First we had the standardised oneNDA, now we have a principle-based oneNDA Playbook that uses genAI to help users quickly assess third-party non-disclosure agreements, ensuring their alignment with the core principles established by the standardisation pioneer’s community.
I.e. rather than simply have a system where you must always use oneNDA’s model document, or accept something very different from a third-party, with the new genAI-based Playbook you can feed in an NDA, it is then analysed across eight core ‘principles’ that oneNDA believes make a solid non-disclosure agreement, then with its interface make changes as and where needed to complete the document.
It operates as a free Word add-in and the goal as always is to let lawyers focus on the strategic deal work that matters, rather than wasting a day arguing over what are today well-understood approaches to what an NDA should look like.
Electra Japonas, Founder of oneNDA, told Artificial Lawyer: ‘The beta version is available now, and we invite current adopters of the oneNDA standard and the global legal community at large to try it out and share feedback.’
She added that after talking to users of oneNDA ‘a clear challenge emerged: the continued need to review and negotiate third-party NDAs. While oneNDA has been widely accepted and streamlined, when counter-parties insist on using their own NDAs this efficiency is disrupted. Enter the oneNDA Playbook’.
As to how this was developed, it was made in partnership with SimpleDocs, the creators of AutoNDA. The oneNDA Playbook is trained on multiple documents across diverse domains, enabling it to understand complex legal language and provide context-aware redlining suggestions. It uses OpenAI and Anthropic LLMs.
Preston Clark, CEO and Co-founder of SimpleDocs, added: ‘We’re thrilled to partner with oneNDA to power the oneNDA Playbook and bring cutting-edge AI to the standardization movement.
‘Our goal with SimpleDocs has always been to simplify complex processes, and with the oneNDA Playbook, we’re taking a big step towards making NDA reviews faster and more efficient. By leveraging our technology, legal teams can now focus on more meaningful work, leaving the repetitive tasks to automation.’
So, there you go, and great to see the oneNDA project evolving and growing. For Artificial Lawyer the key point here is approaching standardisation with principles.
One of the challenges lawyers have with standards is that they are used to having a lot of flexibility in how they draft. Now, clearly the whole point of standards is to remove the need to ‘re-invent the wheel’, so there’s no need to draft on top of what’s there. But……many lawyers still want that flexibility. So how do you give it?
Using principles as a guide, as a set of rules one could say (but not cast-iron ones), is a philosophical middle ground, where the end goal is a standardised contract, but the wording has not been set in stone. Rather the lawyer who signs off on the final version adheres to principles set out by the standard designers. So, you still get some variability, you still get some control, but the overall goal of the standard-makers is not lost either.
In short, we have moved from standard contracts to principled contracts.
Any road, oneNDA would really like to hear what you think. Check it out and please send them your feedback. More info is here:
Follow the link for beta access: oneNDA.org/playbook
And leave comments on our feedback page: oneNDA.org/playbook-feedback.
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