Lawyer 0.9

by Karel Thönissen

Users are often confronted with legal text in computer programs and web sites. Think of licensing terms, privacy policies, terms of use, trademark claims, etc.

Users are often appalled by the legalese and turn away from the product or turn away from the site. Therefore, it is important that the legal text is written with the normal user in mind. Unfortunately, laywers are the least suited to write such texts. Their texts scare people away. Legal text should be written by professional text writers, and then be checked by a knowledgeable lawyer.

Lawyers are not trained interface designers.
Lawyers make awful user interfaces.
Lawyers have zero usability. [Granted, that was over the top]

Initially, I had the following impissibility: lawyers have zero suability (-8.