Most people would never voluntarily sit down to read Shakespeare’s Macbeth before downloading an app. And yet, in practice, many of us agree—often unknowingly—to legal texts that demand more time and greater cognitive effort than one of the most studied works in English literature.

This is not a metaphor. It is a measurable reality.

In a widely cited analysis, Visual Capitalist highlighted that Microsoft’s service agreement alone would take over an hour to read—roughly the same amount of time it takes to read Macbeth from start to finish. Their broader conclusion was even more striking: the average American would need to spend nearly 250 hours per year to read all the digital contracts they accept when using online services.

Time, however, is only part of the problem.

Length Is Only the First Barrier

Building on the Visual Capitalist analysis, we revisited some of the most widely used platforms to assess not only how long their Terms of Use take to read, but also how difficult they are to understand.

Using the latest publicly available Terms of Use and standard reading benchmarks, we conducted our own analysis on 24 May 2024.

Reading speed assumptions:

• Average adult reading speed: 238 words per minute (WPM)
  (based on current literacy research)

Time required to read selected Terms of Use:

• Facebook: 21 minutes, 21 seconds

• LinkedIn: 24 minutes, 16 seconds

• Zoom: 57 minutes, 29 seconds

• Microsoft: 1 hour, 11 minutes, 43 seconds

At face value, this comparison is already telling: some of the most commonly accepted digital contracts rival—or exceed—the time investment required to read a Shakespearean tragedy.

But reading time alone does not explain why these documents fail users.

The Hidden Cost: Comprehension

Legal documents are not merely long. They are hard to understand.

To assess comprehension, we evaluated these documents using the Flesch Reading Ease Score, a widely used readability metric where:

• 60/100 is generally considered the minimum for plain, accessible English

• Higher scores indicate greater ease of understanding

Readability scores of selected Terms of Use:

• LinkedIn: 20/100

• Zoom: 28/100

• Facebook: 29/100

• Microsoft: 37/100

For context, a score in the 20–30 range is typically associated with academic or highly technical texts, often requiring postgraduate-level reading skills.

In other words, users are not just being asked to spend significant time reading these contracts—they are being asked to interpret language that far exceeds average reading and comprehension levels.

Why This Matters More Than We Admit

From a legal perspective, Terms of Use are enforceable agreements. From a user perspective, they are often treated as unavoidable formalities—documents that cannot be negotiated, meaningfully questioned, or realistically understood.

This creates a structural imbalance:

• Consent without comprehension

• Obligation without clarity

• Risk without awareness

The result is predictable. Users scroll, click “accept,” and move on—fully aware that reading the document would be impractical, and comprehension unlikely. Over time, this erodes trust. It also undermines the legitimacy of “informed consent” as a meaningful concept in digital environments.

The comparison to Macbeth is not merely provocative; it is instructive. Shakespeare’s language is complex, poetic, and culturally distant from modern readers. Yet it was written to be understood by a broad audience. Its structure supports meaning through rhythm, narrative flow, and emotional cues.

Most Terms of Use do the opposite: Dense clause stacking, abstract references, little regard for cognitive load. The difficulty is not accidental. It is the byproduct of legacy drafting practices, and a legal culture that prioritizes completeness over comprehension.

A Design Problem, Not a Literacy Problem

The data points to a clear conclusion: users are not failing contracts, contracts are failing users.

This is not a call to “dumb down” legal language. It is a call to:

• Design for real users

• Measure success beyond enforceability

• Treat clarity as a legal quality, not a stylistic preference

Plain language standards, visual structuring, layered information, and legal design practices already exist. What is missing is their systematic adoption in high-impact documents like Terms of Use. 

This is precisely why legal visualization matters: when information is structured visually, users can grasp meaning far more quickly, an effect we explore in detail, with before-and-after examples, in The Three Must-Have Strategies for Legal Visualization.

From Fine Print to Fair Play

These challenges are increasingly at the center of cross-disciplinary conversations, including forums such as the LublInnovation Legal Conference, where legal design and technology practitioners examine how contracts can evolve to meet the realities of digital use.

If digital platforms expect users to meaningfully consent, the burden cannot rest solely on the reader. It must shift toward better design, clearer drafting, and measurable usability. 

Because when a contract takes longer to read, and far more effort to understand, than Macbeth, the issue is no longer attention span.

It is design.