Open Legal Exchange is an open protocol for describing, connecting, and exchanging legal and governance data across systems — without requiring everyone to use the same platform.
Legal and governance data is trapped in silos. Referrals between attorneys are unstructured. Credentials are unverifiable across systems. Regulatory impact is invisible to the people who write the rules. OLE is the shared language that changes this.
Every governance system — from a solo attorney's referral to a planetary governance protocol — is composed of the same six building blocks.
Rule → Institution → Actor → Action → Impact → Feedback → Rule (amended)
An authoritative directive — statute, regulation, professional rule, bylaw, or contract — that creates, constrains, or authorizes governance activity.
A body authorized by rules to perform governance functions — law firms, bar associations, courts, agencies, and HOA boards.
Any participant — human, organizational, or artificial — operating within a governance system. AI agents are first-class OLE actors.
Any event within a governance system: referral, filing, vote, inspection, decision. Actions link actors, institutions, and rules.
Aggregated, anonymized, privacy-preserving signals derived from governance actions. Impact data never contains PII.
Structured signals flowing from impact data back to rulemaking. Feedback closes the governance loop — the rarest and most valuable primitive.
CLEAR is the first OLE module. It defines a structured, trackable, interoperable exchange model for legal referrals — the smallest possible implementation of the largest possible vision.
"Roxana gets an HOA call she can't handle. She refers it to Maria. CLEAR makes that referral structured, trackable, and interoperable."
| What CLEAR Defines | Details |
|---|---|
| Referral workflow | 5-stage workflow: Initiated → Sent → Acknowledged → Accepted/Declined → Closed |
| Status model | 14 defined statuses with transition rules and fork/termination paths |
| Resource set | Referral, Prospect, MatterSummary, StatusUpdate, FeeArrangement, DocumentReference |
| Participant roles | Originating Attorney, Receiving Attorney, Client/Prospect, Supervisor, Observer, AI Agent |
| API surface | 4 REST endpoints + webhook registration + 6 webhook event types |
| Consent | ConsentRecord required before personal data exchange |
OLE is designed for incremental adoption. Each level is independently useful. v0.1 defines conformance profiles for Pre-Tier (Packet) and Tier 1 (Exchange).
| Level | Name | Description | v0.1 Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-Tier | Packet | Read and write OLE JSON files | v0.1 Profile |
| Tier 1 | Exchange | Send and receive via RESTful API | v0.1 Profile |
| Tier 2 | Identity | Verified actors with portable credential-backed identities | Planned v0.2 |
| Tier 3 | Platform | Vendor conformance declaration and interoperability | Planned v0.2 |
| Tiers 4–10 | Rules → Interoperability | Rules, impact, citizens, transparency, feedback, automation, interoperability | Future |
OLE is an open specification. The schemas and code are Apache 2.0. The spec text is CC BY 4.0. Any platform can implement OLE/CLEAR without a license fee, vendor agreement, or certification requirement.
Pre-Tier (Packet) conformance requires only that you read and write valid OLE JSON. No API endpoints needed. Hours of work, not weeks.
Tier 1 (Exchange) adds POST /referrals, GET /referrals/{id}, POST /referrals/{id}/status, and webhook delivery. Implement the conformance checklist.
Publish a /.well-known/ole-discovery.json discovery document with "conformanceStatus": "self_declared". File a GitHub issue to list your implementation.
OLE is an open project. No membership fee. No gating. Pick your path.
Add CLEAR referral exchange to your practice management platform, bar referral service, or legal AI product. The spec is open. No license fee. Self-declare conformance and list your implementation.
File issues, propose RFCs, and review pull requests on GitHub. Bar associations, court technologists, attorneys, and standards practitioners are especially welcome. Every material change goes through a public comment period.
OLE is forming a CLEAR advisory working group — an informal group of practitioners, technologists, and standards experts who help guide the v0.2 specification. Organizations interested in sponsoring or joining the future governance board can express interest now.