Knowledge architecture · Legal practice
Matters, workflows, playbooks and precedent, modelled from what the Harvey LAB benchmark exercises
A law firm's know-how is mostly implicit: which matter taught the firm how to hold a change-of-control clause, what the playbook allows before a partner must sign off, which memo type a reviewer owes the deal team. This ontology names those things so they can be linked, queried and reused. Its core is matters and assignments carried out through legal workflows against a playbook, producing work product that reports issues with severity and recommendations, and leaving firm precedent behind.
It is informed by the 2,010 tasks of Harvey LAB: each of its 14 workflows, 57 agreement types, 13 work-product types and 13 provision types carries the number of benchmark tasks that evidence it. Legal concepts come from FOLIO wherever it has a class, with LMSS and the Judging Contracts ontologies linked beside them. The benchmark's own structure lives in a separate ontology.
Counts taken from the ontology graph when this document was generated.
Actors, matters, assignments, workflows, documents, agreements, provisions, playbooks, issues, work product and firm knowledge.
Each has a domain, a range and a checked superproperty or an explicit note that none exists.
Six contract-lifecycle workflows plus diligence, issue-spotting, gap-analysis, extraction, comparison, library-building and firm-knowledge lookup.
Memo, report, redline and response types named from the deliverables of benchmark tasks.
Each identifier was found by label in the attached FOLIO file; the LMSS twins share the same local identifiers.
The benchmark's contracts area is organised as six workflows repeated across agreement types. The counts are tasks in each; they show how the work is shaped, not an order the benchmark prescribes.
Populate a template or precedent with negotiated terms and source documents to produce a complete first draft of an agreement.
Review a counterparty's draft against the playbook and standard form, produce a redline and an issues memo that numbers each deviation.
Review the counterparty's first markup against the negotiation playbook and the deal team's instructions; for each change accept, reject or counter, and send a counter-turn redline with a cover note.
Produce the next-turn redline implementing agreed points and advancing open ones, with an issues list marking each point agreed or open.
Draft compromise clause language and a rationale for each contested provision, bridging the two parties' positions.
Prepare an approval-request memo to the named approvers for each term that exceeds the playbook's approved fallback authority, stating the counterparty position, the fallback, the delta and the risk.
Clients and firms have matters. Assignments on a matter follow a legal workflow and produce work product that reports issues on contract provisions. Playbooks and deviations govern negotiation; firm precedent and knowledge requests record what the firm remembers. Select a class or an arrow label to open its description in the resolver; hover for the definition.
A firm's or client's standing guidance for negotiating a kind of agreement: for each provision type a preferred position, an approved fallback and a walk-away.
A contract or contract-like instrument. Linked to the Judging Contracts domain class jcd:Full_Contract and core class jcc:Contractual_Agreement, which model the normative content a court judges; here it is the document the firm drafts, reviews and negotiates.
A legal or commercial point a reviewer spots in the documents and reports. Narrower than FOLIO's Legal Issue only in that it carries a severity and a recommendation.
A person who does legal work: a partner, an associate or an in-house counsel. A practitioner holds one or more practitioner roles.
A kind of work product the firm produces, named from the deliverables of the benchmark's tasks.
A practice area under which a firm organises matters and know-how. Instances also belong to the practice-area scheme and are aligned to FOLIO Area of Law classes.
A kind of firm-knowledge request: precedent retrieval, provision count, dormant-matter review or provision frequency ranking.
A client engagement the firm opens, works and closes, identified by a matter number such as 1018-00004 (the form used in the benchmark's firm-knowledge tasks). FOLIO has matter opening, closure and resolution events but no Matter class, so this is minted.
A person or organisation a law firm acts for on a matter. In the benchmark the client may also be an in-house legal team that requests work from its own counsel.
A firm of lawyers that takes on matters for clients and builds know-how from the work. Specialises schema:LegalService.
The closed set of documents shared for a transaction. Every benchmark task works from such a closed set.
A kind of contract provision that the firm tracks, negotiates and builds precedent for.
A firm or client form with placeholders that a first draft populates.
A named, repeatable way of doing a kind of legal work, such as reviewing counterparty paper against a playbook. Each workflow records how many benchmark tasks evidence it.
