What's Happening with SALI, SOLI, and FOLIO?

Dear Legal Standards Community,

Today, we want to share the journey that led to the creation of FOLIO (formerly SOLI) and explain the challenges we’ve faced over the past several months. We believe in transparency, and you deserve to understand why our project appeared to stall — and why we’ve recently rebranded.

Whistleblower’s Dilemma

In August 2024, Damien Riehl — a respected leader in legal standards development who had contributed several thousands of hours to SALI — approached ALEA with concerning information. He discovered what appeared to be serious compliance issues with SALI Alliance’s corporate governance, including:

• Delaware: SALI’s apparent long-term failure to maintain good standing in Delaware — since 2020 — where Delaware documents said that SALI’s corporate status was “Void”
• Illinois: Lack of state registration to do business or solicit funds
• IRS: Discrepancies in IRS filings
• Finances: Questions about SALI’s financial management unanswered: Where has the money gone?

Naturally, we were cautious. ALEA’s representatives have also contributed to SALI, though to a much lesser degree than Damien, and knew the parties involved. These were serious concerns about an organization that many of us supported and enriched for years. We needed verification.

Verifying the Concerns

Our team conducted thorough diligence, reviewing:

• Delaware corporate records indicating that SALI’s corporate status was void. Under Delaware law, void corporations are not dissolved, but it is “as if [they] had never existed” (see Paul Rivera & Kalibrr, Inc. v. Angkor Capital Ltd., C. A. 2022-0671-MTZ (Del. Ch. Aug 20, 2024)).
• IRS filings showing irregularities, including false representations
• Illinois Secretary of State records showing no registration for SALI despite claiming operations there
• Lack of state registrations to solicit funds as a non-profit

The evidence substantiated Damien’s concerns. This doesn’t just appear to be a minor administrative oversight; it seemed to reflect a pattern — spanning years — that raised legitimate questions about SALI’s governance and accountability.

1. How has SALI been governed?
   1. What happened in Delaware?
   2. What happened in Illinois?
   3. What happened with the IRS?
   4. What governance exists, if any?
2. Where has the money gone?

Those questions continue to be unanswered.

Stable Path Forward: The Birth of FOLIO (formerly SOLI)

Verifications in hand, our new concern became: What happens to the standard itself?

For many legal technology systems, the LMSS taxonomy has become critical infrastructure. Thousands of development hours from volunteers throughout the legal community have created a valuable resource. One entity’s apparent governance issues shouldn’t threaten a standard’s continuity.

This was particularly concerning, since in August 2024, SALI’s leadership stated that SALI would be trying to remedy the governance issues (noted above) — so until further notice, SALI’s activities would be “paused.”

Standards don’t pause. Work continues. SALI’s “pause” was hurting standardization.

In September 2024, we established SOLI (Standard for Open Legal Information) as a permitted, lawful fork of the MIT-licensed LMSS specification. It is an undisputed fact that the MIT license allows for copying and derivative works.

Our goals were simple and constructive:

1. Ensure continuous availability of the standard for existing users
2. Provide clear, transparent governance
3. Honor the MIT License, which enabled SALI LMSS’s widespread adoption since 2022
4. Continue building tools — helping firms, their clients, and vendors standardize their data

This wasn’t (and isn’t) about competition — this wasn’t (and isn’t) about money — this has always been about openness, preservation, and continuity for the broader legal community. We volunteer. We enable. We build.

Attempted Communication; Attempted De-Escalation

Consistently since August 2024, we have made numerous good-faith attempts to communicate with SALI leadership — seeking to resolve any issues without escalation. SALI refused.

• Since August 2024, consistent emails asking for meetings with the SALI Board, trying to help inform and resolve.
• SALI said that they would meet — and just need to “figure out a time” to meet.
• But SALI broke its commitments to meet.
• Multiple emails from SALI, saying they appreciate a willingness to “keep a dialogue going” and pursuing a board meeting with us, but to have “patience”
• SALI wrote: “We are willing to meet with you but want to seek the advice of our counsel on this.”
• Attempted In-person meetings. SALI walked away instead of speaking.
• Outreach through mutual connections in the legal technology community

For nearly five months, from August 2024 through January 2025, ALEA attempted to have a constructive dialogue. SALI responded with “be patient.”

SALI’s Legal Escalation

In January, SALI apparently decided that it didn’t want to de-escalate: On January 13, 2025, SALI sent cease-and-desist letters. These letters came as a surprise — after our months of attempting engagement. And SALI’s assurances of a meeting.

On January 22, we responded thoroughly, addressing each claim and providing extensive documentation substantiating our concerns and strong legal positions. We showed continued willingness to find a constructive resolution, asking for a meeting with SALI. But SALI continued refusing to meet. Instead, SALI directed all communications to their lawyers. Without SALI representatives to discuss SALI’s unreasonable demands, negotiation attempts failed. SALI’s principals refused to participate in a single meeting with us.

Moving Forward: Why FOLIO?

On March 14, 2025, we rebranded as FOLIO. This name change reflects our desire to:

1. Eliminate doubt: there’s no trademark confusion;
2. Establish a fresh identity honoring the legal standards community’s collaborative spirit;
3. Move beyond past disputes, focusing on future development.

Along with this rebranding, we’ve published key documentation demonstrating the MIT license status of the original work and other relevant evidence. We’re “posting the receipts” not to inflame, but to provide the community with evidence, helping build trust in the safe future of standards.

Our Commitment to You

We apologize for the slower-than-expected progress over these challenging months. Legal uncertainty created a difficult environment for open collaboration. We hoped to resolve. We hope to de-escalate. But our counterparty apparently didn’t share that desire.

With this rebranding and public clarification, we aim to:

• Provide confidence in our works’ legal foundation;
• Invite renewed community participation;
• Advance the standard, serving legal professionals worldwide;
• Establish clear, transparent governance protocols.

Join Us in Building the Future

FOLIO remains committed to the core principles that made LMSS valuable: open collaboration, interoperability, and practical utility for the legal community. We built out the vast majority of LMSS’s 18,000+ tags, creating a beautifully comprehensive ontology: counting everything that matters to (1) substantive law and (2) the business of law.

We invite you to join us in building a better future for legal knowledge. This work will continue to be free and open to all, without any requirement to pay membership dues or licenses. Free and open.

This journey hasn’t been easy, but we remain convinced that open standards — developed through transparent processes — are vital.

Open is the future of legal technology.

Thank you for your patience and continued support.

For questions or further information, please contact us at hello@aleainstitute.ai