Hi everyone, I'm a contributor to LawPatch. We started this project because we wanted legal positions that we could call like functions (as if we were coding).<p>Our aim is to make legal language simple without introducing ambiguity or extra risk.<p>We think even the most technical legal agreements could look like term sheets using this drafting method. A spectrum of standardised positions also stops lawyers from constantly replicating work.<p>This is is an open source project by lawyers who are also developers - we'd love to hear from anyone who's got ideas for improvements or would like to contribute language for other areas.<p>We have patches drafted for the United States, UK and Australia. Happy to hear from people in other countries too! Creating this extra level of abstraction is also an opportunity to standardize documents across jurisdictions.
Nice work! Other projects in this space include
<a href="http://www.commonaccord.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.commonaccord.org/</a> and
<a href="http://www.contractstandards.com/clause" rel="nofollow">http://www.contractstandards.com/clause</a><p>I am tracking instances of this genre at
<a href="http://www.legalese.io/#priorart" rel="nofollow">http://www.legalese.io/#priorart</a>
I like this idea in general, as a non-lawyer who tries to read things I'm signing, but I wonder if foot-noting or other in-document attribution system is a better answer? I can see struggles where a contract written with LawPatch is consulted in 10-15 years, and there are dead links or other similar technical problems. I don't see where LawPatch addresses that, unless I'm missing something?
Clear wording and incorporation by reference is very similar to the way the details of construction contracts and building regulations work in the United States.<p>Home page of LawPatch: <a href="http://lawpatch.org/" rel="nofollow">http://lawpatch.org/</a>
On a day that Drupal 8 Was released, nmap 7 was released, and bitcoin got it's first visa-backed debit card, this is the biggest thing I've seen today.