Open data standards and community for law
100+ Members | 50+ Organisations | 15+ Locations
Developing more usable and effective ways to classify work, knowledge and experience
Created with these organisations in mind
Law firms / legal services
Legal departments
Legal tech providers
Why we care
Examples of major practical problems that better data can help with in law
" We can't find information effectively "
" We can't answer simple questions like: how much of "x" work type did we do last year? "
" Our sales and marketing efforts are not properly joined up with the work actually done "
" We have different taxonomies in different parts of the firm - with no robust overall view "
" Our messy data limits scope for process improvement and better pricing "
" We can't help our clients quantify their legal spend with us by work type "
What we do
Data standards
We publish a taxonomy for organising and using legal data by work type, legal specialism, participant, jurisdiction and more.
This has gone through iterative consultation and development with a third major version published in March 2025.
Guidance
We produce guidance on the approach taken in our taxonomy. We also share experiences on how to implement it in practice.
We plan to do more of this in future, on taxonomy and other legal data-related topics.
Community
We hold calls and in person events to discuss topics of interest in this area.
This is a great way to meet with other people interested in legal data topics and to learn from each other.
How we (rock &) roll
Open source
Anyone can use, study, modify and redistribute the things we publish, for any purpose and without charge
Community-based
Anyone can contribute to the things we publish, though we have governance to ensure quality.
We also emphasise community as an end in itself.
Useful
We do things of practical benefit, not just theoretical interest.
Simple and modular
We produce material in simple, digestible modules.
But these can be combined with each other, remixed and extended for flexibility and to capture detail.
Broad
Our work is relevant to a wide range of organisations and needs.
Our approach seeks to be internationally relevant rather than based on a single legal culture.
Hear from the community
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Featured in
Financial Times, 17 October 2024
“Adoption… by five sizeable law firms, including A&O Shearman. A set of standards for use in tagging and analysis of legal data across business such as legal operations, knowledge management, and sales and marketing.”
Artificial Lawyer, 10 September 2024
“Congrats on growing this community… It’s great to see how the broader standardisation movement is developing now in 2024.”
“We found noslegal's open-source taxonomy material and community to be very beneficial in redesigning our taxonomy and implementing it in practice.”
“Better data standards are a foundation for all the AI and other data related efforts which many firms, legal departments and technology companies are now pursuing.”
“We found noslegal to be the most helpful starting point available due to its focus on legal practice”
“When working with our clients on deploying solutions for search and knowledge, it is so useful to recommend the modules as a strong starting point… We have great admiration for the community that noslegal has built and support its approach to licensing, and governance."