Living Contracts: Beyond Document-Centric Interaction with Legal Agreements

TL;DR

This work addresses the limitations of traditional contract interfaces, which are largely document-centric and opaque, by proposing Living Contracts—interactive interfaces that contextualize, transform, and proactively surface contractual information across the lifecycle. Using leasing contracts as a case study, the authors design three probes—LeaseCompare, LeaseRead, and LeaseTrack—to explore formation, interpretation, and performance phases, respectively. A three-part qualitative study with 18 participants reveals persistent barriers to contract engagement (e.g., late access, dense language, and unclear rights) and identifies opportunities and risks associated with Living Contracts, including improved decision-making, empowerment, and potential misrepresentation or autonomy concerns. The findings suggest significant implications for HCI, law, and AI, offering a design space for pre-signing education, post-signing management, and cross-contract orchestration, while highlighting policy, privacy, and implementation challenges that warrant future work.

Abstract

User interaction with legal contracts has been limited to document reading, which is often complicated by complex, ambiguous legal language. We explore possible futures where contract interfaces go beyond single document interfaces to (1) educate users with legal rights not stated in the contract, (2) transform legal language into alternative representations to aid information tasks before, during, and after signing, and (3) proactively supply contractual information at relevant moments. We refer to these future interfaces collectively as Living Contracts. Using residential leases as a case study, we created three design probes representing different possible Living Contracts. A three-part qualitative study (N=18) revealed participants' barriers to interacting with contracts, including interpreting complex language, uncertainty about legal rights, and the pressure to sign quickly. Participants' feedback on the probes highlighted how Living Contracts have the potential to address these challenges and open new design opportunities for human-contract interactions beyond document reading.

Figures (14)

• Figure 1: Overview of the three design probes (i.e., LeaseCompare, LeaseRead, LeaseTrack) and their features, mapped to the three design concepts of Living Contracts. Living Contracts is the idea that contract interfaces can go beyond static document readers and instead: contextualize contractual information with relevant background knowledge (DC1), transform contractual information into task-specific representations (DC2), and proactively surface and supply contractual information (DC3).
• Figure 2: Listings View in LeaseCompare. Users can browse, rank, and filter apartments by contractual clauses. Each apartment features a Contract Flexibility Score and a Contract Protection Score, representing the qualities of its contract.
• Figure 3: LeaseRead is composed of: (a) Information Cards that contextualize the contract with external legal references (e.g., city ordinance) and social comments while flagging clauses that are vague or unlawful, (b) Comic Scenarios that visualize unintended consequences of contractual clauses, and (c) Explorable Scenarios that allow users to interactively explore what-if situations. Note: Red underline signals an unlawful clause (see Appendix Figure \ref{['fig:infocards']}d for the corresponding Information Card).
• Figure 4: Obligation Tracker extracts time-sensitive contractual obligations into an interactive real-time timeline.
• Figure 5: Contract Aware Devices: (a) three speculative smart devices that are aware of the contract and the physical environment; (b) the narrative and comic illustration of Contract Aware Speaker; and (c) the settings page that allows users to enter custom instructions on desirable device behavior.