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Using the LMSS

Legal Matter Standard Specification (LMSS)

You may adopt the standard  — in whole or in part — into your own systems. You can feel free to extend (or scale back) the LMSS, tailored to your organization’s needs. But note that achieving the standard’s full benefit will involve incorporating the standard’s core framework. That will ensure interoperability between (1) your organization’s own systems and (2) external SALI-compliant organizations (e.g., clients, firms, vendors).

Example Usage:

  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.
      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!”

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:

Creating custom codes?

For many reasons, you should decline the urge to create home-grown, custom-built codes:

  • Designing a robust taxonomy that works for various computer systems — then seeking consensus/approval from all stakeholders — is a massive, technical, and arduous task.
  • Data with customized taxonomies/UUIDs becomes siloed.
  • Sharing data that is customized/siloed is far more difficult, inhibiting organizations from conducting business with others.

Embedding the LMSS

Some organizations (e.g., software vendors), offer value by including the LMSS in their off-the-shelf products. SALI can assist with this process: embedding the standard in your products and services in a form that most suits the needs of your clients and customers.

Mapping the LMSS

If replacing a legacy taxonomy with the LMSS is impractical, then a common and easier method is mapping your legacy codes to the LMSS. The standard was designed to accommodate many-to-one pairings.

In sum, SALI welcomes all forms of your implementations of the LMSS standard. And if you extend/enhance the LMSS, please let us know so that we can explore integration of your improvements into the LMSS standard. So your enhancements will make your organization’s data even more interoperable with other SALI-compliant organizations.

The SALI License

Lastly, SALI’s mission is to create standards that facilitate communication, not fragment it. So any SALI-licensed materials cannot be used to create competing standards. But any of our stakeholders (e.g., firms and legal service providers, vendors, clients, academics) can freely incorporate SALI into their systems. The public can access and use an XML implementation of our latest LSSS standard in our GitHub repository, available under the MIT License. SALI’s standard specification and associated documentation are licensed under the CC BY ND license.