You and I are both like guys who had this rich neighbor - Xerox - who left the door open all the time. And you go sneakin' in to steal a TV set. Only when you get there, you realize that I got there first. I got the loot, Steve! And you're yellin'? "That's not fair. I wanted to try to steal it first." You're too late. – Bill Gates (fiction), Pirates of Silicon Valley
A treasure hidden in plain sight
One of my favorite movies is 'Pirates of Silicon Valley'. Perhaps it's not remarkable from an objective point of view, but I find the story behind it fascinating. Arguably, the film accurately portrays the rivalry between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates while they were planting the seeds of Personal Computers as we know them today.
Everyone knows about these two entrepreneurs and their companies: Apple and Microsoft. But have you ever heard of Xerox?
What if I tell you that the mouse you are using (if you're on your computer) comes from it?
Do me a favor. Stop reading this and watch this clip from the movie.
A picture is worth a thousand words, don't you agree?
Graphical user interface. GUI.
A new way of interacting with computers.
To grasp the implications of GUI, just imagine using your computer if it looked like a bunch of numbers and letters instead of bars, windows and icons.
It was a game changer. And yet, you've probably never heard before about the guys behind it.
How crazy is that?
(If you don't trust me, you can check it on Britanica. Yes, they're still around, just online, like everything else.)
Fortunately, Jobs and Gates were a pair of fine thieves (just kidding), and they spared us the struggle of using a terminal in our day-to-day. Nonetheless, the code is still there behind the curtain, running silently, covered by all this makeup. This also applies to apps, websites...
GUI impregnates every corner of the digital world.
For example, take this:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<style>
.button {
background-color: #000000;
border-radius: 28px;
border: 1px solid #000000;
display: inline-block;
cursor: pointer;
color: #ffffff;
font-family: Verdana;
font-size: 17px;
padding: 16px 31px;
text-decoration: none;
text-shadow: 0px 1px 0px #000000;
}
.button:hover {
background-color: #262626;
}
.button:active {
position: relative;
top: 1px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body><a href="https://learningproduct.webflow.io" target=”_blank”><button class="button">Cool website</button></a></body>
</html>
Copy & paste it here. Click on 'Run'. See what it translates into.
The end-user approach
It feels like magic, but it's not. Two whole branches of knowledge, User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) design deal precisely with this.
In fact, a key part of developing a great product is ensuring that its UI and its UX are superb.
You can learn more about them here.
Combined, UI and UX should enable clients to use our product 'with ease and pleasure'. Every digital product you use daily works under these premises.
However, it seems that these principles are yet to be applied in some industries.
Take, for example, the legal services industry. Definitely, we do not experience the use-with-ease-and-pleasure part.
Remember our last example about the button?
How did all the farragoes of text turn into a simple, dumb-proof button?
Well, with contracts, this:
"Nothing in this clause shall prevent the Company from entering into other arrangements additional or supplemental hereto or in variance hereof in relation to advertising marketing and/or promotional services with the Employee or with or for all or some of the Company's employees (including the Employee) from time to time. Except in any case where the Company terminates the Employee's employment pursuant to the provisions of clause 10 hereof (when the procedure set out therein shall apply), the Company shall operate the disciplinary procedure set out in Part 3 of Schedule 2 hereto in relation to any breach or failure to observe the terms of this contract or of the Rules."
translates into this:
是的，我正在使用翻译器。我一句中文都不会说，令人惊讶，令人惊讶。希望我没有说任何愚蠢或冒犯的话。顺便说一下，如果你正在读这篇文章，而且你也不懂中文，你一定很无聊。为你喝彩。
(No offence to those versed in Chinese)
I wouldn't expect you to read this post if I just embedded all the HTML and CSS here.
Then, why on Earth do we expect people to read and understand legal jargon out of the blue or to go through confusing documents? Because there is no end-user approach.
Just a matter of time
You'd reply to our previous example: that's why we have lawyers.
Well, I don't think so.
We also have software engineers, front-end developers, back-end developers, full-stack developers, etc. Of course, I'd need one of them if I were to understand the code and logic behind the Internet and build something complex.
But I do not need them if I just want to surf the web and interact with it.
However, this is not how it works when it comes to our interactions with law.
We do need a tax advisor to understand and comply with our tax obligations, ordinary and 'simple' as they may be, and a legal advisor to read and sign a contract (don't even get me started on drafting one).
The reason, I think, is quite obvious: no one has cared about the UI/UX of law for the average Joe.
And caring about UX/UI is the miracle that can turn upside down a very complex and not precisely user-friendly industry.
Don't believe me?
Well, a lot of law consists of "if-this, then-that" rules put together. Just like code.
Sure, sometimes it gets very complicated and abstract. You have to deal with uncertainty, and you need a good deal of creativeness and imagination. Exactly what happens with code as well.
To me, the saying 'Law is code' is absolutely true. It happened once, it can happen twice.
I'd say this:
Ten years ago, Marc Andreessen said: 'Software is eating the world'. This still holds true.
And legal services are not excluded from the feasting.