Managing folders

About folders & search folders

Each ClauseBuddy library can host one or more search folders. Such search folders allow you to segment your legal content — for example, in a typical law firm's clause library, you would have separate search folders for the different departments (corporate, employment, commercial, IT/IP, and so on). 

Within each search folder, you can have one or more folders and subfolders, any level deep. For example, within the employment law search folder, you may want to have different folders for employment contracts, employment policies, dismissal letters, settlement agreements, and so on. 

Managing folders

(Except if your ClauseBuddy administrator has removed your authorisation) you can manage folder structures by going to the Folders setting:

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After selecting the right search folder, you are then presented with all the folders and subfolders of that search folder:

Creating subfolders

You can create a new subfolder by selecting a folder and clicking on the small + icon:

Next, you are presented with a dialog box in which you can give a name to your new subfolder. If your library supports multiple languages, you can include a translation for your folder, to help colleagues navigate the library in another language.

Renaming, deleting and moving folders

You can rename, move and delete folders by pushing the relevant buttons. Be aware, however, that removing a folder will delete all clauses inside them — there is no possibility to undo this action!

Setting folder permissions

In the top right part of the folder management panel, you can specify the "access bundle" that applies to a folder. Essentially, such access bundle specifies who can read and/or edit certain content. In simple ClauseBuddy setups, you will see that access bundles will exist for each group of users — typically configured per department (e.g., the Corporate Law group, the Employment Law group, etc). 

If no access bundle is assigned to a folder, then the folder uses the access bundle of the folder above it (and if that one does not have an access bundle, the access bundle of the folder above that one is used, and so on). 

Adding predefined taxonomy to a folder

ClauseBuddy comes with several predefined taxonomies, which you can easily add to your own folder structure. 

Essentially, you choose a folder, click on the Insert predefined taxonomy button, navigate to your taxonomy of choice, click on some subfolder, and finally click on the blue Add selected folder and all its subfolders button. As a result, a copy of the selected structure (i.e., all the folders and subfolders) will be added to your clause library.

Afterwards, you can then rearrange the inserted (sub)folders any way you want. For example, you probably want to insert a few other folders, remove some folders you do not need, create deeper hierarchies in a few areas where the predefined taxonomy remains at the surface, and so on.

The predefined taxonomy not only helps you to quickly insert common folders, but also serves a very important second purpose: it enhances the effectiveness of ClauseBuddy's Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine when you are searching for similar clauses. 

All those folders and subfolders in the predefined taxonomies contain a special tag, which will also be assigned to the copies of those folders in your own clause library. This way, ClauseBuddy's engine can "learn" what a clause of a certain typically looks like — e.g., what a typical termination clause in (French) employment law looks like. 

After all, Artificial Intelligence requires large amounts of data for its learning process — for truly smart searches (with automatic recognition of synonyms, alternative expressions, and so on) you easily need hundreds if not thousands of clauses of the same type. For most legal teams in most languages and jurisdictions, such amount of example material is simply not available, except perhaps for trivial clauses such as boilerplate stuff. ClauseBuddy therefore encourages you to tag your clauses, so that all users can collectively enhance each others' searches.

Manually tagging folders

In light of the importance of tagging your folders, you can also manually perform such process. Simply choose a folder and click on the text above the Insert predefined taxonomy button. You can then point to the right subfolder of the predefined taxonomy to properly tag your folder.

Creating proxy folders

Folders can also host proxy folders. Such folders are pointers to other folders, to create a kind of "cross-reference" between folders in your library. For example, imagine you have:

• a folder with dispute resolution clauses, in which you keep a set of general dispute resolution clauses
• a special dispute resolution clauses for specific employment or corporate agreements. 

In such setup, it is probably useful to create:

• a proxy folder inside the general folder that points to the specialised employment dispute resolution folder
• a proxy folder in the specialised employment folder that points to the general dispute resolution folder

This way, users can easily "jump" between related general and specialised folders, even when those folders would be located in very different search folders. 

Managing search folders in Clause9

[Clause9 only] If you also have a Clause9 license, you can perform more refined (search) folder management. 

• In ClauseBuddy-only subscriptions, there is a simple one-on-one relationship between each Group and each search folder. Essentially, each Group created from within ClauseBuddy will automatically also trigger the creation of an associated search folder for that Group, tagged with that Group's access bundle. 
• In Clause9, you may require much more granular control. For example, you may want to have a search folder for Employment Law that includes a few folders with clauses from an automated employment contract, as well as a few generic folders with clauses. 

To manage the search folders, you have to login as an administrator, and go to Admin > Search-folders. There, you can create an unlimited number of search folders, specify their access bundles, and add one or more folders to each subfolder. As stated above, you are not limited to the one-on-one limitation imposed when you manage search folders and groups from within ClauseBuddy.

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