Meet a Contract Designer!

Meet a Contract Designer!

Welcome back to our readers and a warm hello to our new subscribers!?

Let's face it, when you hear 'innovation,' you're probably not picturing contracts, right? But imagine a world where contracts don't induce yawns or existential dread. Yes, it's possible! In this edition, we will take a peek into contracts with a twist.?


Innovation: we all want to do something with it, but how to tame the beast?

We’ll capture the essentials of innovation management through the lens of collaborations, intellectual property, commercial strategy, sustainability, and impact.


There's this bustling community of legal design thinkers and contract design practitioners, turning the mundane into the magnificent, making contracts easy to understand! We’re very excited to meet some of them at the Visual Contracts Meet-Up on March 26th at 12:00 noon, with the amazing Lieke Beelen .?

We're buzzing to chat about crafting an Innovation Toolbox.         

Want to join us? Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/d4ygEdE


???But wait, there's more – we snagged an interview with this award-winning designer to give you a taste of what's in store.?

With a background in Industrial Design Engineering (MSc. Design for Interaction at Delft University of Technology) Lieke has worked as a service/UX designer and researcher in many different contexts. Since 2015 she focused on the legal sector to create access to law and access to justice by facilitating lawyers and designers to work together from a Legal Design perspective.

  1. Can you please share what initially drew you to specialize in legal design thinking and contract design???

As a freelance designer, I met a lawyer working on plain legal language. She successfully used a ‘lawyerly’ letter to help me receive payment from my very first client. This positive result, combined with her interest in visualizing legal documents and my expertise in visual thinking, sparked my interest in making the law more accessible. My experience with dyslexia had already highlighted the barriers and anxiety legal texts could create irrespective of the level of education of a person. With my background in innovation and design, I recognized an opportunity to make the law more accessible at scale - especially contracts, which everyone encounters. Our joint efforts won us the Hague Innovators Challenge and €25K to redesign Facebook's privacy statement as a case study in legal document visualization. This project kick-started my continued journey in legal design.

2. Throughout your career, what has been the most challenging project you've encountered, and how did you overcome those challenges??

In my experience, particularly in complex areas like criminal law and collaborative projects with attorneys from various firms, the challenge often lies in transcending the strictly professional perspective and making strict judicial processes more user-friendly. Both contexts, despite their differences, suffer from a common issue: an intense focus on legal accuracy at the expense of accessibility for non-professionals. Legal design aims to bridge this gap, ensuring that legally sound materials are also approachable and understandable. Although we've seen initial success, the journey is ongoing. Experience shows that training, creating a shared understanding of legal design, co-creation, and continuous alignment are crucial for making legal content more accessible. This process involves repeated practice, sharing learnings, and utilizing the expertise and skills from both legal and design fields to foster a comprehensive approach where each party understands the other's scope well enough to effectively collaborate.

3. Who or what has been your biggest influence in shaping your approach to your work??

My approach to work has been significantly influenced by my Industrial Design Engineering studies and my internship at jamvisualthinking.com, which heightened my awareness as a neurodiverse thinker. In terms of legal perspectives, the University of Groningen's interactive online law introduction and Stewart Levine's "The Book of Agreement" have been pivotal, along with interactions and collaborations with various lawyers throughout my legal design journey.?

4. In your opinion, what skills or attributes are essential for someone looking to enter the field of legal design thinking??

To succeed in legal design thinking, essential skills and attributes include:

- Practicing non-judgment (Rule No.1 of Brainstorming)

- Maintaining an open mind to learn from different disciplines.

- Engaging in flexible and creative thinking methods, such as visual thinking.

- Empathizing with end-users through design research and prototyping.

- Acquiring foundational knowledge in law for non-legal backgrounds, and in design thinking and its scope for those from a legal background.

- Undergoing in-depth training in legal design thinking to grasp the potential of redesigning law and legal documents, which involves contemplating legal system changes and interpreting laws to innovate within existing regulations while aiming for user-friendly solutions that reflect the spirit of the law.

