Contract software for small law firms, rewritten in plain English.

Lawyers read contracts for a living. Their clients do not. So every clause now comes with one plain sentence beside it.

The brief

Clausa lets small law firms, from two lawyers to twenty, build contracts from a library of tested clauses. In 2022 it had 260 paying firms, but only one trial in seven turned into a subscription, and the interface still used the words its engineers had given things in the first prototype.

Partners told us the drafting was fine. The trouble came afterwards, when a client received the draft and rang to ask what it meant. Those calls are rarely billed. The brief was a clearer product, an identity that did not look like every other legal tool, and a website that sold to firms rather than to investors.

The idea

Every clause in the library carries one plain sentence that says what it does to the person signing. Clients see it on the shared draft; the clause itself stays exactly as the lawyer wrote it.

The rest of the product followed the same rule. We rewrote 470 interface labels, so a button says what will happen when you press it, and set the identity in a heavy grotesk with one plum accent, the colour of the summaries.

What we made

Product audit and content design
Drafting interface: library, editor and shared draft
Plain-English summaries for 312 clauses
Identity and wordmark
Marketing website, designed and built
Voice guidelines for support and sales

A laptop and a phone on a pale desk showing a contract editor with plum highlights beside each clause — The clause library, the editor and the shared draft, each clause with its plain sentence beside it.

A printed contract page with a thin plum line in the margin and a pen resting across it

One sentence, never two

Every summary is 25 words or fewer and says what the clause does, not what it is called. Clausa’s lawyers wrote them, we edited them, and a panel of 24 non-lawyers had to understand each one on first reading.

How the mark moves

The wordmark lands in one firm step, with no bounce. In the product the same movement confirms a signature, and nothing else is allowed to use it.

A solicitor across a desk from a client, both reading a printed draft, a plum folder between them — A partner at a four-lawyer firm in Leeds, taking a client through a shared draft.

What changed

of trials now become paying firms, up from 14%
Across the first two quarters after launch in January 2023.
support emails asking what a clause means
Measured over the first six months, against the six before.
firms on paid plans by the end of 2023, up from 260
Most of them with fewer than ten lawyers.

Who made it

Orvel

Freya LundContent design and voiceLondon
Tomás FerreiraProduct designLisbon
Anjali RaoCreative directionLondon

With

Client team: Priya Mendis, Oliver Strand, Hannah Cole
Legal review: Ruth Abebe, Martin Hale
Engineering: Clausa product team
Website development: Orvel engineering
Reader panel: 24 clients of Clausa firms

Next project Garden centres, 2022GreenwoldNine family garden centres in Kent, with signs, labels and a website that change with the week.