When Design Met Law: Design Patterns for Information Transparency

The problems of online disclosures, notices, and terms are well-known and documented. Research and experience tell us that consumers dislike and do not read them. Much less has been said and done about the solutions. Building on Proactive Law and Legal Design, this research-based, practice-oriented article introduces proactive legal design patterns as a possible way forward. The article illustrates, with examples, how design patterns can help implement the principle of transparency in consumer-facing communication and elaborates, in an innovative manner, the ways in which legal design patterns can help solve recurring problems.