LegalHub

The Devil’s Advocate™ →Go uptown In which the curmudgeonly old sod puts the world to rights. Index — Click ᐅ to expand: The Devil’s Advocate Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

Bringing GitHub to the legal eagles. Credit to Graeme Johnston of https://www.juralio.com for the nub of this idea.

So the idea is very very formative, but in a nutshell it is like an open-source GitHub, only for legal code — that is, legal text. Words. The challenge is to keep the simplicity but not throw away the opportunities provided by the network and the digital commons.

How is this different to existing platforms?

All existing platforms are in some way proprietary, limited in access, intended as commercial enterprises in themselves with a pre-defined solution. The future not being as predictable as we would like, any platform designed on a controlled, owned basis has inadvertently designed-in obsolescence.

Therefore (i) they are unresponsive to real-time demand; (ii) they are expensive and high maintenance; (iii) they unnecessarily extract rent, and encourage down-stream rent-seeking behaviour from participants (iv) they preserve confidentiality and a worldview which regards as proprietary an element of market infrastructure (boilerplate) that is in fact a public utility.

ClauseHub would be managed more or less like the MediaWiki Foundation: open architecture, non-proprietary. Participants would donate their proprietary technology, and would be free to develop utilities for it based on emerging demand.

Just “boilerplate”?

We take a wide view of what counts as “boilerplate”. All legal documentation that would not feature on a one-page term sheet is “boilerplate”.

For the underlying economic/systems rationale, see: ClauseHub: theory

Overview

• A centralised hub with free, unlimited access for everyone whether as a user or a contributor.
• Transparent: Fully version-controlled, transparent — allow people to take, adapt, copy any iteration.
• Permissive, open-architecture: We are hopeless at predicting the future. Design the architecture to be permissive, developable according to evolving need and use, rather designing for an expected future structure from the outset.
• Ownership model: Charity-owned. Model: Wikimedia Foundation.
• A phased approach: Recognise that development will be slow. Start with what we have: traditional text-based contracts — how folks do things now, for better or worse — expect it to a fully digital, networked, authenticated smart contracts world if that is the best fit.
• Tokenised digital wallets: No central repository of sensitive data. Allow peer to peer.

• Day 1: Purely a text repository to enable people to do more easily what they already do today.
• Day 2: Online networked interaction: real-time contracting.
• Day 100: Expect usage to develop the system iteratively, like an adaptive Ouija board, according to demand.

• Give content away. Freely. Allow people to use all of your stuff without limit. The more of your stuff is on there the greater the chance it will become a standard. Keep no rights. Claim no copyright. This is a community resource. This is the digital commons.
• Be permissive: Allow people to copy, derive, refine and improve without limit. Assuming it is version controlled you can keep your model. But allow the world to make it better.
• Get the oppo involved: Find strategic partners. Especially firms who nominally have conflicting interests to yours. So: competitors; clients; small firms; individuals.
• Pay for it. All of it. Pay a lot. Consider this a down-payment on the savings you will make when you unwind the military-industrial complex that your outsourcing arrangements have become over 20 years.
• Look to split the bill, but don’t quibble: Encourage other strategic partners to pay too, but no penalties if they don’t. The more you all pay, the better the product will be. Pay to make it easy for anyone to engage and use.
• Crowd source to surface the best bits: use reputation management techniques and the network effect to surface most popular forms, segments, components.
• A centralised hub with free, unlimited access for everyone whether as a user or a contributor.
• Transparent: Fully version-controlled, transparent — allow people to take, adapt, copy any iteration.
• Permissive, open-architecture: We are hopeless at predicting the future. Design the architecture to be permissive, developable according to evolving need and use, rather designing for an expected future structure from the outset.
• Ownership model: Charity-owned. Model: Wikimedia Foundation.
• A phased approach: Recognise that development will be slow. Start with what we have: traditional text-based contracts — how folks do things now, for better or worse — expect it to a fully digital, networked, authenticated smart contracts world if that is the best fit.
• Tokenised digital wallets: No central repository of sensitive data. Allow peer to peer.

• Day 1: Purely a text repository to enable people to do more easily what they already do today.
• Day 2: Online networked interaction: real-time contracting.
• Day 100: Expect usage to develop the system iteratively, like an adaptive Ouija board, according to demand.

• Give content away. Freely. Allow people to use all of your stuff without limit. The more of your stuff is on there the greater the chance it will become a standard. Keep no rights. Claim no copyright. This is a community resource. This is the digital commons.
• Be permissive: Allow people to copy, derive, refine and improve without limit. Assuming it is version controlled you can keep your model. But allow the world to make it better.
• Get the oppo involved: Find strategic partners. Especially firms who nominally have conflicting interests to yours. So: competitors; clients; small firms; individuals.
• Pay for it. All of it. Pay a lot. Consider this a down-payment on the savings you will make when you unwind the military-industrial complex that your outsourcing arrangements have become over 20 years.
• Look to split the bill, but don’t quibble: Encourage other strategic partners to pay too, but no penalties if they don’t. The more you all pay, the better the product will be. Pay to make it easy for anyone to engage and use.
• Crowd source to surface the best bits: use reputation management techniques and the network effect to surface most popular forms, segments, components.

Implementation

Phase (a): publish

• Establish platform
• Publish in downloadable templates in word or PDF format and say to everyone "have at it. help yourself." Sponsor then as XYZ content, open source. Standard agreements — NDAs etc.
• Grant pre-approved users (with low threshold) ability to do likewise
• Develop navigation methodology - metadata tags, Boolean search etc.
• Reputation management for templates
• Strip back and break out all the boilerplate - governing law, reps and warranties etc.

Phase (b): modularise

Build an open architecture to participants can start to interact directly, either by reference to the hub itself (for legal terms) or directly through it. Basically, make an online, simple, doc assembly tool, free for anyone to use and play around with as they wish. Like GitHub.

See also

• ClauseHub: theory
• Legal services delivery