Contracts succeed or fail on two dimensions

When contracts are used to drive sustainability, their outcomes depend on two dimensions:

1. Content – what the contract says: the intentions, expectations, promises and obligations it expresses and whether these are relevant to the parties’ goals, roles, and context.
2. Presentation – how clearly the contract communicates: whether its content is understandable, findable, actionable and monitorable.

Most current contracts fail on one or both dimensions. This undermines sustainability outcomes even when the parties’ intentions are good.

As Fred Rodell famously wrote already in 1936:

There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content.

– Fred Rodell, ‘Goodbye to law reviews’ (1936) Virginia Law Review 38

There is no legal requirement for contracts to be written in a formal, legalistic style. Yet this style persists, largely because templates, model clauses, inherited drafting practices and, more recently, AI and contract technology tools continue to reproduce it. The result is often contracts that:

• do not accurately reflect the parties’ real goals
• contain vague, unrealistic or unmonitorable commitments
• undermine responsibility and sustainability outcomes
• create unnecessary risks, misalignment and interpretive problems

This module offers questions and tools needed to make these problems visible so that, in the next steps, teams can design clearer, more intentional and more sustainable contracts.