I made this because I think that if contracts were written in plain text files and managed more like software, from version control to IDEs, lawyers would work more quickly and intelligently for their clients, saving them money.<p>But the entire practice of transactional law is stuck on Microsoft Word. My clients are mostly technology companies with an appetite for innovation. With their encouragement, I am moving my own legal practice away from formats like Microsoft Word and into plain text.<p>Electronic signatures of plain text contracts is the starting point for that effort. The MVP is this developer API.<p>If the reception to this product is positive, I'll continue to release the products that I build. In time, my hope is that plain text will supplant Microsoft Word in the drafting, negotiation and execution of contracts.
I used to be Director of Research at "one company that makes some of the leading legal information access products".<p>You won't likely divorce lawyers from their beloved Word anytime soon. But your approach of
plain text API is not what I would call a "solution" but a mere building block that may be used in a future solution. Law firms and sole practitioners will prefer something already finished, an end product. So I would call what you called "MVP" an "advanced feature", whereas
your basic solution is still not there until it has a GUI (which may have to look like Word?).<p>I personally love plain text, but legal documents have structure that ought to be dealt with in a solution for the future. The question is how to do that, and layout/formatting - while good for rendering - is not good for representing that structure.<p>It's good that you are working on innovating in this space; I would encourage you to talk to customers and to learn about the products in this space [5,6]. Some must-have features like templating have already been mentioned here.<p>[1] <a href="https://mena.thomsonreuters.com/en/products-services/legal/contract-express.html" rel="nofollow">https://mena.thomsonreuters.com/en/products-services/legal/c...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.trustradius.com/contract-management" rel="nofollow">https://www.trustradius.com/contract-management</a>
I have found it impractical to get lawyers to use anything other than Microsoft Word even when there are clear benefits (like online collaboration and shared version history). The reason they give is that they don't want a shared history (need to be able to clean document history for sending to external stakeholders) and that they know the other side will be using Microsoft Word anyways. So it's an equilibrium because they know the other side will use Microsoft word so then they have to use Microsoft Word.<p>I have forced our lawyers to use better technologies but then we end up with Microsoft word documents from opposing counsel. So back to Word it is.<p>There's a gravitational pull that is not worth us spending any % of a $1000/hr bill on; this is a scenario where doing anything different where they have to be trained is costlier than keeping the status quo, where that is a MSFT Word license the fraction of the cost of a billable hour.
Have you developed a standardised format for expressing a legal contract as plain text (including clause numbers, definitions, etc)? The example I see on your Docs page doesn't include any clause numbering, and says:<p>> It's a plain text file so there is no formatting. You can add extra spaces or tabs if you would like and they will appear in the final contract.<p>So I guess it's up to each drafting lawyer to come up with their own formatting conventions. I think that is potentially a recipe for disaster, unless the intention is that the plain text contract will only ever be edited by way of an interface that enforces standardised formatting conventions (which seems like it defeats the purpose).<p>Don't get me wrong, the current process of lawyers marking up each other's Word documents is a pain, but at least with Word when you go to enter a new clause it will by default have the same formatting and styling as all the other clauses. Maybe I'm missing the use case though.<p>Also, just to mention, version control and e-signatures are already available to transactional lawyers, though the solutions are imperfect and I guess they aren't available to everyone (I presume the software is expensive).<p>I don't mean to be critical or unduly sceptical by the way. I personally would love a move to simple, text-based processes for drafting and negotiating documents. But my own experience tells me that non-technically-inclined lawyers and clients would be slow to adopt a solution like this.
Is there a legal way to demonstrate the legally binding aspect?<p>I mean could you, for example, sign a document with your friend, have them purposefully violate it, and then take them to court to prove that the courts will back up the document?<p>I am asking because the existing digital signature solutions have the benefit of having proved that they are accepted in court.
This is a great first step towards better online signing of contracts. I agree with what the FAQ says: "I've always thought that the fake cursive signatures that most electronic signature platforms make you use when e-signing a contract are silly". Quite true. Drawing a cursive signature online is like dancing a waltz in a nightclub. Signing via a simple action like a click / tap / keystroke should be fine.<p>But I'd expect a tool like this to have mathematically verifiable signatures, for example by using GPG keys, or perhaps by using blockchain. Ideally, the signatures would also be calculated based on a hash of the body of the contract. That would be a real game-changer, it would allow you to prove that a given party signed a given exact version of a contract. Magistrate doesn't appear to have anything like that right now, the signature is literally just the text "/s/ Jane Smith". Unless I'm missing something?
