Show HN: Codepact – jQuery for contracts
codepact.comI have some experience in providing services for lawyers in Scandinavia. If I found people interested in this would there be any interest on your side in making a regional/international versions (I'm asking you before I ask others).
But really the 'JQuery for' thing is just awful.
We'd be interested to see how that'd look. Will contact you via email.
Re jQuery: this is an emphasis in our copy for this post to Hacker News only. We've found that it helps technical people (many of our customers are technical) understand what we're doing.
I think it might make sense for more people something like Codepact - Leveling up your contracts.
Can't see any contact on your profile, feel free to ping me on pat@codepact.com.
I'm not following what the JQuery part is of all this? It seems like a tool to allow lawyers to assemble contracts in some sort of templating like manner?
One of the main ideas behind the system is using simplified language to "call" modules of legalese like software functions. This technique abstracts away a lot of complexity on the top layer of the contract (which makes the document much shorter and easier to understand).
Most of the jurisdictional quirks are contained in legalese, so when you abstract it away, you end up with documents that look the same regardless of jurisdiction (the legalese modules change, obviously).
We often compare this approach to jQuery because it lets us:
- get rid of boilerplate "code" for common mechanics to aid in clarity and brevity (thanks, jQuery); and
- use consistent language between jurisdictions (like jQuery's elimination of cross-browser incompatibilities).
There's more explanation of this technique in the second video on this page:
Ok, I don't think anyone in your potential clientele will know or care what JQuery is.
This is very neat, and I think it's probably the future of law, where legalese is more of a compile target than something humans actually write.
What kinds of guarantees do you offer? Would you still need a lawyer to look over any documents this thing generates, and is that a part of your premium plan?
Yes, "compile target" is a very nice way to put it. The key idea is that you only really analyze all the text when there's a problem, which tends to be the job of experts, and that's not often. The wet code that "runs" in a court needs to be part of the doc, but it doesn't mean we need to look at it all the time. :)
Re guarantees, these docs are provided on an informational basis (read: not legal advice). We connect people with lawyers who understand the system and we have some good tech that speeds up their work re the legal sign off they provide. More to come on this.
The back button is broken - seems cool otherwise!
I noticed this too. I think its fixed by using: window.history.replaceState({}, '', '/landed') instead of pushing the state.