A way to submit any legal document, and for a fee have it returned but explained in plain english.
What do you guys think about this? And what do you think are the most common use cases/legal documents?
What do you guys think about this? And what do you think are the most common use cases/legal documents?
SNARK: I understood this to be called a "lawyer".
NOT SNARK: Legal language is so recondite, complex, and heavily dependent on external dependencies defined elsewhere, that short of very smart AGI I despair of there ever being a programmatic way to translate between legalese and plain language with any hope of maintaining fidelity -- and, given the import which legal documents tend to have, a bad translation may well be worse than none at all.
Quick translation of the text on the page:
Title: And now in plain Dutch
Intro paragraph: Contracts are always written in a very cryptic manner. So what do they say in short, plain old Dutch?
Status of the project: beta. I've "translated" 2 out of 38 paragraphs from one contract I've received, and that was a lot of work already. Those paragraphs work fine now, but it still needs a lot more work.
Are you trying to generate summaries programmatically?
No, no, it's nothing like that. It's just a small Javascript thingy that tries to convert legal nonsense into sense. I got a contract in Dutch that I found took way longer to read than it should (like, really read and understand all implications), made this script and threw it online. It's in a directory with dozens of unfinished scripts that I wrote.
So yes, summaries are generated programmatically. They have no legal value but provide a much better read of what is written in the contract.
For extra money, you can highlight a section of text, and a laywer will tell you what it means. Once a few people have asked about some phrase, you can include it in the general data bank.
Make it easy for users to hire a lawyer through you for more extensive work -- that gives you a massive revenue stream, even if only a few people take you up on it.
For example: "No theft agreement" - employees/tenants/whoever shall not steal, etc etc etc
http://www.Upcounsel.com http://www.rocketlawyer.com/ http://www.legalzoom.com