This is really really good. If you can build a collaboration ecosystem around this a kind of GitHub meets Seedlegals then you can create a huge amount of value and disrupt an industry.<p>Where do I invest?
Lawyer here. Much like "Smart Contracts" (presently the worst named thing for anything these days), this is that thing where a tech person believes that lawyer problems are like tech problems and they're just <i>not.</i><p>Real life lawyer contracts just aren't very much like "code," at all.<p>Code does exactly what the text says, "perfectly," every time. Therefore, it's important to be succinct and "correct."<p>Contracts, at best, are the best approximation of what two human beings are agreeing to at any given time -- and here's the important part -- infrequently "do" anything AT ALL; they just kind of shore up what the two people were planning to do anyway.<p>Contracts are more like a best-guess list of all possible errors and what to do about them when they come up.
Interesting product. Congrats on shipping!<p>I'm wondering about the use case of developers actually wanting to send out contracts (on behalf of their employer, I assume). Is this something that your clients who are software developers are asking for?<p>Disclosure: I'm a lawyer and software developer.<p>Edit: Correct a brain fart.
This is great - I really hope to see this take hold. I work for a key player in the legal software space, and easily-parsed contracts would be a game-changer for us. Especially in regards to billing reconciliation between two firms, where there can be a lot of back-and-forth over contract terms. Being able to easily parse and present the terms of a contract could change this forever.<p>I noticed that it seems to be limited to 50 contracts per month currently. Are there plans for larger tiers?
I see.<p>Have a look at script-writing software and its auto-formatting. Some are actually open-source and could very well wipe the floor with some bloated, overpriced alternatives.<p>The scriptwriting community is incredibly anal about format so I think you could benefit from having a look at some of these pieces of software. Things like templates can be molded from community standards.<p><i>Kit-scenarist</i> is particularly good but that's my bias as a loyal user for many years. And yes, I write screenplays ever so often.
This is great! I too have wondered why contracts can't be in plain text since the versioning and back-and-forth between legal and business teams could be handled so much more easily than Word revisions (or worse, PDF comments).<p>You might also want to connect with 'kemitchell[1], also a former software developer who became an attorney. He recently launched a similar initiative to generate license terms for selling software[2]; essentially another initiative towards easier contract automation & management.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kemitchell" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kemitchell</a><p>[2] <a href="https://writing.kemitchell.com/2022/01/22/Fast-Path-1.0.0.html" rel="nofollow">https://writing.kemitchell.com/2022/01/22/Fast-Path-1.0.0.ht...</a>
So where is the proof that all parties signed located? On your servers? So do I rely on your company still offering the service if there is a contract dispute 5 years down the line, or how do you proof in court that the contract was signed?<p>Second question: would you sign ndas since a lot of contracts are confidential?
I've used eSignatures.io in the past, which uses Markdown for contracts, and found it to be exponentially easier to use than DocuSign, so I appreciate simpler solutions coming into the space.<p>There's a couple reasons why I wouldn't switch to Magistrate at this point:<p>1. eSignatures allows templating. Sometimes tacking on parties at the end isn't enough, because things like products or payment terms need to be parameterized inline.<p>2. Webhooks that allow taking actions when the contract is either rejected or signed by all parties. It's also nice to be able to attach some metadata to the contract e.g. (a purchase order #) so it comes back in the payload with the web hook.<p>These may be use cases you don't want to cover yet, but thought I'd list some features I've been relying on as a developer building solutions in this space.
I appreciate the concept here, but I have to ask: do you have a security page for this that documents the controls in place?<p>I get that that's probably not a priority for a startup, but the risk in someone relying on this for contract-work getting burned by someone exploiting your platform is pretty great (i.e potentially unbounded downside), especially if the detection/response processes don't catch or can't properly identify the adversary.<p>I'm trying to account for the scenario where an adversary exploits a flaw that allows them to sign a contract on behalf of a client of the service at a time when audit trails aren't thorough enough for the client to repudiate a false signature.
Congrats !! idea is great. I always fret dealing with clients when it comes to legal stuff as I don't charge that much to afford a lawyer. This could be a very helpful tool for small indie developers like me or even the more established ones, who I have seen fight over petty stuff with clients. It would be helpful if one can see few examples or templates. Also for someone who does less than 2 contracts a month, is there a possibility that for extra free , there could be some custom template depending on the situation ?
