The Standards Advancement for the Legal Industry Alliance (SALI) announced today (4 February) at the LegalTech Conference that it has completed the final revision of the Legal Matter Specification Standard (LMSS). LMSS is intended to create legal matter data interoperability that can aid in the buying and selling of legal services and the improvement of efficiency in legal services.
“Through the hard work of our core working group, and broad support by many in the industry, the LMSS 1.0 release represents a milestone for the SALI standard,” said Toby Brown, SALI board member, and chief practice management officer at Perkins Coie LLP. “It is rewarding to see the standard available for wide use for the pursuit of legal industry innovation.”
“Like many other firms, we have grappled with the challenge of trying to derive meaning from our firm-specific matter taxonomy,” said Chris Ende, chief value officer at Goulston & Storrs. “We were excited to participate in the development of the first standard for describing matters in the legal industry, and are thrilled to see it released today. This collaboration among parties across the legal ecosystem represents a groundbreaking milestone for the industry in terms of quality, consistency and transparency.”
Through its development over the last three years, LMSS 1.0 is intended to provide a common language for describing legal matters in a party-neutral, extensible manner by a wide array of stakeholders in the legal industry.
This standard includes the publication of a modern overall structure, as well as more than a dozen code sets, including Area of Law, Legal Services, Courts and Governmental Bodies (both U.S. only presently), Industries, Organizations, Locations and Player Roles.
“LMSS provides a common language to drive efficiency and serve as a foundation for innovating,” said Adam Stock, co-chair of the LMSS Committee. “The public and the legal community can now access the standard and start using it today.”
SALI Members:
The Association of Legal Administrators (founding member), the International Legal Technology Association (founding member), the Legal Marketing Association (founding member).
Allen Matkins, Barnes & Thornburg Bloomberg Law, Clifford Chance, Cox Automotive, Fish & Richardson, GSK, Goulston & Storrs, Greenberg Traurig, Honigman, Miller, Schwartz and Cohn, Humana, Intapp, King & Wood Mallesons, Level 2 Legal Solutions, LexisNexis, McKool Smith, Mishcon de Reya, Pepper Hamilton, Perkins Coie, Prosperoware, Schulte Roth & Zabel, Shearman & Sterling, Shell, Thomson Reuters, Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, WilmerHale, Winston & Strawn, and Wolters Kluwer. SALI endorsers include the Association of Corporate Counsel, Baker Donelson, Buying Legal, Citigroup, Edge International, Foundation Software Group, LawVision, Institute of Legal Project Management, LegalShift LLC, Microsoft. LEDES is an allied partner. Microsoft announced that it is piloting the standard as a first user at ILTACON 2019.