The broad kind of legal work: analyze, draft, review or research. These four are the work_type values of the benchmark's task files.
One position a playbook takes on one provision type, at one tier.
The place whose law governs or whose authority applies. The benchmark's fund-drafting tasks name, for example, the Cayman Islands.
A question put to the firm's own records, for example which matters negotiated a given provision.
How far a playbook position may be conceded: preferred, fallback or walk-away.
What an assignment produces: a memo, a report, a redline, a draft agreement or a response. Specialises LegalDocument.
A request from a requester to a practitioner to do a piece of legal work on a matter, usually a short written instruction. It follows a legal workflow and produces work product.
A body of regulation a matter or agreement is subject to, such as HIPAA or the GDPR.
The other party to a transaction or negotiation, whose paper the firm reviews and whose positions it redlines against.
A date by which an obligation must be met or a step taken. The benchmark's rubrics check deadlines in more than 800 of its tasks.
Any document a legal assignment reads or produces. Specialises schema:DigitalDocument.
Something a party must do under an agreement or regulation, such as a notice or a consent.
A prior matter's document or provision that the firm reuses as a starting point. Distinct from judicial precedent (the Precedent class of the LKIF norm ontology, FOLIO Precedent), which is a court decision.
A clause or term in an agreement, such as an indemnity or a change-of-control clause.
A difference between a counterparty's proposed term and the playbook, stated as the counterparty position, the playbook position and the precise delta. A deviation beyond the approved fallback needs escalation.
A list of documents and information a buyer's counsel asks a seller to provide during due diligence (DDRL).
A level assigned to an issue: critical, high, medium or low. The benchmark's rubrics use these four.
Where a matter stands: open, dormant or closed. Dormancy is the status a firm-knowledge request about stalled matters turns on.
The part a practitioner plays in an assignment: requester, doer or approver. Instances are in the role vocabulary below.
The action advised for an issue, such as a mitigation, a counter-position or an escalation.
A reference to a statute, regulation, case or playbook section that supports a conclusion.
A kind of agreement, such as a master services agreement or a limited partnership agreement.
Each workflow is a repeatable way of doing a kind of legal work, with the number of benchmark tasks that exercise it. They are ordered by evidence, most first.
Answer a question about the firm's own matters and documents: which matters had a provision, how many, which are dormant, what was the latest precedent. Output is a single response document. Evidenced by 250 benchmark tasks.
Identify and rate the issues in an agreement or document set and report them with severity and recommendations. Evidenced by 181 benchmark tasks.
Extract named terms, covenants or obligations from agreements into a structured summary. Evidenced by 136 benchmark tasks.
Compare two or more versions or documents and report the differences that matter. Evidenced by 96 benchmark tasks.
Draft compromise clause language and a rationale for each contested provision, bridging the two parties' positions. Evidenced by 94 benchmark tasks.
Populate a template or precedent with negotiated terms and source documents to produce a complete first draft of an agreement. Evidenced by 93 benchmark tasks.
Prepare an approval-request memo to the named approvers for each term that exceeds the playbook's approved fallback authority, stating the counterparty position, the fallback, the delta and the risk. Evidenced by 87 benchmark tasks.
Review a counterparty's draft against the playbook and standard form, produce a redline and an issues memo that numbers each deviation. Evidenced by 86 benchmark tasks.
Review the counterparty's first markup against the negotiation playbook and the deal team's instructions; for each change accept, reject or counter, and send a counter-turn redline with a cover note. Evidenced by 82 benchmark tasks.
Review a data room's documents on one subject (commercial contracts, employment, real estate, governance, environmental) and report issues and red flags. Evidenced by 72 benchmark tasks.
Compare a document or practice against a regulatory or contractual standard and report the gaps. Evidenced by 63 benchmark tasks.
Produce the next-turn redline implementing agreed points and advancing open ones, with an issues list marking each point agreed or open. Evidenced by 56 benchmark tasks.
Prepare responses to a diligence request list, or analyse a seller's responses against it. Evidenced by 6 benchmark tasks.
Build a library of deal points or term-sheet terms from prior documents so the firm can reuse its own positions. Evidenced by 4 benchmark tasks.
