We choose to solve hard problems.
Xcential chooses to solve problems in legislative and regulatory drafting. Not because it is easy, but because these problems are important.
As we kick-off 2025, Xcential remains focused on these problems.
Legislative drafting is about clarity, accessibility, the will of the people, guarding against abuse of power, effective governance, and transparency. The caretakers of law are the caretakers of our civil societies and democracies. They deserve our gratitude and service.
Regulatory drafting is about economic growth, and the balance between corporate and individual well-being. Regulation at its best promotes economic growth for its citizens and protects us against corporatocracy. The individuals creating regulation deserve the best tools available to make informed decisions as they shape our economies.
So what are the hard problems that Xcential chooses to solve?
- Clarity
- Speed
- Version Control
- Collaboration, and
- Programability
Clarity
Carefully creating text that is easy to understand is the goal. Lack of clarity leads to disputes and degrades enforcement. Creating clear rules requires focus.
The challenge is the environment and tools. It is hard to focus in a messy environment and rule making is messy. The drafter deals with competing amendments, slightly different amendments, conflicting objectives, and enormous amounts of input from all directions.
Clarity is supported by structure but those structures (like USLM, LegalDocML, and others) require attention to detail. These structures are good and necessary, but using them correctly can steal focus (when tools are complicated as well).
Xcential products are designed to give drafters back some of that focus. LegisPro has a familiar interface and lets the user focus on content instead of structure. No drafter should have to feel like they are programming a document instead of writing one.
LegisPro ensures documents are correct by construction and handles being standard compliant for you.
What’s next?
Writing assistants. Xcential is exploring the addition of plain English assistants and other aides focused on clarity and interpretation. We don’t believe AI should be used for generating text, but it can give feedback on clarity.
Speed
It’s 3:00 pm and a final printed version must be delivered before 9:00 am tomorrow. There are 150 amendments and 50 amendments to amendments; all of which need to be handled with precision. There are numbered and unnumbered lists to create, briefs, and all have different formats. Steps can’t be skipped, so it looks like another long day.
Getting things correct while moving quickly requires tools. The more powerful the tool, the more velocity available.
Document synthesis enables automation. LegalDocML enables automation. Reusable content, templates and standard phrases create speed. LegisPro is a drafting machine that creates hours in the day. This is the problem that gave life to LegisPro in 2002 and speed remains a core principle.
What’s next?
Comparisons are good today in LegisPro. But something bigger, better, and faster is coming. User-friendly document synthesis controls are coming to adjust for change on the fly, while maintaining precision. Document management is evolving to ensure disorganization cannot slow you down.
At Xcential, we believe the primary goal of computers is to automate tasks that require precision, but not human creativity. This belief continues to push LegisPro to remove the speedbumps slowing you down.
Version Control
Remember all those amendments to amendments?
Version control is a problem for all knowledge workers. But there are literally hundreds of versions of a single bill at times.
The ability to work collaboratively on a bill multiplies the problem (even though it’s positive).
Reliable version control allows a drafter to know they are working on the right version, has the ability to revert to checkpoints, handle amendments to bills and amendments, and much more. With complexity and automation, a small version control problem can balloon into a major problem.
Today LegisPro’s version controls are better than any other off the shelf product for legislative and regulatory drafters. It is strong, flexible, and designed for the complexity of the tasks. We welcome the comparisons to weaker platforms.
Tomorrow’s LegisPro is focused on anticipating user behavior and intuitive use. The mechanisms and architecture are right. But we are making it easier to deal with versions through automation and design.
Collaboration
Collaboration is easy. “Just send me what you have and I’ll incorporate it.” Easy, right?
If you’re doing the job of constructing an act or bill or amendment, you know that collaboration is very difficult in practice.
Why? Because of structures and precision. One valuable thing parliaments share is a transparent legislative history. Precision and structure create confidence in the citizens, but make collaboration tricky problem.
Today, LegisPro enables collaboration in a number of ways.
One, it supports the LegalDocML concept of locking provisions. This means any number of drafters, editors, and reviewers can edit portions or segments of a document at the same time. There is no fear of overwriting someone else’s work; and versions of those segments further enable collaboration.
Two, annotations and comments.
Three, the dedication to standards. We usually think of collaboration as two people who trust each other working on a problem together. But two applications who trust each other, and speak the same language can also work on a problem together. It is LegalDocML, USLM and the like that allow various applications to work together. The document standards allow us to create a system of components which work together, instead of monolith systems which are proprietary and costly to replace or upgrade.
What’s next?
An improved approach to annotations and comments is coming. We’ve listened to the feedback.
And the platform. LegisPro is not just an editing and document publishing system. It is not just a platform for consolidating law and making it more transparent. The platform is extendable and already includes a well-used plug-in architecture. Xcential is partnering with leaders and engineers to provide more plug-ins to support applications like plain english recommendations, advanced grammar and structure aides, connections to website portals, RaC and more.
Programability
Did someone say Rac? Rules as Code. In the regulatory space, Rules as Code is the promised land. The problem of drafting easy to understand and interpret and apply regulation is massive. It is also a problem that computers can help us solve.
This is truly a problem as an opportunity. The opportunity is a massive reduction in regulatory risk for both regulators and regulated industries. Today computers cannot reliably model regulatory risk. If they could, we’d see better aligned regulation and economic growth across the globe.
Today our platform provides the first step in this process. Information structured for human and machine readability. This is a step which must be correct and cannot be skipped.
What’s next?
The second step is LegalRuleML. The standard is here. The EU is implementing.
Xcential tools will provide the second step of logic mapping into LegalRuleML. If you are interested in RaC, please drop us a line as we’d love your feedback.
2025
The tough problems above are the focus of Xcential. We have made real progress and will continue throughout the coming year.
We hope you’ll join us.
