Technology to make legal documents easier to understand

Eight out of ten people struggle to understand banking contracts. Forty per cent of people cannot even understand the letters they receive from their bank. Company-customer communications are hindered by a lack of financial education and the complex technical language used in such contracts, significantly increasing the potential number of complaints. But what if there was a way to make everything simpler, leading to better informed users and more satisfied companies?

This is the idea behind Easydoc, a platform that uses a combination of legal design techniques and digital signature technology to explain contracts or legal documents and to sign them digitally. This tool turns the complexities of contracts into audiovisual materials that convey the information in a much simpler manner. Easydoc, a tool developed by the start-up Maddilegal, was one of the featured projects at SpinUOC, the annual entrepreneurship programme held at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

The difficulty involved in understanding contracts

81% of Spaniards admit to having signed a contract without fully understanding it. In addition, 40% of respondents state that they can't understand the letters received from their bank. These figures are taken from the latest report of the Spanish Association of Users of Banks, Savings Banks and Insurance (ADICAE), according to which 48% of respondents confessed to having poor or very poor financial skills.

In addition, according to data from the OECD's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), almost one in three Spanish adults is unable to read and understand long and complex pieces of text or compare information. All this results in companies wasting resources (mainly in terms of time and money) to explain contracts to customers and handle their complaints, which in turn leads to a poorer service for users.

Easydoc, technology for easier communication

"One day we realized that people in our circles really struggled to understand legal documents, often asking me for help," said Antonio Rodas Pinilla, a legal expert and one of the founders of Maddilegal, the company behind Easydoc. "There have been lawyers and agencies producing visual contracts for years. However, this is the first tool that can make them quick, flexible and affordable for the general public," said Rodas, a graduate of the Master's Degree in Legal Practice of the UOC's Faculty of Law and Political Science.

Easydoc is a platform that can be used by companies to explain the contracts to their customers, and sign them, in a way that is visual, simple and intuitive. Furthermore, it has successfully automated the contract customization process, so that each visualization is tailored to the user who is going to sign the document without the company having to make any changes or include any additional information.

"Those companies that use our platform will see that contracts are read 76% faster, information about the contract is understood 53% better, and concentration is improved by 60%. All this with 62% less effort," explained Rodas Pinilla. "We've given companies the ability to convey a greater feeling of transparency to their customers and make them feel closer to them. Furthermore, users never want to go back to traditional contracts after trying our platform: it's a key customer attraction and retention tool."

Easydoc can be easily added to a company's website or other digital infrastructure used by it. It's also easy for customers to use. Users click on an automatically generated link to access the Easydoc platform, where they can view the information contained in the contract in different formats (visually, on video or as an audio file). All they need to do afterwards is fill in their details, review the final document in PDF and digitally sign it. Users then receive the contract by email.

Legaltech: entrepreneurship in the legal industry

Legal design is a fast-growing movement, a legal innovation trend that aims to apply the principles of design thinking (a working method based on maximizing creativity) to ensure that legal information is more accessible and easier to understand for the public. "It started a few years ago in the English-speaking world. They realized that, by replacing the complex technical terminology used in law with simpler vocabulary and visual elements, you could make relations between legal operators much more agile and reduce litigation following agreements," explained Antonio Rodas.

The founders of Maddilegal drew inspiration from this movement to develop their first tool, Easydoc. However, this is not the only project they are planning. The team which, in addition to Rodas Pinilla, includes Vicente López, a programmer and computational mathematician and also a co-founder of the company, and David Gámez, art director and the person in charge of creating attractive designs for the documents, is also very interested in the application of technology to the legal industry, what's known as legaltech, and the possibilities provided by artificial intelligence.

"Our current aim is to test the product in the market and collect data. Until now, we've developed it in controlled environments, but we need to test its operation in real-world situations. In short, we're seeking to partner up with companies for the implementation of Easydoc," said Antonio Rodas. "Taking part in SpinUOC has thus provided an amazing showcase for our projects," he said about the university's entrepreneurship programme, which is developed by the Hubbik platform.

This project supports Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 9 to build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.

UOC R&I

The UOC's research and innovation (R&I) is helping overcome pressing challenges faced by global societies in the 21st century, by studying interactions between technology and human & social sciences with a specific focus on the network society, e-learning and e-health.

The UOC's research is conducted by over 500 researchers and 51 research groups distributed between the university's seven faculties, the E-learning Research programme, and two research centres: the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) and the eHealth Center (eHC).

The University also cultivates online learning innovations at its eLearning Innovation Center (eLinC), as well as UOC community entrepreneurship and knowledge transfer via the Hubbik platform.

The United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and open knowledge serve as strategic pillars for the UOC's teaching, research and innovation. More information: research.uoc.edu #UOC25years