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Overview

What is the Accord Project?

Accord Project is an open source, non-profit initiative aimed at transforming contract management and contract automation by digitizing contracts.

The Accord Project defines a notion of a legal template with associated computing logic which is expressive, open-source, and portable. Accord Project templates are similar to a clause or contract template in any document format, but they can be read, interpreted, and run by a computer.

The goal of the Accord Project is to provide an open, standardized format for Smart Legal Contracts.

What is a Smart Legal Contract?

A Smart Legal Contract is a human-readable and machine-readable agreement that is digital, consisting of natural language and computable components.

The human-readable nature of the document ensures that signatories, lawyers, contracting parties and others are able to understand the contract.

The machine-readable nature of the document enables it to be interpreted and executed by computers, making the document "smart".

Contracts drafted with Accord Project can contain both ‘smart’ and ‘non-smart’ clauses. For example, a Smart Legal Contract may include a smart payment clause while all of the other provisions of the contract (Definitions, Jurisdiction clause, Force Majeure clause, ...) are being documented solely in regular natural language text.

A Smart Legal Contract is a general term to refer to two compatible, architectural forms of contract:

  • Machine-Readable Contracts, which tie legal text to data
  • Machine-Executable Contracts, which tie legal text to data and executable code

Machine-Readable Contracts

By combining Text and a data, a clause or contract becomes machine-readable.

For instance, the clause below for a fixed rate loan includes natural language text coupled with variables. Together, these variables refer to some data for the clause and correspond to the 'deal points':

## Fixed rate loan

This is a *fixed interest* loan to the amount of {{loanAmount}}
at the yearly interest rate of {{rate}}%
with a loan term of {{loanDuration}},
and monthly payments of {{monthlyPayment}}.

To make sense of the data, a Data Model, expressed in the Concerto schema language, defines the variables for the template and their associated Data Types:

  o Double loanAmount     // loanAmount is a floating-point number
  o Double rate           // rate is a floating-point number
  o Integer loanDuration  // loanDuration is an integer
  o Double monthlyPayment // monthlyPayment is a floating-point number

The Data Types allow a computer to validate values inserted into each of the {{variable}} placeholders (e.g., 2.5 is a valid {{rate}} but January isn't). In other words, the Data Model lets a computer make sense of the structure of (and data in) the clause. To learn more about Data Types see Concerto Modeling.

The clause data (the 'deal points') can then be capture as a machine-readable representation:

{
  "$class": "org.accordproject.interests.TemplateModel",
  "clauseId": "cec0a194-cd45-42f7-ab3e-7a673978602a",
  "loanAmount": 100000.0,
  "rate": 2.5,
  "loanDuration": 15
  "monthlyPayment": 667.0
}

The values entered into the template text are associated with the name of the variable e.g. {{rate}} = 2.5%. This provides the structure for understanding the clause and its contents.

Machine-Executable Contracts

By adding Logic to a machine-readable clause or contract in the form of expressions - much like in a spreadsheet - the contract is able to execute operations based upon data included in the contract.

For instance, the clause below is a variant of the earlier fixed rate loan. While it is consistent with the previous one, the {{monthlyPayment}} variable is replaced with an Ergo expression monthlyPaymentFormula(loanAmount,rate,loanDuration) which calculates the monthly interest rate based upon the values of the other variables: {{loanAmount}}, {{rate}}, and {{loanDuration}}. To learn more about contract Logic see Ergo Logic.

## Fixed rate loan

This is a *fixed interest* loan to the amount of {{loanAmount}}
at a yearly interest rate of {{rate}}%
with a loan term of {{loanDuration}},
and monthly payments of {{% monthlyPaymentFormula(loanAmount,rate,loanDuration) %}}.

This is a simple example of the benefits of Machine-Executable contract, here adding logic to ensure that the value of the {{monthlyPayment}} in the text is always consistent with the other variables in the clause. In this example, we display the contract text using the underlying CiceroMark format, instead of the rich-text output that would be found in editor tools and PDF outputs.

More complex examples, (e.g., how to add post-signature logic which responds to data sent to the contract or which triggers operations on external systems) can be found in the rest of this documentation.

What are the Benefits of Smart Legal Contracts?

Smart Legal Contracts can be easily searched, analyzed, queried, and understood. By associating a data model to a contract, it is possible to extract a host of valuable data about a contract or draft a series of contracts from existing data points (i.e., variables and their values).

The data model is used to ensure that all of the necessary data is present in the contract, and that this data is valid. In addition, it provides the necessary structure to enable contracts to "come alive" by adding executable logic.

For more information about Smart Legal Contracts, and how they are different from other kinds of "smart contracts", please visit the Accord Project FAQ.

Key Concepts →