Core elements

Legal Guides are easy to create, but there are a few important concepts to understand.

Legal Guides consist of guide items with clause identifiers, stored in one or more repositories, and then packaged into guides.

• Each guide item ("item" in short) identifies a clause, and then provides either legal information (e.g., a layman's introduction to the clause, or instead detailed references to case law and legal doctrine) and/or alternative clauses that the end-user is invited to consult and insert into his existing Word document.

• Repositories are storage areas for guide items. The idea is that a legal team will create one or more repositories (e.g. "boiler plate", "distribution law", "IT contracts", ...), store items in each of those repositories, and then assign selected items to guides. The reason to have a split between repositories and guides is to foster reuse of items as much as possible.

• Guides consist of guide items from one or more repositories, packaged together. In most legal teams, a guide will be created per type of document — e.g., for an inhouse legal team, one guide could be created for dealing with the company's Terms & Conditions, while another guide could be created for employment contracts. Conversely, a law firm may want to create guides for specific clients.