It is time to rethink contracts...

As a commercial contracts and procurement lawyer, I’ve seen the same issue play out again and again: contracts have become dense, text-heavy documents – built more for legal protection than for human understanding. Procurement, subsidy control (and its predecessor, state aid) have become overly focused on process, often losing sight of purpose. The result? Real outcomes are often not realised, and when it comes to government-procured contracts, particularly for people-focused services, too often the people they are meant to serve are the ones losing out. 

Nowhere is this clearer than in major PPP (Public-Private Partnership)/PFI (Private Finance Initiative) payment contracts. These documents are vast, complex, and intimidating. In the world of PFIs, many of the people who once understood how to contract-manage them have moved on – leaving few people able to hold providers to account, simply because the contracts are so difficult to navigate.

And let’s be honest: most customers find contracts difficult to navigate. They skim. They hope. They trust. But trust shouldn’t be blind – trust should be earned through clarity.

And this is more important now than ever. The way we receive and process information has fundamentally changed too. We live in a world of dashboards, infographics, visual cues, and intuitive user experiences. People expect information to be accessible at a glance. Yet contracts remain stuck in a world of dense paragraphs and archaic formatting. If everything else has evolved to be clearer and more visual, why haven’t contracts?

If we want stronger, healthier, more collaborative relationships with customers and partners, we must move contracts forward – out of the era of legal jargon and into a world where they are visual, intuitive, and genuinely understandable. And for suppliers, this is a smart move too: clarity builds trust.

Imagine contracts that look less like a wall of text and more like a roadmap:

• Clear visuals explaining key terms
• Transparent, plain-language summaries
• Easy ways to see responsibilities, timelines, and outcomes
• A design that invites conversation, rather than shutting it down

When people truly understand the terms, the whole dynamic shifts: confidence replaces uncertainty, shared understanding replaces negotiation friction, and partnership replaces transaction.

This isn’t just about design – it's a mindset shift toward openness, transparency, and trust.

As I move forward, at Stone King we are thinking carefully about how we design contracts that serve real people, not just processes – contracts that strengthen relationships instead of complicating them.

It’s time for change. And it starts with clarity.