Everything you need to know about the noslegal taxonomy

There are two basic ways to use noslegal. One is to replace all or some of your existing taxonomy when you assess that noslegal is better. In doing so, you can extend noslegal to address further details relevant to your organisation. The second way is to use it as a mapping layer to join up different taxonomies within your organisation or between your organisation and others (e.g. your legal services providers or clients). Mapping documents the relationship between your existing concepts and the corresponding noslegal concepts. It is often an approximation rather than a perfect translation, but even an imperfect mapping consistently applied allows data classified under different taxonomies to be understood and combined.

To make rapid progress, the most important level to map to is often the second level: concepts at this level represent the core interoperable layer. Every departure from second-tier alignment generates a downstream cost to manage. The layer above it gathers these concepts together, and the layer(s) below it break down further details.

Where clients, law firms, and technology providers describe legal work using a mapped set of concepts in this way, it becomes easier to exchange information, benchmark performance, and integrate workflows across organisational boundaries. These benefits compound over time: an organisation that invests in alignment now, even partially, will be better placed to realise them as adoption widens. If your existing concepts lack explicit definitions, this is a practical opportunity to adopt noslegal definitions where possible. If you have your own definitions, consider how well they are applied in practice and whether they offer any material advantage over the noslegal equivalents. If not, alignment with noslegal is likely to be a good choice.

Enablement is a residual category. It applies to work that does not fall within a more specifically defined work type category.

The practical test is therefore to work through the other categories first. Is the matter concerned with resolving a dispute over legal rights or remedies? Dispute resolution. Establishing or amending a legal relationship or status? Transaction. Formal insolvency, wind-up of an estate, or separation of a relationship? Dissolution and restructuring. Constructing or materially altering a physical or intangible asset? Development. Structured fact-finding or official proceedings? Investigative process. And so on. Enablement comes into play when none of these fits: ongoing advisory support, day-to-day legal backing for a business function, internal initiatives, authority responses, and residual representation and advice all live here. Its ten types cover a wide range of situations. The unifying feature is that they fall outside any more specifically characterised work type but nevertheless enable an organisation or person to fulfil their objectives.

Work that is primarily advisory but falls within a more specific category (for example, advising a client through an official investigation) should be classified under that specific category.

We've concluded that legal operations is not a work type in the same sense as the others. It is better modelled as a cross-cutting approach that can be brought to bear across different work types. Treating it as a discrete work type alongside those categories was not useful. This means that in practice legal operations activity will typically be classified under whichever work type best describes what is actually being done: a compliance framework design project falls under GRC and policy; a post-merger integration programme falls under Enablement; a litigation spend benchmarking exercise would sit in Dispute Resolution. The legal operations dimension can be captured through topic tags or organisation-specific fields rather than at work type level.

We recognise that this may leave some people wanting more explicit guidance on how to represent legal operations consistently across classifications. We are planning a short, focused consultation exercise later in 2026 to consider how best to address this: whether through extended guidance, a dedicated extension pack, a definition in the process elements glossary or in other ways.

The most likely classification is within Enablement, specifically as Organisational initiatives (wkt-enb-7). The definition of that type covers legal support for the implementation of major internal programmes, including organisational change and business transformation initiatives. A legal operations capacity-building project (building legal operations capability, improving processes, implementing new tooling) would typically fall within that scope.

The caveat in the definition is worth noting: Organisational initiatives explicitly excludes projects that can be categorised in other work types. So if the capacity-building work is primarily a compliance programme, it would belong in GRC and policy (wkt-grc-3, Risk and compliance). If it is primarily a training and guidance exercise, Advice (residual) (wkt-enb-10) may be more appropriate. If it involves procuring and implementing technology, Organisational initiatives remains the better fit.

As with any classification decision, the question to ask is: what is the primary purpose of this project as a whole? Classification should follow from that purpose rather than from incidental features of how the work is being done.

Governance, risk and compliance. While we have generally avoided initialisms in category names, we concluded after consultation that this one is widely understood and used by people working in the field and can easily be found by anyone unfamiliar with it. Brevity in this case was more important. In implementation, you are free to use a fuller phrase as a synonym if you wish, as the unique noslegal code will identify it as the same concept.

noslegal does not impose a single classification scheme on everything about a matter. Data structures in practice typically include two types of field: fields that draw on the noslegal taxonomy (work type, area of law, sector, places, roles), and other fields that capture organisation-specific context using your own terms: practice group, business unit, internal client, cost centre, strategic initiative, product line, or whatever dimensions matter to your organisation. These are not alternatives. They can sit alongside each other in the same record.

