iManage and noslegal: Speaking the same language with open-source legal data standards

In legal services, we rely on a common vocabulary to plan, deliver and manage our work. Noslegal, an open-source initiative supported by iManage, helps organizations to quickly adopt this shared language and integrate it directly into their processes and technology.

Within many law firms or in-house teams, regardless of their size, specialty, or geography, there is a persistent problem that continues to impact how they manage opportunities, core services, and people. Perhaps you have noticed it yourself? The problem can arise when lawyers pitch new business; Business Development Managers create regional market intelligence; or users search through collections curated by Knowledge Managers.

What do all these things have in common? The answer is that they rely upon well-governed terms and concepts to describe the work we do. Often, this data suffers from problems like poor design, a lack of shared understanding, weak enforcement, and ungoverned definitions. That last point is key, as there is rarely a well-maintained living definition of what a term, like “Transaction” or “Eastern Europe” means – what it includes, specifically excludes, and its relationship with other concepts. This is a root cause of things being misclassified.

Difficulty answering one of the most important questions

This lack of structured classification creates immediate friction when legal organizations try to tap into their own experience. Without a reliable way to filter past engagements, answering the fundamental question “Have we done work like this before?” becomes a manual, time-consuming scavenger hunt rather than a simple data query.

To answer this question, a person would need to know how values for types of work, laws, industries, places, and participants were defined. Legal organizations have either done this successfully through implementing good data foundations, started and failed because the foundations aren’t strong enough, or not started at all, usually due to a lack of resources or leadership buy-in.

Enter noslegal

Noslegal, supported by iManage, is an open-source, community-based project that offers standardized taxonomies, metadata models, and guides for the legal sector. It helps an organization to quickly adopt a common vocabulary that allows it to define work products and knowledge assets more effectively.

Beginning as an informal group in August 2020, noslegal formalized as adoption and demand grew. They have since partnered with legal, business, and technology professionals across different regions to increase output and continue to govern the assets that are under their watchful eye.

Perfecting the wheel

Noslegal’s efforts are collaborative, aiming to capture best practices in structuring and enriching legal work assets. Its Design Committee is made up of industry experts, including iManage, and they work to ensure that its taxonomies reflect best practices, are well-governed, and meet the evolving needs of the legal market. By leveraging collective expertise, the initiative helps the wider community by avoiding the need to start from scratch and therefore lengthy debates over taxonomy details - so often a momentum killer in projects like this.

Good design principles are at the heart of noslegal – they have a clear vision of who the standards are meant for. In making the taxonomies modular, extensible, and facetable, this helps to make them simple and usable, which is so key to adoption.

In addition to providing the taxonomies, noslegal also publishes guides that explain what their concepts mean, with careful definitions and examples to help distinguish between them. This does wonders for keeping all stakeholders on the same page when discussing labels and helps clarify distinctions that might otherwise be ambiguous.

These efforts have gained traction internationally, resulting in strong adoption in the UK and Europe, as well as early interest from organizations in the US and Canada.

Seamless iManage integration

We are committed to helping customers align with emerging standards, such as those offered by noslegal, and unlocking the benefits of a shared information architecture across the industry.

In support of that commitment, we make it easy for Insight+ users to utilize the easily accessible taxonomies provided by noslegal and upload them directly into the Control Center of the iManage platform for use within knowledge libraries. (Note: Taxonomy fields are currently only available in knowledge libraries, not client matters.)

The simple process can be reviewed in the video below.

Building a strong foundation for AI

Adopting a shared, open-source knowledge metadata model like noslegal enables legal organizations to standardize data tagging, ensuring a consistent information structure necessary for effective AI deployment.

Consistent taxonomies reduce ambiguity and enhance data interoperability, enabling AI models to utilize reliable datasets more efficiently. This enables quicker AI adoption, better automated recommendations, greater value of knowledge assets, and lower risks associated with poor data classification.

A firm's knowledge base not only supports client work but also underpins its technological systems. Tools like search, analytics, and AI services require precise, well-structured metadata to function effectively.

To discover other ways that iManage is preparing the legal industry to navigate the AI-influenced road ahead, visit our AI Confidence™ resources.