Contract design

Better contracts mean better business. Fundamentally, contracts are tools: structured communications that aim to reconcile the parties' expectations. A tool should speed up your business, not block it or slow it down - but in the real world, not all contracts work so well. 

Contract design makes you rethink the contract from the actual user's perspective: for example, a client who has to sign the contract, or salespeople who will be negotiating it? The result: contracts that are easy to navigate, read and understand. Contracts that drive your business forward faster. 

Contract design can take many forms. For each case, the right choice will depend on things like the type of end-users (B2C or B2B), the level of contract automation, and the specific objectives you want to achieve. 

What will you learn?

• The essentials of legal design
  What is legal design and why does it matter?
  
  
• How to get started with contract design
  What does a typical contract design process look like: from understanding your users' needs to applying design thinking to create effective and engaging contracts.
  
  
• Which techniques can you use to improve the navigation, readability and comprehensibility of your contracts
  Learn to create contracts in which structure, wording and design are so clear that users can easily find what they need, understand what they read and use that information.
  Practical tips for writing in plain language, shifting from legal jargon to inclusive communication.
  
  
• How to use visual elements in contracts
  How to use visual elements (e.g. colour, icons, timelines) meaningfully to communicate more effectively and to enhance the overall user experience? 
  
  
• Practical document redesign  
  How to turn dense, text-heavy contracts into visually appealing, easy-to-read documents using Word.  
  
  

Objectives and outcomes

• You will understand why and how contract design is a benefit to any legal department. 
• You will learn the basic principles of contract design in a practical and accessible way so that you can immediately apply these principles in your own context. 

Practical information

• 4-hour interactive training session (in person)
• Dutch or English
• No prior knowledge or preparation required
• We create easy to use documents in Microsoft Word that are fully customizable and in line with your brand. We also make sure that our redesigned documents can easily integrate with your existing contract automation or other systems.