Templates, Portfolios, and Solutions

What is a Template

To convert the execution experience of a legal service—whether analyzing a problem, drafting a contract, petition, or memorandum, extracting data from an external document produced by an opposing party, distributing and coordinating work, or deciding on strategies and gaining insights from a case—we organize things into Templates.

A Template is a model and a specialized computer program that executes, along with other Templates, part or all of a solution to a legal problem. It acts like a mold where the legal engineer places legal logic objects and execution components.

A Template is a model because it contains the abstract elements of a given problem, already mapped and defined. For instance, it defines the clauses of a lease agreement (object, price, conditions, term, etc.), the inputs a lawyer needs to construct the document, and the outputs generated by the interview (e.g., the contract printout).

A Template is also a program (functions) as it includes the logical operations required to automate the construction of that lease agreement.

In essence, a Template combines Legal Data Models, logically segmented to reflect how lawyers organize their content. Examples include templates for lease agreements, dispute defenses, agreement negotiation workflows, or visual analyses of labor process portfolios.

Internally, a Template can be divided into various components that legal engineers can invoke to enable construction and automation from a library of common elements. For instance, a contract can call a dispute resolution and jurisdiction clause or a general termination and duration clause for service agreements. These components can be Legal Topics. Components can be legal or service-oriented, such as contract signing services or an integration component for synchronizing data with an external supplier management system.

Template Types

Several types of templates exist in the Looplex platform, named according to their output or context (view) delivered to the user. Common examples include:

Document Templates: For constructing intelligent documents. These can be subdivided into Interview Templates (for generating dynamic user interview input forms) and Rendering Templates (for generating the document, such as a contract).
Workflow Templates: For modeling and automating business process workflows associated with content and/or cases.
BI Templates: For ETL (extraction-transformation-load) of structured data to display standardized dashboards, analyze strategies, and suggest actions.
Case Templates: For managing legal problems involving multiple tasks, content, resources, and people, such as judicial processes, contract lifecycle management, or corporate governance.
Calculation Templates: For preparing updates and calculating interest, monetary corrections, fees, fines, etc., in contractual obligations, disputes, and other scenarios.

What is a Portfolio

Sometimes it makes sense to group related Templates to manage them in a coordinated manner since their content is interrelated, both at the data model level and in instantiated data (concrete situations).

The keywords are “related” and “coordination.” When grouped this way, they form a Template Portfolio¹. For instance, an automation pipeline for a judicial procedure could include templates for contestation, audience preparation and analysis, appeal reasoning, contingency reporting for the client, and more—grouped into an automated pipeline for managing a judicial portfolio.

What is a Solution

From the perspective of strategic objectives and delivering aggregated value to users, we can make another aggregation: the Solution.

A Solution differs from a Portfolio because it includes a collection of various elements (Templates, computing services, APIs, etc.) that may or may not be related. The aggregation is tied to strategic objectives and how we want to view that collection, whereas Portfolios consist of directly related elements.

An example of a Solution could be combining Case Templates, Document Templates, integrations with financial and supplier management systems, dashboards, and more to manage supplier contracts. Another example could involve provisioning and optimizing a portfolio of judicial cases or managing entities, governance, powers of attorney, and internal deliberations within a company.

Aggregation of Templates, Portfolios, and Solutions

A Solution can include Templates and Portfolios, while a Portfolio must contain one or more Templates. A Solution cannot exist without Templates.

Put another way: a Template is an independent unit producing various unique and identifiable outputs for the user (Documents, Dashboards, etc.).

A Portfolio is a group of related Templates managed in a coordinated way, with the keywords “related” and “coordination.”

A Solution is a collection of various elements, with the keywords “collection” and “strategic objectives.” By aggregating elements into a Solution, we enable Portfolio and Template management.

Output from a Concrete Situation

When a Template is activated, it receives the inputs of the concrete case, processes them according to mapped operations, and generates an output. This output is the computed result of the presented legal problem, manifesting in various forms: Document, Workflow, Dashboard, Case Interface, etc.

These output elements are temporary and unique, as they are archived or stored for future consultation after being generated or displayed to the user in response to a concrete problem.

In summary, Templates are “factories” producing outputs, which are the Documents, screens, dashboards, and tasks generated as a consequence.

Analogy with Construction

A helpful analogy to solidify these concepts is comparing them to how construction projects are built and managed:

In PMBOK and other frameworks, Solution is synonymous with portfolio, while Portfolio is synonymous with program. Similarly, at the base of the hierarchy, a Template is synonymous with project. We use this naming convention to align with software architecture terminology and user expectations on the Looplex platform. ↩