Object properties link the classes; datatype properties carry identifiers, text and dates. Every property declares a domain and a range. Those that specialise a schema.org property say so; the rest record that no schema.org superproperty fits.
The practitioner who asked for the work (a partner, or an in-house requester). No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
The provision an issue arises in. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
An authority a piece of work product relies on. Specialises schema:citation.
A position a playbook takes. Specialises schema:hasPart.
The provision type a firm precedent shows how the firm has handled. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
A kind of agreement a workflow is run on. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
The deadline attached to an obligation. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
What the counterparty proposed, in words.
The kind of a provision. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
A regulatory regime an agreement or matter is subject to. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
What the playbook position says, in words.
A kind of work product a workflow typically yields. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
The playbook position a counterparty's term departs from. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
The tier of a playbook position: preferred, fallback or walk-away. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
A provision in an agreement. Specialises schema:hasPart.
The advised action for an issue. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
The prior matter a firm precedent comes from. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
The work product that answers a firm-knowledge request. Specialises schema:suggestedAnswer.
The date of a deadline. Specialises schema:endDate.
The status of a matter: open, dormant or closed. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
The document that carries a firm precedent. Specialises schema:hasPart.
The data room a document sits in. Specialises schema:isPartOf.
The work product the assignment results in. Specialises schema:result.
The practitioner who does the work, typically an associate. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
The broad kind of work a workflow is, where the corpus states it. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
The counterparty provision a deviation concerns. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
An issue a piece of work product reports. Specialises schema:about.
The client a matter is for. One client per matter. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
The law firm that handles a matter. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
The provision type a playbook position speaks to. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
The kind of an agreement. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
The severity assigned to an issue. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
The agreement a provision belongs to. Specialises schema:isPartOf.
The firm's identifier for a matter, such as 1018-00004.
The practice area a matter belongs to. Specialises schema:about, which it narrows to a matter and a practice area.
The kind of a firm-knowledge request. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
How many tasks of the benchmark corpus evidence this workflow or vocabulary term, counted when the corpus was read (2026-11-02, 2,010 task files).
The kind of a piece of work product. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
Links a workflow or vocabulary term to the benchmark that evidences it. The range is the Harvey LAB instance in the benchmark ontology.
The written request an assignment carries. Specialises schema:description.
The jurisdiction whose law governs an agreement. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
True when the deviation exceeds the approved fallback authority and needs approval.
The legal workflow an assignment instantiates. No schema.org superproperty fits; checked and none exists.
A document the assignment works from. Specialises schema:isBasedOn.
What is reused, what is only pointed to, and what is left unmatched.
33 of 36 classes link to a FOLIO class, as do 11 of 57 agreement types, 7 of 13 provision types and 26 of 27 practice areas. 82 distinct FOLIO terms are used, each found by label in the attached file. For individuals (practice areas, agreement types, provision types), same-scope matches use skos:closeMatch and broader or overlapping ones use skos:relatedMatch. For classes, five carry an OWL axiom because FOLIO's definition coincides with or contains theirs: LawFirm, DiligenceRequestList and DocumentTemplate are owl:equivalentClass, and Client and Playbook are rdfs:subClassOf. The other…
LMSS (SALI's Legal Matter Specification Standard) shares local identifiers with FOLIO. Classes link to their LMSS twin by rdfs:seeAlso where the twin exists, and no equivalence is asserted, so FOLIO stays authoritative.
These ontologies model the content a court judges in a contract, built on LKIF. Only Agreement and ContractProvision link to them, by rdfs:seeAlso to jcd:Full_Contract, jcc:Contractual_Agreement and jcd:Contract_Clause. A contract the firm negotiates is a document; the judged content of a contract is something else.
Benchmark structure (tasks, rubrics, criteria, runs) is kept in its own ontology. This one links to it in two ways: practice areas are skos:exactMatch to its areas, and every workflow records informedByBenchmark with the number of tasks that evidence it.
No FOLIO Matter class (only matter opening, closure and resolution events). 3 classes have no FOLIO link: Deadline, Recommendation, Severity. Provision types without a FOLIO class: reverse-termination-fee, working-capital-adjustment, non-compete, assignment-and-consent, confidentiality, equity-vesting-acceleration. Severity has no FOLIO class; the four levels come from the benchmark's rubrics.
