For thousands of years, legal documents have essentially been viewed on scrolls. Even as legal documents are written, stored, exchanged, and verified on the digital medium, they continue to be viewed as a flat length of text. The problem lies with two conflicting requirements that legal documents must fulfill:

1. Legal documents must be complete. In order for legal documents to define rules and regulations, they must not contain loopholes or ambiguities.
2. Legal documents must be understandable. For legal documents to be enforced, they must be understandable.

Frequently, the latter is sacrificed in favor of the former. We believe that providing multiple perspectives of legal documents can enhance understanding while maintaining completeness. These perspectives include:

• A visual navigation between different documents, enabling the user to see where she has been in a more natural way
• A translation between commonly used “legalese” phrases to common English phrases
• A view representing parts of a document that only apply to a certain party

We feel these perspectives can provide richer understanding of legal documents for the average citizen. Moreover, companies can use these perspectives to enhance the presentation of their own documents to their clients. Our program will benefit both the average person and industry as a whole.

LegalTransform is a project being conducted at The Evergreen State College, part of the Student Originated Software program.