November 11, 2022

By Betsi Roach

Page Reading Time: 2 minutes

SALI’s Contracts and Clauses Classification Project

SALI is excited to spread the word about one of its most-recent projects: Standardizing types of contracts and clauses. There is a lot of buzz in the industry surrounding contract management optimization and efficiency, and SALI is proud to lend its support to help facilitate change and innovation in the transactional space.

With SALI LMSS version 2.0, we went deep deep in many areas, including Areas of Law (e.g., Patent Law), Engagement Terms (e.g., Fixed Fee), Litigation Service (e.g., Deposition, Breach of Contract), and Industries (e.g., Pharmaceuticals). With this initiative, SALI is going deeper into transactional documents and contents.

Over the coming months, SALI will be working with industry leaders to incorporate additional classifications:

1. Agreement Types
   1. E.g., Non Disclosure Agreement
   2. E.g., License
   3. E.g., Merger Agreement
2. Clause Types
   1. E.g., Force Majeure Clause
   2. E.g., Indemnification Clause
   3. E.g., Arbitration Clause

As shown in the screenshots below, SALI’s contracts project has already gathered an impressive list of 700+ Agreement Types and Clause Types.

As part of that project, SALI has gathered a coalition of some of the most-respected minds in the contracting space. Those willing to add knowledge and insights to SALI’s contract initiative include Noah Waisberg (CEO of Zuva, former CEO of Kira), Alex Hamilton (Radiant Law), ContractPodAi, Thomson Reuters, NetDocuments, and many others. 

We are excited to expand SALI’s LMSS to dive more deeply into this important space. To the extent you’d like to contribute to this working group, please contact us at info@sali.org.

ABOUT THE SALI ALLIANCE

The SALI Alliance seeks to improve the legal industry by moving it towards standardizing how we describe legal work. We will simplify and improve the description of legal services by providing a common language represented in an open-source taxonomy. This will provide all players with greater transparency and increase the effectiveness of budgeting and resourcing. Providing a common language for the industry serves as the catalyst for better outcomes and value.

Our work is to produce a Legal Matter Standard Specification (LMSS) and gain adoption in the ecosystem. LMSS is, in essence, an extensive taxonomy, with almost 10,000 nodes. It is actually more than a taxonomy: it not only describes areas of law, services, industries, and player roles, but also captures the relationships among those.

HOW CAN I LEARN MORE?

We welcome your input and your involvement! The most complete, practical standard can only be realized by continued contributions and adoption from organizations throughout the legal industry, particularly legal operations professionals and in-house counsel teams.

A link to the standard, which anyone can use at no cost, can be found at SALI.org.

In addition, there are several active and pending conversations to join, including:

• International working groups
• Area of law working groups
• Open forums for questions, feedback, and discussion among current and potential adopters

For more information on the standard, adoption, or getting involved, please contact Kelly Harbour at kharbour@goulstonstorrs.com.