Helena Haapio

Transforming contracts from legal rules to user-centered communication tools: a human-information interaction challenge

In this paper, we illustrate how merging contract design with information design, especially visualization, can help to transform contracts (and peoples perceptions about contracts) from legal rules to communication tools. We argue that improved human-contract interaction can maximize the value of commercial relationships, minimize risk, and prevent workplace frustration. Viewing contracts as boundary objects and changing their design to overcome the current challenges offer unexplored opportunities for both research and practice.

A Short Guide to Contract Risk

Contents: Foreword Introduction Contracts and risks - the big picture Sources of contract risk Risks in negotiating a business contract Risky terms and issues in contracts Contract risk recognition and response: processes and tools Conclusion Index.

Cooperation through clarity Designing simplified contracts

This paper reports a case study of an innovative contract simplification project. The context is an energy industry facility to be built in northwestern British Columbia, Canada, where it is important to gain social license from Aboriginal communities by sharing employment opportunities. However, the complexity of contract documentation was seen as a barrier to local small contractors. This project transformed a complex document set by using principles of clear information design, both at the structural and detailed level. The principles used are explained in the form of a pattern library that lists potential solutions to common communication problems for contract documentation.

Reducing Contract Complexity through Visualization - A Multi-level Challenge

In todays networked economy, contracts are everywhere. Most contracts are complex, as is the business they describe. Contracts are not easy to read, and their misinterpretation can cause expensive disputes between the parties. Recent research suggests an alternative to contracts written in legalese, by harnessing the benefits brought by plain language and plain design. Clarity and user-friendliness present a challenge on multiple levels: the contract as artefact, the cognitive capabilities of the readers, and the different contexts in which the contract may be used. This paper focuses on the artefact level. Using recent examples of contract visualization, we investigate ways in which text and images can work together to address the needs of different readers and help them use contracts to secure successful business outcomes.

Business-Friendly Contracting: How Simplification and Visualization Can Help Bring It to Practice

One thesis of this book is that the legal function within businesses will shift from a paradigm of security to one of opportunity. This chapter embraces that likelihood in the context of business contracting, where voices calling for a major shift are starting to surface. It explores how contracts can be used to reach better outcomes and relationships, not just safer ones. It introduces the concept of business-friendly contracting, highlighting the need for contracts to be seen as business tools rather than exclusively as legal tools, and working as business enablers rather than obstacles. By changing the design of contracts and the ways in which those contracts are communicated—through simplification and visualization, for example—legal and business operations can be better integrated. Contracts can then be more useful to business, and contract provisions can actually become more secure by becoming easier to negotiate and implement.

Robo-Advisors and Investors: Enhancing Human-Robot Interaction Through Information Design

Automation is everywhere. Robots can become lawyers and nurses – as well as investment advisors. Investment advisors have a pedagogic role in making sure that investors can under-stand where they are putting their money. Human-to-human interaction, discussions between investors and advisors, often help to enlighten the features of the products better than just reading mandatory prospectuses lying on a couch at home. In robo-advising there are usually no discussions supplementing the written information. That is why information design and investor-friendly information will step into the footlights. In this paper, we explore the ways in which information design can be utilized in robo-advising.

Contracting for innovation and innovating contracts: an overview and introduction to the special issue

This special issue of the Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation (JSCAN) is devoted to ‘‘contracting for innovation and innovating contracts.’’ From the inception of planning for the issue, the co-editors hoped to attract contributions from a full range of professionals engaged in contract theory and practice: research academics, contract managers, corporate executives, and legal counsel, plus what JSCAN Editor-in-Chief Tyrone Pitsis told us are called ‘‘pracademics:’’ those who straddle research and commercial environments, making concrete contributions through collaborative projects, experiments, interviews, software development, or theory-building. JSCAN is a natural publication outlet for such partnerships, since so many of the 40,000 worldwide members of the International Association of Contract and Commercial Management (JSCAN’s parent organization) are thought-leaders in every aspect of commercial contracting. The outreach to a diversity of potential authors was rewarded with a rich array of articles, research reports, essays, and a book review from a broad cross-section of professionals. The collected works of this special issue come from legal and business academics, information designers, practicing attorneys, and contract consultants. The works span theory development, project description, software analysis, and suggestions for yet further innovation.