Clear legal content for business benefit

Why legal content is important and how to improve it for
business advantage
www.simplifiedcommunication.co.uk

What is legal content?
Content that creates an agreement and legal obligation.
Content that is heavily affected by laws and regulations.
A meeting of
the minds
Visit www.simplifiedcommunication.co.uk
Copyright belongs to Simplified.

This is how you’ll
screw me if
something goes
wrong.
Long and boringDon’t know.
Don’t care.
Consumers feel it has little or no value

To corporations... it’s a necessary evil
Gets in the
way of sales
Expensive to
change and
maintain
Protects us against
those consumers
out to get us

But legal content is becoming more important:
1. Because consumers are becoming more protected by laws
and regulations (for example, the Consumer Rights Act of
2015), legal content is no longer restricted to ´terms and
conditions´. Promotional content is now often also seen as
part of an agreement between a consumer and a corporation.
This means that Legal and Compliance are starting to take an
interest in content that was previously outside their scope.
2. Because of increased awareness of issues such as privacy and
security, consumers and businesses are more interested in
legal content than ever before.

Here is a rewrite of the document below – which sets
out the rights of an arrested person in South Africa:

To make this content clear, we had to make it inclusive
- a group of volunteers worked to create prototypes
in different channels and different languages:
1 Voice
2 Mobi
3 Paper

1 Voice

1 Voice
2 Mobi
3 Paper

What would the inclusive
versions of these terms
and conditions look like?

There are consequences of poor legal content:
• Business consequences: reputational damage
• Brand consequences: unprofessionalism
• Ethical consequences: unfair and misleading
• Legal consequences: imprecise and, in fact, often
illegal

Statement from Consumer Council, Norway
´End user agreements are long and hard to
understand.´
´iCloud terms and conditions are convoluted and
unclear.´

Working with Legal and Compliance to improve legal
content means many stakeholders, for example:
Business
Internal
compliance
Lawyers internal
and from a law
firm

To reduce risk of
litigation or
reputational
damage.
But often the objective is singular:

The only successful approach is a highly collaborative
process

1. Scenarios
2. Terminology workshops
3. Rewrite clauses independently of each other (as modules)
4. Present and discuss in person
5. Get formal sign-off
6. Incorporate tone
8. Tag, structure, situate in content strategy
A collaborative process

Scenarios (if then)
For example:
1. Jill wants to know if she can trust you as an online brokerage
– what safeguards are there to prevent excessive fee
increases over time?
2. In five years´ time, there is a market crash. Jill sees her
investment value plummet. What is she likely to do?

A collaborative process
1. Scenarios
6. Incorporate tone

We do a workshop activity called ´circle words´
1. We ask workshop participants to circle all jargon
and complex words
2. We then separate out jargon or ´terms of art´
(words with technical or legal meaning) from
unnecessarily complex words
3. We explain or replace all jargon
4. We replace all unnecessarily complex words

We draw a strong distinction between legalisms
(jargon) vs legalese
A legalism is a ´term of art´. It has a specific legal
meaning, which you have to understand, respect and
deal with.
Examples:
– Deeming provisions
– Liability
– Force Majeure or Acts of God

Deeming provisions: I deem you to have understood this presentation.
I am going to treat you as if you have understood this presentation.

You are liable for the cost of my cake.
You are responsible for the costs of my cake.
You must pay for any cake that I buy. If you do not…

Force Majeure or Acts of God
Events beyond our control or events beyond your or our control.

Unnecessarily complex words - legalese…
Unlike terms of art or legalisms, legalese has no specific legal
meaning. They just mean what they mean, so usually you can
replace them:
• Henceforth, aforesaid, subsequent to, subject to, set forth
hereunder, hereof
• Notwithstanding the generality of the foregoing
• Mandatory, applicable
• Expiry, termination, commencement, prior…

Explaining Force majeure or Acts of God
I have been made aware that the Company will maintain procedures for
disaster recovery in the event of a catastrophe. The Company will have no
liability for any loss that results directly from a force-majeure or from the lack
of electricity supply or such other resources over which the Company has no
control.
No responsibility for events beyond our control (force majeure)
We are not legally responsible for any loss that you or any other person
suffers because of circumstances beyond your or our control. Examples of
these circumstances are natural disasters, poor weather, power outages, war,
strikes and government intervention. This is referred to as force majeure.
We have taken reasonable measures to protect ourselves against these
events. We have put in place technologies and processes that are designed to
allow us to recover as quickly as possible if there is a disaster.

Collaborative process
1. Scenarios
6. Incorporate tone

Conclusion: legal content is content
Laws and regulations to protect consumers are
increasing. This makes it essential to collaborate better
with Legal and Compliance. Use a defined process
when collaborating.

References and acknowledgements
• Cheryl Stephens: How to get lawyers to use plain
language and be cooperative , Journal #66, Clarity
International
• Michele Sohn (Spoke) designed this presentation
• Candice Burt (Simplified) contributed content
• Copyright belongs to Simplified

Find out more
• Visit www.simplifiedcommunication.co.uk
• Email info@simplifiedcommunication.co.uk
• Download our white paper

Clear legal content for business benefit

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