Legal language is everywhere. It can be found in statutes, regulations, contracts, and even terms and conditions. Typically, legal language is drafted to have particular meanings in specific situations, but unintended ambiguities or poor drafting can produce unexpected interpretations. The goal of this session is to create a two-step crowdsourcing platform for the drafting of more effective legal language.
The winning team will create a platform that: (1) enables a crowd to draft competing versions of legal language after being told what the legal language is supposed to mean in specific situations, and (2) enables a second crowd to interpret the competing versions of the legal language in the context of the predetermined situations. The most effective legal language will be interpreted by the second crowd in the way that the drafters in the first crowd intended. For example, if the first crowd is tasked with creating legal language that produces outcome X in situation A, outcome Y in situation B, and outcome Z in situation C, the most effectively drafted legal language will be interpreted by the second crowd to produce those outcomes most reliably. The winning team will produce the best process for this two-step crowdsourcing of effective legal language.
An initial session will review the basic challenges of legal language drafting and interpretation and introduce the idea of intentional ambiguity. Subsequent hacking sessions will involve teams competing to develop the best two-step legal language crowdsourcing process. Teams will have two weeks to develop their process.