm.com/contracting-excellence-journal/calculating-cost-recovery-in-commercial-item-contracts-significance-of-present-value-part-2-0

Hagan MD (n.d.) Law by design. https://lawbydesign.co/legal-design/

Hern A (2015) I read all the small print on the internet and it made me want to die. The Guardian, 15 June. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/15/i-read-all-the-small-print-on-the-internet

Hurmerinta-Haanpää A (2021) The many functions of contracts. Doctoral Dissertation. University of Turku. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-29-8433-6

International Association for Contract and Commercial Management IACCM (2017) The purpose of a contract - an IACCM research report. https://www.worldcc.com/Portals/IACCM/resources/files/9876_j18069-iaccm-purpose-of-contract-a4-2017-11-14-v1-webready.pdf

Kolt N (forthcoming) Predicting consumer contracts. Berkeley Technol Law J 37

Kuhn TS (1962) The structure of scientific revolutions. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Kwakkel E (2018a) Books before print. ARC Humanities Press, AmsterdamCrossRef

Kwakkel E (2018b) The architecture of the medieval page. https://medievalbooks.nl/2018/09/07/the-architecture-of-the-medieval-page/

Lannerö P (2013) Fighting the biggest lie on the internet: common terms beta proposal. Metamatrix. http://commonterms.org/commonterms_beta_proposal.pdf

Legal Design Manifesto (n.d.). https://www.legaldesignalliance.org/

Medium (2020) Medium terms of service, effective September 1, 2020. 2 September. https://policy.medium.com/medium-terms-of-service-9db0094a1e0f

Mellinkoff D (1982) Legal writing: sense & nonsense. West Publishing, St. Paul, MN

Obar JA, Oeldorf-Hirsch A (2020) The biggest lie on the internet: ignoring the privacy policies and terms of service policies of social networking services. Inf Commun Soc 23(1):128–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1486870CrossRef

Passera S, Smedlund A, Liinasuo M (2016) Exploring contract visualization: clarification and framing strategies to shape collaborative business relationships. J Strateg Contract Negot 2(1–2):69–100. https://doi.org/10.1177/2055563616669739CrossRef

Pitkäsalo E, Kalliomaa-Puha L (2019) Democratizing access to justice. Translation Matters 1(2):30–42. https://doi.org/10.21747/21844585/tm1_2a2CrossRef

Pontis S (2018) Making sense of field research a practical guide for information designers. Routledge, LondonCrossRef

Sacks H, Schegloff EA, Jefferson G (1974) A simplest systematics for the organisation of turn-taking in conversations. Language 50(4):696–735. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.1974.0010CrossRef

Schriver KA (1997) Dynamics in document design. Wiley & Sons, New York

Shell Marine (2018) General terms and conditions of sale (US). https://www.shell.com/business-customers/marine/contact-shell-marine/lubricants/_jcr_content/par/toptasks.stream/1591106590441/f44886f744b4779df44d5e83f42926d5cd03b9e7/shell-marine-gtc-lubes-and-shipcare-us-law-final.pdf

Stickdorn M, Schneider J (2010) This is service design thinking. Basics – tools – cases. BIS Publishers, Amsterdam

Tiersma P (2005) Some myths about legal language. Loyola-LA Legal Studies Paper No 2005-26. https://ssrn.com/abstract=845928

Verbeke A, Greidanus NS (2009) The end of the opportunism vs trust debate: bounded reliability as a new envelope concept in research on MNE governance. J Int Bus Stud 40(9):1471–1495. https://doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2009.44CrossRef

Vitasek K (2017) Comic contracts: a novel approach to contract clarity and accessibility. Forbes, 14 February. https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevitasek/2017/02/14/comic-contracts-a-novel-approach-to-contract-clarity-and-accessibility/?sh=10ec6af77635

Waller R (2022) Designing contracts for human readers. In: Corrales Compagnucci M, Haapio H, Fenwick M (eds) Research handbook on contract design. Edward Elgar

Waller R, Delin J (2003) Cooperative brands: the importance of customer information for service brands. Des Manag J 14(4):63–69. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1948-7169.2003.tb00353.xCrossRef

Waller R, Waller J, Haapio H, Crag G, Morrisseau S (2016) Cooperation through clarity: designing simplified contracts. J Strateg Contract Negot 2(1–2):48–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/2055563616668893CrossRef

Wathne KH, Heide JB (2000) Opportunism in interfirm relationships: forms, outcomes, and solutions. J Market 64(4):36–51. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.64.4.36.18070CrossRef

Williamson OE (1979) Transaction-cost economics: the governance of contractual relations. J Law Econ 22(2):233–261. https://doi.org/10.1086/466942CrossRef

World Commerce & Contracting, Passera S, Haapio H (n.d.) Contract design pattern library. https://contract-design.worldcc.com

Wright P (1988) The need for theories of NOT reading: some psychological aspects of the human-computer interface. In: Elsendoorn BAG, Bouma H (eds) Working models of human perception. Academic Press, London, pp 319–340

Titel: Layered Contracts: Both Legally Functional and Human-Friendly
verfasst von: Robert Waller
Stefania Passera
Helena Haapio
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Buch: Liquid Legal – Humanization and the Law
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-14239-0

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-031-14240-6

Copyright-Jahr: 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14240-6_13