Document Layouts

This article explains how you can use layouts to leverage reusable content blocks (such as headers and footers for Documents) and create a consistent experience across all Document Templates in a library.

About Layouts

Global legal logic components—Legal Data Models—contain content that can be displayed in multiple Document Templates. Looplex Code allows legal engineers to create and reuse a separate file with these content blocks, which can include text, markdown, and code.

You can embed these content blocks in multiple Templates where you want the information to appear, simplifying the automation and construction process of legal logic in a legal document. This also allows multiple platform views and services to use the same data consistently, such as Cases, BI, Flows, and other subsequent or dependent Documents in contract or dispute lifecycle processes.

This eliminates the need to copy and paste the same content into each Document Template or to transform and assign customized interview values through ETL (extraction, transformation, load) interfaces, which would process data for use across the Looplex platform.

If you need to modify these content blocks, you only need to update one file, and the changes will be reflected in all Templates and locations where the content is used.

The diagram below shows how the content blocks function. When the content construction module requests the instantiation of a specific Document Template, Looplex Code inserts these content blocks at the point where the RenderPage method is called on the main page. A completed (merged) page is sent to the browser, displaying both the intelligent interview elements and a preview of the Document to be generated.

This article outlines the general division of content blocks, referred to as sections, and explains the elements of the sections common to nearly all legal documents, such as the Header and Footer. This allows any Template to reference these blocks stored in separate files within its library.

Sections of a Document Template

All Looplex Documents have a topology with four main structural sections:

Document Types

Looplex has grouped several document types into its semantic reference model, each with different topologies within the Sections and, consequently, different basic layouts. These include:

Unilateral Documents

All content where only one party is acting—for example, any document containing propositions, obligations, or unilateral declarations made by one party (even if multiple people are in that position, such as multiple proposers or senders).

Examples of Unilateral Documents include petitions, commercial proposals, memoranda, letters, wills, notices, judicial rulings, etc.

Different configurations of a Unilateral Document.

Bilateral Documents

Documents in which there is an active party and a passive party acting simultaneously—for instance, any document containing propositions, obligations, or declarations made reciprocally or from one party to another (even if there are multiple people in each position, such as multiple contractors and contracted parties).

These documents may involve other parties, but this does not make them trilateral legal transactions. Instead, in such cases, there are multiple connected bilateral legal transactions within the same instrument, with the extra parties added as “third parties” (e.g., a guarantor or an intervenor).

Examples of Bilateral Documents include contracts, settlement petitions, or transaction instruments.

Different configurations of a Bilateral Document.

Multilateral Documents

The term “multilateral” can be misleading: there are not multiple poles here, but rather people connected by a common bundle of obligations to another legal object, which could be another person, an asset, a universal legal right, or a factual universal entity.

This object or entity can also be seen as the “party” on the passive side, even if it is not a legal subject. The actors on the active side can assume different roles or relationships (hence the multilateral nature of the document).

An example of a multilateral document is a company’s articles of incorporation or bylaws (all “shareholders” are on the active side, but they may also be “directors”), assuming different or even multiple roles. Another example is property ownership, where rights and obligations may be divided among multiple parties: bare owner, usufructuary, tenant, condominium owner, possessor, etc.

It is possible to construct multilateral documents in the same way as a lease contract with a guarantor (two connected but distinct legal transactions).

Even a judicial dispute with counterclaims or double requests represents two actions. Although the parties act as both active and passive poles simultaneously in the same instrument or petition, these are two distinct legal relationships.

Despite the ability to construct multilateral documents, in case lifecycle management, this will be broken down into multiple aggregated cases and subcases.

The header layout may vary depending on the type of Document being constructed. Additionally, some elements may or may not be present depending on the document type.

Bilateral Document

Unilateral Document

The same applies to the footer of the Document. As mentioned, the footer is a section for placing information common to multiple Documents regardless of the body, such as signature pages, document creation dates, and locations.