Frameworks and solutions

Lawrence Lessig wrote “Code is Law”. We prefer it the other way around. To us, the law is social code and we develop our legal and compliance frameworks as an experienced software developer develops application code. We pay attention to how our documents read, how they look and, most importantly, how they function in a legal and compliance environment. We think about our solutions and frameworks as legal software and we don’t write bad or junky code!

You may need something fairly simple or you may need to develop a fairly complicated legal structure to accommodate a complex business relationship. We can help you do what you need to do by developing that framework for you. More often than not, our frameworks are custom built for your requirements and take advantage of best practices as we develop them.

In practical legal terms these frameworks are your agreements with your providers, your customers and your trading partners and policy documents you implement in a variety of contexts. These frameworks often take the form of website terms of use, privacy policies and content licenses. These are the essential tools you need to conduct various aspects of your business in a legal environment that reduces your exposure to risk as much as possible as well as to comply with a growing body of legislation, rules and regulations. Here are a few more examples of the work we do for our clients:

• Content licensing both online and offline (this includes both open content licenses and custom licenses)
• Protection of personal information and respect for privacy online
• Anticipating and managing competition from employees and third parties
• Developing and maintaining a benign publishing environment (this includes protecting freedom of expression and addressing defamation)
• Compliance with relevant legislation such as the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act as well as emerging privacy legislation
• Formulating policies and guidelines to govern use of your IT infrastructure and processing personal information
• Preparing a variety of agreements including service level agreements, leases, trading terms and conditions and so on.

We also have roughly a decade's experience in commercial litigation and general commercial legal work. Our services are based, to a large extent, on intelligent and thoughtful commercial legal expertise. In order for Web and digital media related projects to have real-world applications, they must interface with the commercial world. Our frameworks connect our clients' creative and innovative work with the legal demands of the commercial world.