Groundwork
· 3 min read

Let the data name your templates

Pick the values in a knowledge type field from what most lawyers already call things, keep one term, and drop any word with two meanings

Groundwork

Every firm has documents full of square brackets and blanks. A lawyer changes the names and numbers, and they're good to go. Ask what to call one, though, and you'll get at least four answers: standard form, template, model and precedent.

Knowledge projects stall on this. Building a classification scheme means choosing the values in each field, and the knowledge type field is where firms lose months. Some corners of the firm say standard form, others say model, and each side has a preference. Indulge the discussion and it never ends in a way that satisfies anybody.

Leave it unsettled and the cost lands on the person searching. Suppose all four names survive as values in the filter. A lawyer who wants something reusable can't tell how anything was tagged, so they tick every box.

A knowledge type filter with four names for the same document, all ticked, beside one with a single agreed name FOUR NAMES ONE NAME Knowledge type Knowledge type Standard formTemplateModelPrecedent Tick all four, just in case TemplateTraining materialPractice note One box
Four names for one kind of document mean four boxes to tick.

Count the names, then choose

Objectivity settles it. Choosing a term is no exercise for anybody's personal interest. Find out what most people call the thing, using surveys and conversations, and adopt the most common term. The answer then comes from data, and nobody has to win an argument.

The knowledge team has to keep control of the decision. Without that, every practice group weighs in and the debate takes months and months. A taxonomy designed by committee never gets finished.

Ask lawyers what they call it, count the answers, and the knowledge team adopts the most common term for the whole firm ASKCOUNTDECIDE Surveys andconversations Count whatlawyers call it Knowledge teamtakes the top one One termfor the firm Nobody's personal preference counts.
Ask around, count the answers, and let the knowledge team make the call.

One term for the whole firm

Some knowledge systems offer practice-specific synonyms, so one team sees "standard form" and another sees "model" for the same value. That overcomplicates things. Choose one term and get the firm round it. A practice group that has always said "standard form" can carry on saying it in meetings, and the filter shows the chosen word. Settling on one term from the data also saves a lot of political back and forth.

Drop words with two meanings

Clarity is the second test. Never use a term that could mean two things to two different people, and "precedent" fails it. To some lawyers a precedent is the square-bracket template. To others it's a piece of prior work product being reused on a new matter.

Two plainer words do the job. Everyone knows what a template is, so use "template" for the square-bracket document. Use "example" for prior work. Nobody confuses those two.

The word precedent points at two different kinds of document, so each gets its own word: template and example precedent Square brackets and blankschange names and numbers Prior work productreused on a new matter template example
"Precedent" points at two kinds of document, so give each its own word.

The ambiguity also spills out of the filter. When lawyers argue about whether AI can draft from precedents, some mean a widely accepted standard, like the LMA or ISDA documents, and others mean a contract from one specific deal. They end up agreeing or disagreeing about different things.

Spend the effort on the busy fields

Controlled vocabulary pays off most in high-volume fields. Knowledge type is one of them: hundreds and hundreds of documents get tagged as training, and hundreds more under whatever the firm calls its templates, so every overlap hits a lot of searches.

Legal topics behave differently. The list is long and keeps growing, and only a handful of documents might be tagged against it in a week. If two values overlap in a list of 500, that's an issue, but a smaller one. The work there is getting each practice's topics written down at all.

So save the strict rules for the short lists everybody filters by, and settle those from the data. Then the lawyer ticks one box, and the knowledge team gets to spend its hours elsewhere. Otherwise the next project will spend them deciding whether the practice group is called "Banking" or "Banking and Finance".