About Us
Who We Are
Publishing standardized legal data to recognize legal value, experience, and knowledge — increasing interoperability, fueling AI, and producing better outcomes.
The SALI Alliance is a not-for-profit organization directed by a board comprised of leaders of legal industry professional associations and driven forward by volunteers building the taxonomy and supporting technologies.
Law firms, in-house counsel, and legal tech companies 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 these thousands of tags serve as the industry’s common language, improving outcomes and value.
Our History
The SALI Alliance began when legal industry leaders lamented a common problem – inconsistent and ineffective taxonomies that limited the insights and innovation they could bring to their organizations. Creating a common taxonomy became a passion project, and, in 2017, a formally organized not-for-profit corporation.
Leaders at the Association of Legal Administrators (ALA), the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA), and the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) quickly recognized the promise of a standard taxonomy, and a representative of each created the organization’s first board of directors. Since that time, these representatives have steered the organization, with significant progress driven forward by a core group of volunteers, members, supporters, and implementers spanning all areas of the legal industry ecosystem.
The original leadership team spent countless hours organizing meetings, developing content, socializing the standard, and seeking input from professionals across the industry. Without Toby Brown, Justin Ergler, Jim Hannigan, Keith Lipman, Mark Medice, Adam Stock, and Oliver Yandle, the SALI Alliance would not be what it is today.
The first version of the LMSS was released on February 4, 2020. Original contributors that shared their own sample codes as a baseline for development of the taxonomy included Microsoft, Perkins Coie, and Wolters Kluwer, along with many others that offered their feedback and ideas.
The first full known implementation of the Legal Matter Specification Standard was by Am Law 200 law firm Goulston & Storrs in 2020. Version two of the LMSS was published on March 9, 2022, and the API standard was released on May 10, 2024.