The Sectors facet adds a further dimension worth noting. The same matter may legitimately be classified by matter sector (the sector most relevant to the legal work itself) and client sector (the industry or industries in which the client operates) as separate data points. These will sometimes differ: if an energy company instructs you on a real estate acquisition, classifying the matter in the real estate sector and the client in the energy sector is both accurate and useful for different purposes. Field design should make this distinction explicit.

The practical principle is that fields should be designed around the questions the data needs to answer. noslegal provides the shared conceptual foundation; your organisation's own business taxonomy and your field design can provide the additional business context.

Within Areas of law, the primary classification is by issues such as public law, land law and family law with indigenous law aspects being addressed as topics within these. If you are interested in developing an extension pack in this area either with international application or for a particular country, please get in touch.

In areas of law terms, the most relevant classification will depend on what the matter concerns. General government law within Sectoral laws > Public sector and NGO (law-sec-pub-6) explicitly includes municipal law as a topic and covers local government organisation, powers and decision-making. Planning law (law-lnd-2) covers land use decisions including municipal planning, zoning and development consent. Public law > Constitutional and administrative law (law-pub-1) or Public law > Rights law (law-pub-2) may be relevant if the matter concerns the legality of a municipal body's decisions or their impact on individual rights.

Work type will follow from the nature of the matter. A challenge to a municipal decision is most likely Litigation (wkt-dsp-2) or, if there is an administrative appeals route, Enablement > Representation (residual) (wkt-enb-9). Advising on compliance with a municipal regulatory requirement may be GRC and policy (wkt-grc-2 or wkt-grc-3). A contract with a municipality is a Transaction. Classification in the Public sector and NGO sector (sec-pub) is appropriate where the municipal body is itself the client.

The noslegal taxonomy classifies by the process that is actually underway or clearly expected, not by the process that might eventually happen. Classification should therefore follow the current state of the matter and be updated as the position becomes clearer. If formal proceedings have been commenced (in a court, tribunal, or under arbitral rules), the classification is clear: Litigation (wkt-dsp-2) or Arbitration (wkt-dsp-3) as appropriate. If the matter is still in negotiation without any formal process underway, Consensual resolution (wkt-dsp-1) may be used, but its definition should be noted: it applies to a free-standing process aimed at agreed resolution without any process already underway to impose a binding decision. It is not the right classification simply because parties have not yet gone to court.

Many matters begin with informal negotiation before any formal process and it is not always clear at the outset which route will be taken. In those circumstances, the best approach is either to make an initial classification and revise it as the position develops, or to subdivide the matter as the nature of the process changes, depending on the nature of your organisation's workload and data needs, policy on this is something to define and enforce. Materiality limits should be considered for defining when to reclassify and when to subdivide.

The question captures a genuine initial surprise, but the underlying logic is coherent.

The Dissolution and restructuring category (wkt-rsl) is defined by a shared purpose: winding up or restructuring the affairs of an organisation or individual, solvent or insolvent, alive or dead. What the types in this category have in common is not their legal subject matter but their process character. All of them involve bringing something to a close or fundamentally reorganising it, gathering and valuing what exists, resolving claims, and distributing assets or rights to those entitled to them.

Administering a deceased estate involves exactly that process: obtaining authority to act, identifying and valuing estate assets, settling debts and liabilities, and distributing the remainder to beneficiaries. Handling a divorce or separation involves dividing shared assets and resolving financial claims between parties. Formal insolvency and solvent reorganisation involve much the same thing at an organisational level. These are not superficially similar: they draw on the same process vocabulary and generate similar data needs for planning, pricing and experience management.

The alternative (placing deceased estates in Personal affairs and divorces in Family law) would make sense if the area of law were the organising principle. But noslegal's Work types facet organises by purpose, not by area of law, which is captured separately in its own facet. When a lawyer plans, prices and manages a deceased estate or a divorce, the relevant experience for comparison and knowledge purposes has as much in common with solvent restructuring work as with other family law or personal affairs matters. Keeping them together reflects that reality.

The areas of law facet handles the legal subject matter: Succession and estate administration (law-paf-2) for estates, Divorce and separation (law-fam-2) for family dissolution. The two facets work together rather than duplicating each other.