RE: [legalxml-econtracts] The Future We Want?

["jmessing" <jmessing@law-on-line.com>]

Hi Peter:

I have little problem with what you say, to the extent that I think I understand it.

In addition to enabling legally-neutral contract instantiation, which is how I interpret (roughtly) what you are saying, I think some of us are looking at standardized terms that will facilitate automation via rules based and/or neural net programming in the following areas:

1. contract negotiation
2. contract administration
3. dispute resolution.

I think these are not yet covered by your core requirements.

>My core requirement would be that when we mark up the terms of a contract,
>we should ensure that if the parties wish to use a plain text (Unicode) XML
>file as evidence of their contract, they should be able to do so.
>Essentially this is a requirement that the XML record should be self
>contained as to the terms of the contract and that it does not introduce
>ambiguity as to those terms. So, for example, all clause numbers and cross
>references should be explicitly present and the hierarchical and grammatical
>structure should be evident. I would go on to propose that the core,
>structural markup must not signify any legal meaning, lest this interfere
>with the grammatical statement of the contract terms. If in practice the
>parties apply semantic legal markup to suit their particular processing
>needs for an XML document that is treated as the evidentiary record, that
>markup should be excluded from the interpretation of the contract, just as
>is often the case with legislation where clause headings etc are treated as
>not being part of the legislation for interpretation purposes. Whether the
>standard can ensure this outcome is doubtful. Of course, if the parties want
>the markup to be legally significant, that is up to them. I think they would
>be heading into uncharted waters.
>
>When the TC was formed I and some others objected to the use of the term "e
>contracts" but were out voted on that point.
>I am interested in using XML as a means of preparing the terms of all of the
>4 types of contract as a facilitative process for the parties but whether
>XML was used along the way is no more important to the contract than if it
>was done in RTF or any other markup. The most concise statement of my
>objectives for the TC would be "To develop a standard for the use of XML to
>facilitate contract preparation". When stated in this way, I don't see the
>use of XML for contracts as being any different to its use for many other
>documents prepared by lawyers and others in their day to day work.
>
>
>Now that may not be everyone else's expectation so this is why we need to
>have this discussion. What are we trying to achieve?
>