Press Release

New Standards for Legal Information Exchange Underway at OASIS LegalXML

Consortium Forms Technical Committees to Address Standards for Integrated Justice, eNotarization, eContracts, Electronic Court Filing,Legislative Documents, and Transcripts.

Boston, MA, USA; 25 September 2002 — Legal and technical communities unite as OASIS, the XML interoperability consortium, forms six new LegalXML committees to create standards for the electronic exchange of legal data. Backed by government agencies, lawyers, and vendors, the new working groups include: * OASIS LegalXML Integrated Justice Technical Committee, which will design XML specifications for exchanging data among justice system branches and agencies; * OASIS LegalXML eNotarization Technical Committee, which will develop an agreed set of technical requirements to govern self-proving electronic legal information; * OASIS LegalXML eContracts Technical Committee, which will advance XML standards to enable the efficient creation, maintenance, management, exchange and publication of contract documents and terms; * OASIS LegalXML Electronic Court Filing Technical Committee, which will develop specifications for the use of XML to create legal documents and to transmit legal documents between attorneys, litigants, courts, and other users of legal documents; * OASIS LegalXML Legislative Documents, Citations, and Messaging Technical Committee, which will further develop open XML standards for the markup of legislative documents to allow the public to more easily participate in the democratic process by creating open, accessible legislative documents; * OASIS LegalXML Transcripts Technical Committee, which will design an XML-compliant syntax for representing legal transcript documents. “As part of OASIS, LegalXML has increased the rate of creation of requirements and specification drafts that will become OASIS LegalXML Standards. The Court Filing standard is undergoing interoperability testing, which has lead to the refinement of the interoperabity definition and standardization of the process,” said Don Bergeron of LexisNexis, chair of the OASIS LegalXML Steering Committee. “LegalXML technical committees are developing the requirements, specifications, data models, data dictionaries, and proposed standards that are necessary for the electronic exchange of legal information. OASIS LegalXML will continue to listen to the needs and concerns of the legal community to ensure our standards remain both efficient and effective.” “These new OASIS LegalXML technical committees are a testament to the energy and momentum that is building for LegalXML,” said Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. “It is significant to note that although the OASIS intellectual property policy allows both Royalty-Free (RF) and Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) licensing, LegalXML technical committees have all decided to provide their work to the public on an RF basis.” Participation in the LegalXML remains open to all organizations and individuals. OASIS hosts open mail lists for comment on the work of each technical committee, and completed specifications will be freely available to the public without licensing or other fees. Information on joining OASIS can be found on http://www.oasis-open.org/join. About LegalXML LegalXML brings legal and technical experts together to create standards for the electronic exchange of legal data. LegalXML operates as a member section within OASIS, the not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the LegalXML agenda, using the open OASIS technical process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. LegalXML produces standards for electronic court filing, court documents, legal citations, transcripts, criminal justice intelligence systems, and others. http://www.legalxml.org/ For more information: Carol Geyer Director of Communications OASIS carol.geyer@oasis-open.org +1.978.667.5115 x209