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Relevant Uses of GitHub for Legal Document

Dazza Greenwood edited this page Aug 5, 2013 · 1 revision

Docracy describes itself as: "the web’s only open collection of legal contracts and the best way to negotiate and sign documents online." The Docracy site includes several legal documents in template form and is essentially a GitHub for legal agreements. This webmonkey.com article describes the service and it's GitHub overtones very well.

Resources by Zeke Vermillion

This template is provided as a general guide to pre-incorporation business associations. It allows people to collaborate on speculative, early-stage business projects on fair terms, without a lot of hassle or paperwork. The founders should replace this with a traditional structure if the company obtains significant outside funding, customers, revenue, or takes on other obligations.

This form is drafted from a New York perspective, and may not be appropriate to parties in other jurisdictions. You should consult with your own attorney for advice prior to using this form.

This is a convertible note term sheet template developed by an open source law project (https://sites.google.com/site/opensourcelawproj...), with primary drafting by Zeke Vermillion of Adler Vermillion & Skocilich LLP, and Vanessa Schoenthaler of Qashu & Schoenthaler LLP. Please feel free to use, improve, and modify. Keep in mind that the main branch of this doc should be a semi-exhaustive template, not a negotiated doc. Please fork for any specific negotiated uses.

The following is from a Wired article about the project by Fenwick and West to share these legal documents via GitHub

Now one of Silicon Valley’s star legal firms, Fenwick & West, is posting a set of legal documents to GitHub that startups can use when lining up their first stage of venture funding. The 30 pages of “Series Seed” documents have been available in open source form for several years, but these days it only makes sense to share them on GitHub, which has become a standard tool for Silicon Valley startups, says Ted Wang, the Fenwick & West partner who released the docs.