PATHFINDER PROJECT - LEGAL DOCUMENT TOOLKIT

The National Archives has developed a variety of different tools for working with legal information through our work delivering the legislation.gov.uk, Lawmaker and Find Case Law services.

The umbrella term for these tools is the Legal Document Toolkit. There are specific tools which can securely receive, represent, store, transform, query, analyse, enrich, revise and publish legal documents of different types.

The tools in the Toolkit have been developed using a variety of different technologies over the last 15-20 years. Some are quite recent (developed in the last 2-3 years), some are much older. The tools are centred on LegalDocML, the international standard for legal documents. This provides the core data model around which many of the more recent tools (Lawmaker and Find Case Law) are based. Our adoption of an international standard means the toolkit potentially has appeal in overseas markets.

Most of the tools have been developed with a very specific task in mind but we think they potentially have wider application and use. Our hopes are highest with Lawmaker, a browser based drafting and amendment workflow management tool, and the parser we have developed for converting Court Judgments from Word, for Find Case Law.

We are trying to work out how best to exploit the tools in the Toolkit commercially. We think there is both a domestic and international market for our tools - but we don't know which tools or what markets to focus on. We are regularly approached by people wanting to use some of these tools. The AI Revolution is opening up new opportunities as "Big Law" wakes up to the power of data. Many legal businesses rightly want to stay in control of their information assets but need better information management capabilities. Our Toolkit could help.

In this project we will develop our understanding of the potential market, learning more about potential users and their needs, and evaluating the different business models we might use.

The project has a budget of £32,000 (inc. VAT) per lot.