I have to say, I've wanted someone to do this for years. Amazing to see it coming about. Imagine if it were possible to describe more and more things the way Creative Commons does?
standard text format for legal pleadings feels like it has more of a value prop<p>- for litigants, standardizes the production of documents<p>- for legal researchers, makes it easier to discover / extract what they need (vs current PDF workflow)<p>- for hosting tools like PACER, makes it easier to index references and preview docs. for courts who have to accept e-file, lets them do more auto linting / checking on filings<p>- for people in the judge's office, makes it possible to build summarization tools that simplify reading memos etc
This is interesting! I'm going to throw a few questions your way, please feel free to answer as many or few as you'd like. A lot of these are stream of thought things too, so apologies.<p>Do you see this product serving the lawyer-lawyer use case, lawyer-individual use case, or to an individual-individual market?[0] As an individual, I feel like there may be a lot of friction in drafting and sending a contract for another individual to sign. The chain of custody/assurance of no editing is one aspect that would drive me to do this process through a lawyer (or any other document signing company, but I don't have any experience with them).<p>Can I request/propose changes to a document sent to me? Or is this more for final drafts to be sent for final signing? Being plain text, I imagine diffing could be very straightforward.<p>It seems to me there's an assumption that email access is enough to validate you are the person this is intended for. I wouldn't be surprised if other online offerings like this had similar assumptions, but I'm not sure if I agree with the premise. I would imagine an entity sending a contract could include a PGP key, and you signing it could also sign the message, but a lot of this seems like a post-signing check, not a pre-req to sign.<p>I like that there is a style manual that formats the draft. I know it exists as a guideline for non-digital uses too, but conforming to a standard in the digital representation should make sharing and templating more standardized. Not a question, just something that excites me as not-legal-expert person.<p>Do you think making a plugin for Microsoft Word that calls your website would be a middle-ground for moving people into your service?<p>I like how you mention IDEs as well. I truly do not know the current flow for making a contract, and assume it is that there are templates that you change to match the specific situation. Completing templates in a guided manner seems like it could be a big deal, especially if there are sub-templates for each variation that a section would have.<p>Overall, I'm excited. I think the legal system has a lot of pain points for lawyers and individuals alike. Some of those can't be fixed, but tech can definitely solve some, and I think this is one of the problems tech CAN help with.<p>[0] Lawyer in this case can also mean a business' or other entity's legal counsel.
I’ve always wondered if contracts themselves couldn’t be expressed in a parsable domain-specific language.<p>IANAL, but it seems to me that source code and contracts/legislation/policies are similar in many ways: logic, rules, special words with reserved meaning.<p>The right DSL might go a long way to automating the boring stuff out of law, and serve to highlight the contentious stuff for human judgement.
This is a neat idea. So is there a repository where the contract is stored, and does every one have read access to it? Does a version control track changes? I do feel you'd have more success with a web app or desktop app.
I couldnt tell what country and thus legal system this was aimed at, so I've assumed this is geared for the US and not European countries and spent like 20seconds on it before coming back to make this comment.
20 years ago, you could improve a lawyer's contract workflow in three ways:<p>Make Word load faster.<p>Make Adobe Acrobat load faster.<p>Make the printer print faster.<p>This hasn't changed much since 2002. If you are to reinvent the wheel, you really need to see it turn.
Super cool. I want to see more legal tools for developers to improve workflow efficiency. As a developer I'm especially interested in finding free contracts I can use to create agreements with other developers to work on mutually-owned products/businesses together.<p>Also, I like the pricing page-- especially this approach: "Keep this low, early adopter price as new features are added." -- I'll keep this in mind for my own products, I think customers will appreciate being grandfathered in to low prices-- it's a win-win.<p>To the developer-- Do you have any advice for the following scenario: You invite another developer to work on your product, such as Magistrate. How do you go about ensuring legal compliance with that developer--<p>A. That they make the appropriate work contributions to obtain the agreed upon equity level. I.e. you worked 1600 hours on the product this year, they worked 400 hours. You've both logged these hours. In terms of the work, you offer 25% equity, but that's if they also put in the same amount of money you've put in (such as for various IT, marketing, administrative costs), as an example of: You retaining 75% equity and giving 25% equity to a partner.<p>B. That they respect IP protections of the product (i.e. they don't immediately go off and try to build a competitor)
Whats the point of switching from Word to another website. It's just switching one dependency to another dependency, at least it doesnt depend on the cloud.