Standard Defining a Common Language for Describing Legal Matters Now Available for Use

Chicago, June 12, 2019 – The Standards Advancement for the Legal Industry (SALI) Alliance announced today at Legal Marketing Association’s (LMA) P3 Practice Innovation Conference that SALI is releasing the Legal Matter Specification Standard (LMSS) 1.0, Revision 2. The LMSS represents an important milestone in providing interoperability of legal matter data that can aid in improving the efficiency of the legal industry while creating a community for the exchange of ideas around standards. Revision 2 sets the stage for reference implementations and initial use of the standard.

The LMSS provides a common language for describing legal matters in a party-neutral, extensible manner. This release includes the publication of an overall structure as well as eight code sets for Area of Law, Courts (U.S. only), Governmental Bodies (U.S. only), Industries, Legal Entities, Locations, Player Roles, and Processes. The LMSS is an open, free standard that available at https://salilegal.org. "The release of Revision 2 is a major milestone," said Adam Stock, Co-Chair of the LMSS Committee. "The public and the legal community can now access the standard and start using it today."

“This new standard has the potential to bring forward many of legal procurement’s dreams about effectiveness and efficiency,” said Dr Silvia Hodges, CEO of Buying Legal Council, “Clients should quickly adopt the new standard and expect their firms to use it.”

The SALI Alliance founding principle is industry inclusiveness. Organization members include firms, clients, organizations and industry technology service providers. "This draft of the standard is the collective work of many people and organizations. Notably, Bloomberg Law and the Free Law Foundation have made major contributions of codes for U.S. Governmental Bodies and U.S. Courts that are used in more than 5 million publicly available documents," said Toby Brown, SALI Board president.

SALI was created to ensure all stakeholders in the industry have a voice to shape the most useful and relevant standards that will create a common language to drive efficiency and serve as a foundation for innovating.

“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,” said Jae Um, Director of Pricing Strategy at Baker McKenzie.

“Through its inclusive approach, SALI and its members are paving the way for a more measurable and transparent legal services market. SALI’s efforts will benefit all stakeholders in the legal system, and set the stage for what will no doubt be the further evolution of the legal profession: a more efficient legal marketplace, driven by data,” said Pieter Gunst, CEO, Legal.io.

Any company or organization can become a member at www.sali.org. Members can participate in defining the legal services market through regular SALI standard committee meetings. Membership tiers are offered for clients, law firms, solution providers and other industry stakeholders. One of the unique benefits of SALI membership is its community for idea exchange: providing the ability for collaboration with stakeholders across the industry.

About the Standards Advancement for the Legal Industry (SALI) Alliance

The Standards Advancement for the Legal Industry (SALI) Alliance promotes an inclusive industry neutral standard for the progress of legal industry transparency, efficiency and innovation. It was founded by Legal Marketing Association and Association of Legal Administrators. Its mission is to create a common language for all participants for the delivery of modern legal services. Learn more at www.sali.org, on Twitter at @SALIalliance, and connect with the SALI Alliance on LinkedIn. SALI’s board consists of Toby Brown, Chief Practice Management Officer at Perkins Coie LLP; Oliver P. Yandle, J.D., CAE, ALA’s executive director; and Kat Seiffert, LMA’s interim representative and head of marketing.

SALI members include:

• Association of Legal Administrators (founding member)
• Legal Marketing Association (founding member)
• Allen Matkins
• Bloomberg Law
• Cox Automotive
• Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass LLP
• GSK
• Greenberg Traurig
• Holland & Knight
• Honigman LLP
• Husch Blackwell
• Humana
• Intapp
• Level 2 Legal Solutions
• Lexis
• McKool Smith
• Mishcon de Reya
• Pepper Hamilton
• Perkins Coie
• Prosperoware
• Schulte Roth & Zabel
• Shell
• Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis
• Wolters Kluwer

Endorsers include:

• ACC
• Buying Legal
• Citigroup
• Deutsche Bank
• Edge International
• Foundation Software Group
• LawVision
• Microsoft

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For more information, contact Kat Seiffert, Legal Marketing Association at kseiffert@legalmarketing.org or 312.673.4742, or Oliver Yandle, J.D., CAE, Association of Legal Administrators at OYandle@alanet.org or 847.267.1570.