Parse the Turtle file or load it into a Virtuoso named graph. The base IRI is the document's DAV URL, so every class, property and vocabulary term resolves.
Create a :Matter with its matterNumber, forClient, handledBy, inPracticeArea and hasStatus. Reuse a :PracticeArea concept; each already carries its FOLIO alignment.
Create an :Assignment with its instruction, inMatter, requestedBy, assignedTo and followsWorkflow, choosing one of the workflows such as counterparty paper review or playbook escalation.
Add each source file as a :LegalDocument, an :Agreement with its AgreementType and contained :ContractProvision items, and place data-room files with inDataRoom.
For each provision, record the :PlaybookPosition at its tier, and a :Deviation with deviatesFrom, onProvision, counterpartyPosition, delta and requiresEscalation.
Create the :WorkProduct, give it a work-product type, and list its :Issue items with hasSeverity, hasRecommendation, citesAuthority and any deadline.
Record a :FirmPrecedent for each reusable document or provision, with precedentFromMatter and illustratesProvisionType, so a later :KnowledgeRequest can be answered from the firm's own record.
It models how a law firm works: matters, assignments, workflows, agreements and provisions, playbooks, issues, work product and firm knowledge, so that practice know-how can be linked and queried instead of living in people's heads and folders.
The benchmark informed it. The 2,010 benchmark tasks were read to find the workflows, agreement types, work-product types and provision types a firm actually performs, and each of those carries the number of tasks that evidence it. It is not a benchmark ontology.
In a separate Harvey LAB ontology covering tasks, criteria, rubrics and evaluation runs. This ontology links to it through informedByBenchmark and through skos:exactMatch between practice areas.
First draft, counterparty paper review, first-turn redline, subsequent-turn redline, term negotiation and playbook escalation. The benchmark repeats them across 57 agreement types, but it does not prescribe an order, so none is asserted.
A playbook has positions on provision types, each at a tier: preferred, fallback or walk-away. A deviation compares a counterparty's term with a position and records the delta; if it exceeds the approved fallback, requiresEscalation is true and an escalation memo goes to the approvers.
The firm's own record of what it has done: matters with numbers and statuses, and precedents drawn from them. Benchmark firm-knowledge tasks ask which matters negotiated a provision, how many did, which are dormant and what the latest precedent was.
From the benchmark's rubrics, which use critical, high, medium and low. FOLIO has no severity class, so the four levels are minted here.
82 distinct terms, including Area of Law, Law Firm, Legal Issue, Contractual Clause, Playbook, Precedent and the main agreement types. Each was found by label in the attached FOLIO file.
FOLIO has matter opening, closure and resolution events and matter-identifier attributes, but no class for the matter itself, so Matter is minted here and linked to those events.
They model the content a court judges in a contract. A contract being negotiated is a document with provisions, so the link is rdfs:seeAlso and no equivalence is claimed.
An owl:equivalentClass or rdfs:subClassOf into FOLIO would import FOLIO's own class hierarchy into this ontology under reasoning, and in several cases the scopes differ: FOLIO's Legal Issue is a question posed in a document, not a finding with a severity; its Contractual Clause sits under Transactional Objectives; its Legal Services Provider - Person is tied to invoice data. Where the definitions coincide or FOLIO's contains ours, the ontology does state an axiom: equivalence for Law Firm, Due Diligence Request List and Template, and subclass for Legal Services Buyer and Playbook.
No. Counts of agreement types and workflows come from directory names, and provision counts are keyword mentions in instructions and rubrics. They show evidence, not a labelling by Harvey.
Yes. The SPARQL workbench offers recipes for workflows by evidence, agreement types with FOLIO matches, provision types without a FOLIO class, and class cross-references.
A business entity formed by lawyers to provide legal services. It is the organisation that handles matters.
Discussion aimed at agreement. Contract negotiation runs through first-turn and subsequent-turn redlines.
Investigation of a transaction target before closing, done through a data room and a diligence request list.
Transactions that combine companies or transfer ownership; the corporate M&A area is a large part of the benchmark.
