Living Contracts: Beyond Document-Centric Interaction with Legal Agreements

2026-02-01

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenges users face when interacting with legal contracts—namely, opaque legal language, limited awareness of statutory rights, and pressure during signing. To overcome these barriers, the paper introduces the concept of “Living Contracts,” which transcends traditional document-centric paradigms by employing multimodal representations to translate legal jargon, proactively surface implicit rights, and deliver dynamic support at critical decision points. Using a design probe methodology, the authors developed three interactive prototypes centered on residential lease agreements and evaluated them through a three-phase qualitative study with 18 participants. Findings demonstrate that Living Contracts significantly lower comprehension barriers, heighten users’ rights awareness, and alleviate signing-related stress, offering a systematic design framework and practical insights for reimagining human–contract interaction.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: The sharing economy
• Responsible Web: Human-perceived consequences of algorithmic deployment on the web
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience

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.

Problem

• legal contracts
• user interaction
• complex legal language
• legal rights
• contract comprehension

Innovation

• Living Contracts
• contract interaction
• legal language transformation
• user-centered design
• proactive information delivery