How I can help
Automation is a kind of legal design solution. It takes repetitive tasks or tasks that can be distilled into a series of rules or processes and automates the collection of inputs and the creation of an output. The most common form of output is a draft contract but the same approach can be taken to the delivery of preliminary legal advice or the crowd-sourced collection and presentation of legal knowledge in standardised form. I’ve built many automation tools and can help you too.
To appreciate what’s possible one needs to understand what’s doable technically. I do understand because I work at the intersection of law and technology and because I build my own automation tools. Sometimes people need to see something in action to appreciate what’s possible. That’s where prototyping can be useful. I can build prototypes using open source software.
Some examples
I’ve built:
- online contract builders (for example I’ve automated the build of the Government Model Contract for Services, including a wide range of options for amending the standard terms in Schedule 2 and supplementing it with additional terms)
- online privacy policy generators
- a tool called ‘GPL Engine’ that helps developers with the GPL licensing statements they need for their WordPress plugins and themes; it asks the developer a series of questions about the theme or plugin and then produces legally-oriented content for the style.css, readme and licence files for the theme folder (if a theme), or the plugin file header, readme and licence files for the plugin folder (if a plugin)
- a tool that collects key details and summaries of specific legislative provisions that enable the collection or sharing of personal information, and produces a standardised, tabular output in web-based and Word formats, while also sending the data to a Google spreadsheet
- a tool that collects privacy-related information and produces preliminary advice.