How to make you read my Privacy Policy and not scrolling down?
There you are, you the new legal assistant. Freshly graduated and ready to face challenges. You are asked to write legal documents that you have never read. Privacy policy and blurred Terms of Service among of many others. But more than writing them — you want to make people read them.
This is the task I got the first day as a rookie: prepare long legal texts that are never read by any normal human being (Did you say that lawyers are not humans?).
First internship, first day, first task, good luck. They push you in the water just like a child learning to swim. You feel that you are about to drown because you understand that what you have studied at the University for about 5 years is not going to help you at all. But you find unknown and deep resources in yourself ( and on Google…). And you face the challenge.
You are about to come up to the surface and then they ask you to write the Privacy Policy, the Terms of Service and the Security Measures for the product they are about to launch. And as a legal assistant, you of course barely understand the technical specificities of the product.
Suddenly you realise that you have not just been pushed into the water, but in the cold Norwegian water in winter time.
Terms of what? Never read that. Just like you!
I have studied law for few years, but still, just as a all normal people (it’s always lawyers vs normal people), I have never looked at a single Privacy Policy. I always scroll down and click on “I agree” or I just browse without even been asked to click on anything. It is too long, boring, and I just want to access to the app I just downloaded.
You can write anything you want, nobody reads it anyways…but is that what you really want?
But there we are. My boss asking me to write texts that I have never read before as a consumer. I soon realised I could write anything in those texts. Just like all those damn apps on my phone probably access to much more information that I am aware of. I give them the right to more or less do whatever they want with my info. Not good.
My goal was to make sure the company followed all regulations and data was treated. Almost impossible.
At the same time make sure all the lazy users (like yourself) would read and are aware of the terms they agree. For sure impossible!
How can we make people wanting to read this privacy policy instead of scrolling down?
How can we make the Privacy Policy user-friendly?
Making policies readable and friendly, but without unicorns.
A colleague suggested we should put in smileys.
Yes, but we need more than smileys! Unfortunately emojis are not legal words.
Another colleague suggested adding swearing, sex and rock’n’roll. That’s what people want to read about, he claimed.
Unfortunately legal is not as dreamy as Suits.
Instead I decided to try the dating game. Use pick-up lines. Something both friendly but still advising the user like “hey honey, look at this. It’s kinda exciting, but easy to get to the end!”, just like a good friend of yours or a random pick-up artist would say to you.
So I used some dating tricks. But, then what to do? I might have the attention of the visitor, but then come all the legally required words. And that might be long, really long and really boring. Or rather — it IS really long and really, really boring.
I decided to write short, but still clear sentences. Providing as much information as possible but without giving a headache to anyone.
At the end of the text, I made sure we did everything right and that the user (that’s you) was aware of and agreed to it.
To spice things up even more, I got the copywriter of the company to write a super short summary on top. He is by no means close to anything juridical, but he is used to making short, shitty texts.
You have been through this post? Then you are ready to read our policies, they are not much longer!
What do you think of the result, btw? Read them. Please!
You almost enjoyed the policies I have written? That’s because I wrote the kind of policy that I want to read myself as a user. Find the perfect balance between the needs of your company and the legal requirements, have fun writing them, make it simple and transmit those good vibes to everyone!
Still not read them? …come on!
