The Things You're Not Seeing in Your Contracts; A Masterclass in Visual Literacy for Legal Teams
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Webinar Recap & Key Takeaways
Contracts are the lifeblood of every business, yet the way lawyers draft them has barely changed in generations. Dense blocks of text, all caps disclaimers and layers of legalese make agreements hard to use for the people who actually live with them, so legal teams get pulled back in to clarify, interpret and put out fires long after signature.
This masterclass, hosted by SpotDraft, brought together the three co-authors of the ABA book Visual Literacy for Lawyers for a practical look at how plain language, visual design and contract analytics can make legal documents easier to read, understand and act on. The point was not to turn lawyers into designers. It was to help them write for the business user instead of a judge who will almost never see the contract.
The session covered the drafting habits that make contracts unreadable, when a timeline, flowchart or swim lane works better than another paragraph, the research behind why people understand visuals faster than text, and how treating contracts as structured data helps legal teams spot patterns, benchmark terms and have sharper business conversations.
Session highlights :
06:11 Linsey Krolik explains why lawyers draft for a judge who rarely reads contracts, not for the business teams who use them every day.
08:57 Olga V. Mack recalls an M&A deal where her team erased a diagram, and the other side had to redraw it to understand.
14:37 Linsey Krolik rewrites a dense termination clause in plain language and flags "for the avoidance of doubt" as a sign of weak drafting.
27:06 Tessa Manuello shows why business users scan, and how timelines, flowcharts, and swim lanes can communicate better than paragraphs.
36:34 Tessa Manuello explains dual coding theory and why pairing words with visuals improves understanding, memory and accessibility.
40:22 Olga V. Mack treats contracts as structured data, benchmarking a liability cap against a typical range to drive a business decision.
44:42 Olga V. Mack uses the subway map to show that a visual only needs to be accurate enough for the decision, not every detail.
54:08 Tessa Manuello advises winning over skeptical teams by naming real pain points, piloting small and upskilling for consistency.
Have you ever seen the map of a London subway or a New York subway? Is it accurate? Actually, it's not... But is it effective? Oh, yes, it is. That's how most people navigate a metropolis every single day... A visual doesn't have to be precise topographically to be effective in making decisions accurately. -- Olga V. Mack, CEO, TermScout
Watch the webinar now!
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