Legal content: The final frontier for content strategy

Frances Gordon Senior content strategist and plain-language writer

Legal content

This is how you’ll screw me if something goes wrong.

Don’t know. Don’t care.

To consumers... it’s of 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

To people like us…?

I hope that this presentation inspires a respect and determination to give value to what is now the ‘small print’ of digital communications.

Change can and must happen.

What is legal content?

Content that creates an agreement and legal obligation.

The trend for laws and regulations that protect the consumer is international and is growing.

A meeting of the minds

In the real world

Meet Innocent

250 300 350 400 450 500 550

South Africa

Morocco

Indonesia

Trinidad and Tobago

Romania

Norway

Belgium

Poland

France

New Zealand

England

USA

Germany

Italy

Singapore,

Canada, Alberta

Hong Kong SAR

Russian Federation

Literacy levels are low Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006

And on corporate websites?

Disclaimer Save for our company being liable to you – • under the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 (“CPA”) in relation to

any products sold us to you via the Website; and • under sections 43(5) and 43(6) of the ECT Act in relation to our

payment systems not being sufficiently secure, Neither our company nor any of its agents or representatives shall be liable for any damage, loss or liability of whatsoever nature arising from the use or inability to use this Website or the services or content provided from and through this Website. Furthermore, our company makes no representations or warranties, implied or otherwise, that, amongst others, the content and technology available from this Website are free from errors or omissions or that the service will be 100% uninterrupted and error free. You are encouraged to report any possible malfunctions and errors via email.

A typical clause

Tick this box if you agree with the terms and conditions.*

*We know you won’t click here, and if you do, you won’t be able to wade through 10 pages of Web-unfriendly legalese.

And by the way, the terms and conditions are our

agreement, not anything else on the site.

What we have now is not okay

• We have at best carelessly, at worst, misleadingly, transferred offline to online.

• (It’s easier to hide things online?)

What we have now is not ok.

• Business reasons: reputational damage

• Brand reasons: unprofessionalism

• Ethical reasons: unfair and misleading (scenarios)

• Legal reasons: imprecise and, in fact, often illegal

• If the UX community does not start engaging, things will get worse. The remit of legal content is growing with protectionist laws.

So what do we do?

We start to create inclusive content

1 Voice

2 Mobi

3 Paper

1 Voice

2 Mobi

3 Paper

3 Paper

The showdown with the legal department So how do we change this

Focus on what we can agree

What we have now is not okay.

The corporate lawyer...

Reference: Cheryl Stephens, 2012

• Does not love change • Does not love technology • Does not see the forest

• Loves law but is not idealistic

• Loves criticism • Loves the trees (not the

forest)

To reduce risk of litigation.

Their job...

General principles

• Have a lawyer by your side

• Meet the litigation attorney

• Respect the legalities, not the legalese

• Use the laws related to UX – you are the experts at implementing them:

– Plain Writing Act (US)

– Consumer Protection Act (SA)

– Consumer codes (EU)

• Use mobile as a catalyst What if, in 10 years’ time...

Using Brain Traffic’s quad:

Workflow

• At the start, give them the opportunity to explain the intention of the laws to you

• Put legal brief at the start, legal review at the end

• Give more checkpoints, not less

• If you are not succeeding, break up your process into smaller steps with smaller chunks

Governance Substance Structure Workflow

Keep moving

Governance

Give them a role, and they will play it.

Governance Substance Structure Workflow

You are only allowed to review where we are exposing the company to risk.

You are not reviewing tone.

Substance

Understand the ingredients.

Governance Substance Structure Workflow

There is no such thing as boilerplate.

Structure

• Structure is the hard part

• If you have a tough audience, try to present structure after you have presented and signed off some detail

• Customise content as you need to (you will have to argue for this)

Governance Substance Structure Workflow

Conclusion: legal content is content

• ‘Legal content’ is a meaningless phrase... Talk about what you have to tell your consumer from a business, brand, ethical and legal perspective

• Legal content is part of your user experience, if not at the time of purchase, later, if things go wrong

• Create scenarios not only for now, but also long term

Frances Gordon | frances@simplified.co.za | @Simplified_SA

References and acknowledgements

• Cheryl Stephens: How to get lawyers to use plain language and be cooperative , Journal #66, Clarity International

• Content quad of Brain Traffic (slide 45) is at http://blog.braintraffic.com/2012/07/from-the-archive-brain-traffic-lands-the-quad/

• Michele Sohn (Spoke) designed this presentation

• Candice Burt (Simplified) contributed content

• Copyright belongs to Simplified