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Standardized legal data to recognize legal value, experience, and knowledge — increasing interoperability, fueling AI, and producing better outcomes.

Vendors, providers (e.g., firms), and clients are quickly and broadly moving towards standardizing with SALI tags — improving legal-services classification and delivery. The industry is collectively implementing SALI tags to gain insights about legal work, and those 10,000+ tags serve as the industry’s common language, improving outcomes and value.

Why does SALI matter?

Here’s an example of the problem that SALI is solving.

  1. Your organization spends many hours tagging work with `PTAB Appeals` tag — and you're proud of your success!

  2. But then you try to interact with other systems (e.g., Thomson Reuters, Docket Alarm, NetDocuments, Foundation, Intapp), but if you want to push/pull data to/from them, 

    1. They don't have a `PTAB Appeals` tag

    2. So you'll have to add all your tags manually​.

    3. And then it's bespoke to your firm: 

      1. As those systems (e.g., TR, Docket Alarm) get new `PTAB Appeals` documents, you won't get them. 

      2. Because your newly created tag is bespoke/unique/non-interoperable.

  3. Even worse, after looking at SALI, you realize that `PTAB Appeals` is a less-than-optimal tag!  

    1. Wouldn't it be better to tag it this way?

      1. Area of Law = Patent Law

      2. Service = Appellate Practice

      3. Forum/Venue = PTAB

    2. And with those three tags, you're able to run much better queries — that are more granular!

      1. "Show me all Patent matters."

      2. "Show me all Appeals."

      3. "Show me all PTAB matters."

      4. "Show me all PTAB Appeals." (Two tags: Forum:PTAB + Service:Appeals)

  4. Then you realize, "Oh, SALI is smart. I should align my taxonomy/ontology with theirs — especially since the entire industry is rallying around SALI, making it easier to interoperate!"

Legal Matter Standard Specification (LMSS)

Explore the Standard

The best way to browse the SALI LMSS 2.0 standard is through the Stanford WebProtégé tool:

Select LMSS 2.0 to see the latest official release; to see the most recent working draft for comment, select DRAFT LMSS 2.x

SALI on GitHub

Excel version:

Alliance for Indian Legal Ontology and Standards Working Groups
Will Collaborate to Develop Ontologies Using the SALI Framework

CLOC Announces Endorsement of the SALI Alliance

NEWS

SALI Alliance Defines and Translates 12,000+ Legal Data Tags in 11 Languages, Paves the Way for Accelerated Global Adoption

Read More

SALI Publishes Overview of SALI LMSS on Influential 3 Geeks Blog

Read More

SALI Alliance Releases Second Major Version of the Legal Matter Specification Standard

Read More

NetDocuments Joins SALI Alliance, Advocates Legal Classification Standards

SALI Legal Matter Specification Standard framework part of NetDocuments PLAN and ORGANIZATION Solutions - Read More

SALI Litigation Extension and Innovative LMSS Viewer

SALI Efforts Accelerate During Pandemic to Provide More Depth for Litigation AttributesWhile Facilitating Code Viewing with a New LMSS Viewer - Read More

SALI Presentation at NetDocuments Elevate 2020

Industry Leaders Chat about SALI (Toby Brown, Kelly Harbour, Jim Hannigan) - Watch

ILTACON 2020 Presentation by Patrick Dundas, Meg Evans, Kelly Harbour

What started as an idea at ILTACON a few years ago, has now graduated to a formal non-profit dedicated to achieving practical standards for coding matters, time entries, and documents: The SALI Alliance. Hear directly from the founders of the SALI movement as to how it started, where it is today, and practical steps and guidance to implement the SALI standards at your firm. - View the Session (requires access)

SALI: Building Common Standards for Legal Services

Matter standard version 1 release provides a foundation for driving efficiency and enabling change for the legal industry - Read More

SALI Alliance Announces LMSS 1.0 of Legal Matter Standard

Matter standard version 1 release provides a foundation for driving efficiency and enabling change for the legal industry - Read More

SALI Alliance Announces Addition of International Legal Technology Association as Founding Member

The Addition of Key Founding Member Represents a Milestone in Standards Industry Adoption and Endorsement - Read More

Microsoft Signs on as First User of ‘Standard’ Legal Language

The Standards Advancement for the Legal Industry Alliance announced Microsoft had begun a trial implementation of the new language - Read More

 
 

Quick Overview: Explore/
Download LMSS 2.0 (1 Minute)

 

Strategic Knowledge & Innovation Legal Leaders' Summit Presentation (5 Minutes)

 

SALI at LegalWeek 2023 | Generative AI Tagging (50 Minutes)

 

Standardizing Legal Data: SALI's 10,000-Plus Tags Adopted By Providers, Vendors, And Clients (40 Minutes)

  • “The work SALI is doing to establish industry standards on matter types addresses two critical problems facing the legal industry: first, our continuing quest for value-orientation and second, extreme inefficiency in the buying and selling of legal services.”
    Jae Um

  • “What is exciting about the SALI initiative is the ability to develop an underlying framework upon which to build smarter systems.”
    Rebecca Benavides, Microsoft

  • “A modern clear legal standard provides the unifying language between firm and client, offering clarity and transparency while promoting efficiency and opening the door to accelerated innovation. SALI’s standard does that.”
    Vincent J. Cordo, Jr., Holland & Knight

Rationale for legal industry standards

Industry standards have been around a very long time. Their purpose is to enable a more effective and efficient market for a product or service.

Standards come about when industry participants recognize that a there is no real competitive advantage to having custom and unique specifications. Industries standardize when they realize that the lack of a standard hinders the market, and limits innovation and creativity.

Standards have value for all participants in the market, from raw material companies, to manufacturers, to supply chains, and especially the ultimate consumers. The costs of consumer products would be dramatically higher absent multitudes of standards. A legal matter standard will help in the sourcing of legal services.

SALI Alliance Standards

SALI Alliance Standards are:

  • Open — They are free and available to for anyone to use free of charge.
  • Industry-Driven — They are managed by an independent non-profit where all stakeholders can participate.
  • Practical — They are provided with reference implementations.

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About the Legal Matter Specification Standard (LMSS)

The LMSS is a modern, common language that defines legal matters — a set of services for a specific legal need. LMSS specifies legal work in way that is:

  • Viewer neutral — It is neutral to law firms and clients
  • Adaptable — It accommodates the way that a legal matter evolves from inception to completion and captures critical attributes
  • Extensible — It has a well-defined extension mechanism to meet the specific needs of each organization, while fitting into a common industry framework,
  • Digitally accessible —It has associated programming APIs designed to support the evolving industry needs for innovation, transparency, and free market pricing.

About the SALI Alliance

The Standards Advancement for the Legal Industry (SALI) Alliance is an independent not-for-profit, member organization that was formally established on May 15, 2017 with the goal of producing standards for the legal industry to accelerate innovation, and improve efficiency. The SALI Alliance includes a wide range of stakeholders including law firms, companies, service providers and legal industry associations.

SALI thanks the Association of Legal Administrators for the admin and IT support it provides.

Do you want a say in the development of the SALI Standard?

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