Outline of noslegal taxonomy project
nos legal
open source legal for all of us
noslegal is an open-source, non-profit project aimed at developing a simplified and standardized taxonomy for categorizing legal work. Launched in 2020, the initiative seeks to create a “common language” that can be used across the legal industry to make tasks like project management, knowledge sharing, and client reporting more consistent and efficient. The project is supported by various global law firms, legal tech companies, and professionals.
GUIRBADEN is sponsoring noslegal.
But the noslegal project is independent of any sponsor: it was founded by Graeme Johnston, who still coordinates it. Graeme is also the founder of the Juralio software company and a former global law firm partner.
Law firms and technology companies involved collaborate to produce taxonomies which are published on an open source basis. Anyone can download and use them for free with no strings.
Material published today includes simple taxonomies of
- major types of legal work and areas of law.
- a detailed taxonomy of countries, their subunits, regions and international organisation membership. This builds on the UN/ISO standard.
- types of person, property and relationship involved in legal matters, including roles (e.g. buyer/seller).
- sectors – based on the UN standard, but hiding those of little relevance to modern legal work and expanding on others (e.g. digital, financial).
- information assets – for example, different types of documents and their status.
For details and downloads see www.noslegal.org
The main project at the moment addresses phases and major deliverables for a selection of legal matter types. Various international firms are involved and committed and a first set of outputs will be published in September 2024.
The philosophy from day one has been to keep things simple and internationally relevant, as opposed to getting deep into the details of US, UK or other specific systems.
Legal operations and client service
pricing, project management, process improvement, efficiency.
Knowledge
sharing and finding information and templates more effectively.
Legal operations and client service
pricing, project management, process improvement, efficiency.
Marketing and sales
describing what the firm does consistently.
Joining up internally
across countries and throughout the cycle (marketing > sales > executing work > capturing knowledge and improving).
Participants have mostly been UK-based so far but the coordinating team is very interested in raising interest among law firms in continental Europe.
GUIRBADEN believes it is also in the interests of legal departments to help drive forward the development of shared taxonomies in law firms, as it is relevant to pricing, project management, process and legal operations.
If not now, then when?
Ready to streamline data management for Legal, Compliance, Ethics, and Integrity?
Contact us to learn how we can help your organization achieve optimal efficiency and cost savings by redesigning its legal ecosystem.
Not Ready yet?
Contact us as well to understand how Guirbaden will get you to readiness.
Get in touch with us to discover how we can assist your organization in optimizing efficiency and reducing costs by reimagining its legal framework.