Redesigning law raises fundamental questions

  • Why do we have laws?
  • What are the functions and goals of law?
  • How can we design to fulfill these functions?

As a designer, constantly revisiting these questions in every project and challenging clients to consider them is crucial for innovating within legal systems and subareas, always with the end goal of enhancing user experience and understanding.

5. How do you keep yourself updated with the latest developments in your field, and could you recommend any resources for our readers??

To stay current in my field, I actively use LinkedIn to follow and connect with professionals from both academic and commercial sectors. Additionally, the framework in The Innovation Matrix has significantly influenced my strategic thinking, especially regarding IP and innovation. (Lieke mentioned that she wasn’t just being nice to us ?? )

This, along with continuous interactions, projects I've undertaken, and insights gained from each, play a crucial role in keeping me informed and inspired.

For resources, I recommend "Rules for a Flat World" by Gillian Hatfield and "Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst" by Robert M. Sapolsky. Although I haven't finished these books yet, they promise valuable insights, contributing to my understanding and approach to various topics.

6. What projects or goals are you currently working on, and what impact do you hope to achieve?

We're currently developing the 'Canva for contracts,' a user-friendly, AI-powered SaaS platform designed for business and legal professionals.?

This tool simplifies the contract creation process, allowing users to produce clear, understandable, and visually appealing contracts tailored to their brand and business needs. By integrating AI suggestions for plain legal language, visualization, and layout, we aim to revolutionize how contracts are drafted, making them more accessible and engaging.??

Our platform facilitates collaboration between legal, communication, and branding teams to ensure strategic business outcomes. Users can import their text templates for AI-enhanced visualization recommendations or start with our templates to accelerate design. Finished contracts can be saved, exported, and integrated with various systems ERP/HR/CLM systems - or we can build them custom to your situation - for seamless management.?

This initiative not only seeks to innovate contract design but also to support global sustainability goals (SDGs 8, 9, 10, and 16), ultimately to make your contract design process more human-friendly and accessible, living up to your brand standards to distinguish yourselves in the market and make deals faster, more effective, proactive and strategic.?

7. How does your work address the accessibility and understandability of legal documents for non-experts?

Our work leverages a proactive law approach, integrating plain legal language with design principles and Gestalt theory. This strategy focuses on the user's perspective, aiming to craft legal documents that are not only accessible and understandable to non-experts but also visually appealing and highly usable.

8. How has the approach to contract design evolved in recent years, and what key factors have driven these changes?

Contract design is still in its early stages, but there's a growing interest in its exploration and implementation. The use of AI in contract design has become more prevalent. While pioneers delve into deeper aspects of legal and contract design, I see that a majority remain focused on visual and information design, with less attention to interaction, relational, and proactive elements.? For many, adopting plain legal language and improving layout represent significant steps forward, indicating we are still at the beginning of evolving contract design practices.

9. In your view, what are the most critical elements of effective contract design that make contracts more understandable and actionable for all parties involved??

Making the decision/aligning on what you need to cover based on user, business and legal needs is one of the most crucial elements.?

10. How do you incorporate feedback from non-legal professionals into the contract design process to ensure that contracts are accessible to a wider audience??

To ensure contracts are accessible to a wider audience, we integrate feedback from non-legal professionals through various design research methods aimed at gaining comprehensive insights into contract design:

  • Conducting observations within contract processes, such as observing job interviews where employment contracts were signed in my first project with CSU.?
  • Organizing co-creation and focus group sessions to gather diverse perspectives.
  • Administering surveys to evaluate different styles and approaches to contract design.
  • Shadowing stakeholders during their interactions with contracts in a workday to observe real-life applications.
  • Testing prototypes with users, observing their interactions, and conducting follow-up interviews to understand their experiences and perceptions. E.g, at Tzorg we tested with the employees who went over the original document and the new concepts while thinking out loud.
  • Performing contextual interviews in the actual setting where contracts are signed to assess end-user reactions and gather immediate feedback.
  • Measuring impact through methods like contextual interviews and analyzing business data related to factors such as employee onboarding experience and deal closure times.
  • Employing academic research techniques, such as lab settings where participants read contracts and then answer questions to evaluate their understanding.

