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The reason lawyers don't always OK this: contracts are lengthy and precise because the law values precision and negotiations/cases can literally turn on the pos
by patio11 12y ago
The reason lawyers don't always OK this: contracts are lengthy and precise because the law values precision and negotiations/cases can literally turn on the position of a single comma. People don't naturally write like this.
If you write a contract with In Laymen's Terms next to the actual legal code, a court may in the future find that someone's inaccurate interpretation of your Laymen's Terms is controlling over the actual, unambiguous legal code.
Also: practically speaking, few enough people read ToS documents that, for the typical app, the only important audiences for it are a) in-house lawyers and b) people who want to sue you. It is probably unwise to optimize for the experience of people who want to sue you.
- transmute 12y agoYes, precision is important so that people don't bend terms in their favor. But a court ruling that the summaries take precedent over the actual legal terms won't happen if it's made clear that they are summaries, and if the summaries are accurate to the legal terms they're summarizing. So your fear of summary misinterpretation is unwarranted. You're overlooking the huge benefit of term summaries for both websites and users.