A promise to compensate for loss. Indemnification is the most frequently mentioned provision type in the benchmark.
Comparing actual state with a required standard. A gap-analysis memo is a work-product type.
Identifying and rating risks. Issues carry a severity from critical to low.
Capturing and reusing an organisation's knowledge. Firm-knowledge requests query the firm's own matters.
Something a party must do; obligations carry deadlines.
The place whose law governs. An agreement is governed by a jurisdiction.
Conforming to regulation. HIPAA and the GDPR appear as regulatory regimes.
The W3C model for concept schemes; practice areas, work types and agreement types are SKOS concepts.
Standing guidance for negotiating an agreement type: a preferred position, an approved fallback and a walk-away for each provision type.
The difference between a counterparty's proposed term and the playbook, stated as counterparty position, playbook position and delta.
A prior matter's document or provision reused as a starting point, as opposed to judicial precedent, which is a court decision.
Interactive graph visualization derived from the companion RDF. Click nodes to resolve, drag to explore. Graph data embedded from companion RDF at generation time.
Query this knowledge graph on URIBurner. The editor opens on the canonical SAMPLE entity-type summary (DAV named graph). Pick a recipe, edit freely, then run live or copy.
Reproduced verbatim from the companion RDF. Execute loads the query into the workbench below and runs it live.
PREFIX : <https://linkeddata.uriburner.com/DAV/demos/daas/law-firm-know-how-ontology-claude_sonnet_5_5-1.ttl#>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>
PREFIX owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#>
PREFIX schema: <http://schema.org/>
SELECT ?wfIri ?workflow ?tasks
FROM <https://linkeddata.uriburner.com/DAV/demos/daas/law-firm-know-how-ontology-claude_sonnet_5_5-1.ttl>
WHERE { ?wfIri a :LegalWorkflow ; rdfs:label ?workflow ; :benchmarkTaskCount ?tasks }
ORDER BY DESC(?tasks)Each legal workflow with the number of benchmark tasks that evidence it.
PREFIX : <https://linkeddata.uriburner.com/DAV/demos/daas/law-firm-know-how-ontology-claude_sonnet_5_5-1.ttl#>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>
PREFIX owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#>
PREFIX schema: <http://schema.org/>
SELECT ?typeIri ?agreementType ?folioIri ?tasks
FROM <https://linkeddata.uriburner.com/DAV/demos/daas/law-firm-know-how-ontology-claude_sonnet_5_5-1.ttl>
WHERE { ?typeIri a :AgreementType ; rdfs:label ?agreementType ; schema:numberOfItems ?tasks ; (skos:closeMatch|skos:relatedMatch) ?folioIri }
ORDER BY DESC(?tasks)Agreement types with the FOLIO class they match and how many contract-workflow tasks use them.
PREFIX : <https://linkeddata.uriburner.com/DAV/demos/daas/law-firm-know-how-ontology-claude_sonnet_5_5-1.ttl#>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>
PREFIX owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#>
PREFIX schema: <http://schema.org/>
SELECT ?ptIri ?provision ?tasks
FROM <https://linkeddata.uriburner.com/DAV/demos/daas/law-firm-know-how-ontology-claude_sonnet_5_5-1.ttl>
WHERE { ?ptIri a :ProvisionType ; rdfs:label ?provision ; schema:numberOfItems ?tasks .
FILTER NOT EXISTS { ?ptIri (skos:closeMatch|skos:relatedMatch) ?m } }
ORDER BY DESC(?tasks)Anti-join: provision types that have no skos:closeMatch or skos:relatedMatch to FOLIO.
PREFIX : <https://linkeddata.uriburner.com/DAV/demos/daas/law-firm-know-how-ontology-claude_sonnet_5_5-1.ttl#>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>
PREFIX owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#>
PREFIX schema: <http://schema.org/>
SELECT ?classIri ?class ?refIri
FROM <https://linkeddata.uriburner.com/DAV/demos/daas/law-firm-know-how-ontology-claude_sonnet_5_5-1.ttl>
WHERE { ?classIri a owl:Class ; rdfs:label ?class ; rdfs:seeAlso ?refIri }
ORDER BY ?classEach class with the external terms it points to by rdfs:seeAlso.