These methods allow us to refine contract designs based on real-world feedback and insights.

?11. Looking ahead, what emerging trends or technologies do you believe will have the most significant impact on contract design, and how should professionals prepare for these changes??

Looking forward, AI stands out as a game-changer for contract design, promising to enhance speed and quality for a broader audience. While current AI technologies have yet to reach their full potential and don't always meet desired standards in legal accuracy and visual presentation, they offer significant promise in managing the complexities of contract design. For more on this, see here.


If you are still wondering why simplified contracts are the way to go, guess what happened in Rotterdam this week?

?????? Over 100 folks decided to hit the streets not for a flash mob, but to rally behind Dutch Rapper Ronnie Flex. And get this - it was all about contracts! Yeah, contracts.

How responsible are you for understanding your contract?

Rapper Ronnie Flex feels he hasn't earned enough from his music and accuses his record label Top Notch of having made him sign a suffocating contract. He even found out he didn't own the rights to his songs.

Flex argues that his contract is unreasonable and admits he didn't understand what he was signing at 20. Now, he wants to renegotiate the contract to his advantage. Flex aims to awaken young musicians with his protest, increasing their awareness.

The judge pointed out that Flex had a manager and was an adult, so he simply shouldn't have signed.

In the Netherlands, everyone is supposed to know the law, and everyone is expected to hire a lawyer if needed. But how realistic is that?

What if we flip the script? What if every contract drafter is expected to write something understandable for the intended party and double-check it before signing? That seems quite realistic and doable.

Why complicate things when they can be simple? Why not clearly explain why Ronnie Flex only gets 8% of the revenue and who gets the other 92%? It’s not strange or unreasonable to clearly explain to a budding 20-year-old musician, right?

We wonder how Top Notch's management reflects on this now. To what extent do they feel responsible for a contract a leading artist says he didn't understand then and still doesn't 12 years later? And that it's likely that his peers still don't understand it either?

What's in it for Top Notch to have a difficult contract, when it is possible to offer a simple and visual contract that is understandable?

And what about you? How responsible do you feel for your organization's complex contracts toward your customers, partners, or suppliers? How responsible are you, and how do you feel about it? What's your role?


?? We leave you with a final question that is also a tip:?

Ever thought a timeline could save your sanity??        

It's like a superhero for your contracts, keeping everything in order and easy to follow. Discover how a timeline can become your contract's best friend here.?

Until next time, stay curious and connected!

Deepika & Mirjam


Ready to level up? Our innovation management consulting is all about results. Let's cut through the noise and build a strategy - for innovation, collaboration, or intellectual property - that actually works for your business. Efficiency, creativity, and success – that's the game plan. Let's chat and make innovation work for you. Your next move starts here. Get in touch with Mirjam and Deepika on Linkedin!

Who Benefits from Our Expertise?

  • Broad Spectrum: Whether you're part of a large corporation, an SME, a nimble startup, or a growing scale-up.
  • Visionaries and Builders: Investors, incubators, accelerators, and those shaping the future of business.
  • Knowledge Hubs: Government entities, academic institutions, and tech innovators.

Our focus areas: We dive into Innovation strategy and management, collaborations & partnering, intellectual property management, and contracts negotiations.

What we bring to the table: We offer workshops, strategy consulting, coaching, commercial advice, negotiation support, and contract simplification and visualization to empower your innovation journey.

Who do we empower? We're here to boost innovators, decision-makers, and leaders in their quest to transform brilliant ideas into real-world solutions and impactful results.

Why The Innovation Matrix? Learn more about our story and work here.

Lars ten Wolde

Senior legal professional ?? Team lead legal at H&P

8 个月

Great insights from Lieke Beelen on legal design thinking and the transformative approach to contract design. The blend of creativity and legal expertise is very inspiring.

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