Interoperable Legal Data Standards

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Connecting legal data across multiple standards through interoperability.

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About FOLIO

What is FOLIO?

FOLIO is an open, CC-BY licensed project that helps develop and maintain interoperability between multiple legal standards through software, standards development, education, and stakeholder collaboration. Through its modular and federated design, FOLIO enables different legal systems and standards to communicate effectively while preserving their unique strengths.

What is an ontology?

An ontology, often referred to as a knowledge graph, is a structured representation of concepts and their relationships.

What is a taxonomy?

A taxonomy is a hierarchical classification system that organizes concepts into categories and subcategories.

FOLIO's approach

FOLIO combines the power of ontologies and taxonomies with modern software to create a modular, federated approach to connecting and extending legal information standards.

Key Features

FOLIO Standards

Comprehensive

FOLIO standards include over 18,000 standardized concepts covering a wide range of legal domains, including both common and specialized terms across multiple legal systems.

Unique Identifiers

Every concept linked by FOLIO is assigned a unique IRI (Internationalized Resource Identifier), ensuring unambiguous identification and consistent data representation across different standards and systems.

Multilingual Support

Translations and country-specific spellings for global accessibility and cross-border legal work, including support for the ten most common languages across multiple legal standards and jurisdictions.

Modular Design

FOLIO uses a modular design approach where different components can be developed, updated, and used independently. For example, jurisdiction-specific legal terms can be maintained separately from global concepts, allowing for efficient specialization and reuse across systems.

Federated Development

FOLIO standards are developed collaboratively through a federated approach, where multiple independent stakeholders can develop under interoperable technical standards while maintaining their autonomy.

FOLIO Users

Who Benefits from FOLIO?

Law Firms

Law firms can standardize information across their matter management, document management, and timekeeping systems and share this information with clients and partners.

Corporate Legal Departments

Corporate legal departments can use FOLIO resources to harmonize their systems of record, to improve data quality and consistency, and to facilitate better information sharing with their service providers.

Legal Service Providers

Legal service providers can use FOLIO resources to improve the quality of their services, to streamline their operations, and to enhance their ability to integrate with their clients' systems.

Legal Technology Providers

Legal technology providers can use FOLIO resources to improve the interoperability of their solutions, to safeguard the results of their generative AI, and to create innovative new products and services.

Courts

Courts can use FOLIO resources to improve the quality of their case management systems, to facilitate data sharing between jurisdictions, and to enable the development of e-filing systems.

Legislators and Regulators

Legislators and regulators can use FOLIO resources to improve the quality of their drafting, to facilitate the interpretation of their laws, and to enable the development of regulatory technology solutions.

Legal Educators

Legal educators can use FOLIO resources to improve the quality of their teaching materials, to facilitate the development of legal tech curricula, and to enable the development of legal tech research projects.

Researchers

Researchers can use FOLIO resources and FOLIO-annotated data to improve the quality of their research, to facilitate the sharing of their data, and to enable the development of new tools like legal search engines or AI models.

Use Cases

FOLIO Use Cases

FOLIO is designed to be immediately useful and usable for many use cases.

Contract Management

Yes, FOLIO resources can be used to standardize data with CLM systems. FOLIO can even be used to annotate the text of contracts themselves, making them machine-readable and directly linked to CLMs or other relationships available through FOLIO-compatible standards.

Greener Acres Lease

This Lease Agreement (the "Agreement") is made and entered into as of January 3rd, 2020 , by and between:

Acme, Inc. , hereinafter referred to as the "Lessor",

and

Emca LLC , hereinafter referred to as the "Lessee".

WITNESSETH:

WHEREAS, Lessor is the owner of certain real property being, lying and situated in the County of Anytown, State of ST, and legally described as follows: real property having a street address of 123 Main Street, Anytown, ST 12345 .

The term of this Lease shall begin on February 1st, 2020, and shall continue until January 31st, 2021, unless earlier terminated as provided herein.

Case Management

FOLIO resources can also be used to standardize data with case or matter management systems, either at record level or in the text of documents like complaints, motions, or orders.

Case Number: 2020-12345
Case Status: Smith v. Jones
Areas of Law:
  • Franchise
Role:
  • Appellant
  • Plaintiff
Actions:
Case Number: 2019-3456
Case Status: Doe v. Acme et al.
Areas of Law:
  • Employment
Role:
  • Defendant
Actions:

Generative AI

FOLIO-compatible standards are also useful in generative AI applications, where rich, expert-vetted knowledge graphs can be used to improve the quality and coverage of AI-generated results. The FOLIO Python library and API include LLM-based search capabilities out-of-the-box.

# Types
<TYPES>
{"C Corporation", "S Corporation", ...}
</TYPES>
          
          
# Instructions
Please classify the Entity below as exactly one of the TYPES provided above.

# Entity
bobs hotdogs llc d/b/a bobs hamburgers

# Classification
```json
...

Implement FOLIO

Explore

Learn about FOLIO through our documentation, tutorials, GitHub, or forum.

Integrate

Use the FOLIO standards, software libraries, or public API to integrate legal data standards into your systems and services.

Collaborate

Share your experiences, feedback, and contributions with the FOLIO community to help improve the standard.

FOLIO Implementation Steps

Browse the FOLIO API Taxonomy

Explore the complete FOLIO taxonomy through our interactive browser

Explore Taxonomy

Frequently Asked Questions

Learn more about FOLIO and its impact on legal technology.

What is are FOLIO knowledge graphs?

FOLIO knowledge graphs together create a comprehensive ontology providing over 18,000 standardized tags for legal concepts.

How does FOLIO ensure data consistency?

FOLIO-compatible standards must use unique identifiers (IRIs) for each tag, which are used consistently across API calls and responses in the legal tech ecosystem. This ensures that different systems can accurately interpret and exchange legal data.

Is FOLIO suitable for small law firms or legal tech startups?

Absolutely! FOLIO is designed to benefit public and private organizations of all sizes. For small firms and startups, it provides a robust, pre-built framework for organizing legal information, saving time and resources in development while ensuring compatibility with other legal tech solutions.

How can I contribute to FOLIO's development?

FOLIO follows a federated development process on GitHub. Users are free to fork or PR the standard or provide feedback and suggestions directly.

What makes FOLIO more than just a list of legal terms?

FOLIO provides a framework for structuring and working with knowledge in an interoperable, legal-friendly way. Taxonomies of terms are key to this idea, but the software and process for developing and connecting them is equally important.

How does FOLIO support advanced AI in legal technology?

FOLIO software and standards enable a hybrid approach between human-curated top-down ontologies and neural networks like Large Language Models (LLMs). This combination helps improve the reliability and relevance of AI-generated legal insights, leveraging both structured knowledge and advanced machine learning techniques.

Who is involved in developing and maintaining FOLIO?

FOLIO is the collective work of expert volunteers and contributors whose discussion and work are conducted in the open on GitHub and our community forums. This diverse group includes legal professionals, technologists, domain experts, and other stakeholders who share a common goal of improving legal data standards.

How can I access and implement FOLIO standards?

All FOLIO standards are made available on GitHub under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License. This permissive open source model allows organizations to easily use, integrate with, and contribute to FOLIO.

18,000+
Standardized Tags
10+
Supported Languages
100+
Industry Adopters

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