Legal analysis

Make laws and regulations understandable, testable and enforceable

Laws and regulations are everywhere – both outside the organization (such as laws and policies) and inside. In our highly regulated world, it is a challenge to always comply with all regulations.

Legal analysis provides the solution for this. By converting complex laws and regulations into a logical formal model, laws become understandable and applicable for both humans and computers. This allows you to analyze the impact of legislative changes in advance and gain insight into your organization’s compliance and compliance obligations.

About Legal analysis

Legal analysis based on the Legal Reference Model (JRM) is the discipline that focuses on unraveling, structuring and understanding the currently complex structure and content of legislation. It is a method for analyzing legislation by identifying, defining and annotating its components – components such as legal subjects (the parties involved) or legal facts (events affecting the situation of those parties).

The JRM is the underlying legal model that determines which elements to identify and how to model them in a legal analysis. Using the JRM, we transform legislation into a structured, logical and understandable form. As a result, legislation becomes more transparent, accessible and clear for both lawyers and citizens.

Legal elements of the JRM

Some crucial improvements of the JRM over the Legal Analysis Scheme (JAS) presented in the “Legal analysis – for workable implementation of legislation with ICT” book are:

the introduction of the distinction between objective and subjective law,

The legal scenario with its underlying legal deeds,

The impact of the legally relevant fact (JRF) on the various legal elements of the JRM.

Curious about all the changes? Click here

What is Legal analysis?

Why is there Legal analysis?

What does Legal analysis look like?

When is Legal analysis of interest to you?

What expertise is needed for Legal analysis?

What does it take to perform Legal analysis?

Getting started with Legal analysis

Tooling, training, articles and more

Free introductory meeting with our executive consultants

In this one-hour meeting, you will discuss with our executive consultants how Legal analysis can help improve your organization’s compliance, insight and efficiency, and plan together any possible next steps.

Plan a meeting

Legal analysis in iKnow

With iKnow, you bring Legal analysis to life. The tool suite supports modeling according to the principles of CogNIAM and helps to efficiently capture data, rules and processes from laws and regulations. iKnow secures both the legal model and the knowledge model and makes the results directly applicable within your organization.

Legal analysis workshops

Select a workshop for more information

Legal analysis (i.c.w. OU)

Meet Legal analysis and learn how to structure and analyze legislation.

Legal analysis in practice

Get the knowledge and experience needed to get started with Legal analysis in practice with JRM 2.0.

Legal analysis with MiKnow

Online course on Legal analysis available soon!

MiKnow is an online platform that combines self-paced learning with instant feedback from experts and personal guidance – providing a truly blended learning experience. It is a perfect alternative to traditional workshops for individual participants, or a flexible addition for teams.

A MiKnow course on Legal analysis will be available soon!
This course consists of videos, podcasts, textual explanations and many exercises.

Watch the video to get a better idea of the course content.
In this video, we explain how Legal analysis helps make the implicit logic in legislation explicit.

More about CogNIAM

CogNIAM is at the core of all PNA activities. It is a knowledge modeling method that approaches processes (BPMN), rules (DMN), Data (FBM) and semantics integrally rather than separately. CogNIAM also forms the basis of the Legal Reference Model (JRM) that underlies further development of Legal analysis. It defines the core aspects of legal knowledge decomposition: the legal processes, the rules that drive them (derivation rules), the data involved (legally relevant facts) and their definitions (also referred to as the semantics).

More information?

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Bas van de Laar

Article

Ongoing developments and advances in Legal analysis

Presentatie iKnow-dag 2023 JohnB

This article discusses recent developments and insights within Legal analysis.

Article

Bridge between legislation and ICT

Legal analysis connects lawyers with technicians and knowledge modelers.

Article

Dissecting legislation can prevent strange things

Lawmakers and software developers do not speak the same language.

Animation

Agile law execution

What is Legal analysis?

Legal analysis is the systematic and complete dissection of a legal source. Thus, Legal analysis explicates the structure and content of laws and regulations in a standardized and complete legal model, with full traceability to the source. Legal analysis is based on CogNIAM and uses its principles to coherently model data, (derivation) rules and processes from laws and regulations. The result of this analysis – the legal model – can then be converted into a knowledge model that can be fully and cleanly executed and tested by information systems. Moreover, this model refers back to the original laws and regulations, making it always transparent on which legal basis a provision or legal rule is based – hence the double-sided arrows in the image below.

A bridge between legislation and information systems

In many organizations, (legal) rules are specified, or even “programmed away” in information systems in such a way that they are barely maintainable. Legal analysis has made it possible to record these (legal) rules in such a way that they are easily implementable and maintainable.

Why is there Legal analysis?

UniformSecure unambiguous interpretation and thereby reduce ambiguity.

Reduce complexity of laws and regulations to a great extent, thereby improving compliance and enforceability.

Be able to put the perspective of citizens and businesses at the center.

Enable testing of law implementation before implementation.

Legislation agile and questionable making.

From legislation to information systems: common bottlenecks - and how Legal analysis contributes to the solution

Lack of traceability

Legal analysis makes the structure and logic of laws explicit.
Every fact, rule and process element is directly linked to its legal source.

The content of services and processes is often not systematically linked to the original laws and regulations. As a result, insight into the legal correctness of implementation is lacking.

Full transparency and traceability from implementation to law.

Unclear and inconsistent translation process

The translation of laws and regulations into service and product requirements is often unstructured and person-dependent. Lawyers, process designers and IT specialists each use their own perspective, leading to misunderstandings and inconsistencies.

Legal analysis provides a standardized method based on CogNIAM.
It provides a common language between legal, operational and technical disciplines.

A clear, reproducible and manageable translation process.

Limited management and analysis support

By structuring laws into data, rules and processes, Legal analysis enables efficient management of legal information. Models can be directly tested and reused in information systems.

It is often difficult to effectively search, manage and update within large amounts of laws and regulations.
Changes are error-prone and difficult to oversee.

Faster maintenance and consistent compliance.

What does Legal analysis look like?

When applying Legal analysis, delineating information and using a source inventory is essential to arrive at the correct outcome for a given situation without having to model all irrelevant laws and regulations. We then cite practical examples for the given scope, which we convert into legal scenarios.

A legal scenario is the description of an implementation process of legislation from the perspective of the legal subjects involved, divided into legal acts. A legal act consists of a legal initial state, a legal fact (change of state), a legal consequence (change of state) and a legal final state.

While modeling of legal scenarios we link objective and subjective law to each other. Also, the practical examples allow us to agree with the domain expert(s) whether everyone has the same interpretation of the legal sources.

Objective law is the law as described in laws and regulations. It is the general rules that apply to everyone, recorded in law books. For example, a speed limit of 50 km/h applies to every driver within built-up areas, and a natural person is legally competent from the age of 18.

Subjective law arises when a concrete case is brought under objective law. This involves the application of general rules to a specific person, organization or situation. For example, T.E. Snelreyder driving 55 km/h in built-up areas gets a personal fine, André Rieu can claim copyright, or ASML can apply for a permit to expand its factory in Veldhoven.

This allows us to then explicate the structure and legal elements, including annotation of the legal source, for each legal scenario. From this we can check and validate the results of this model with the domain expert and indicate if and where missing policies have been found. With the legal model of a given scenario, we can then design the associated knowledge model, including concept definitions of the legal concepts, data model and decision logic.

When is Legal analysis of interest to you?

Everyone in the Netherlands has to deal with legislation, organizations of course too. The government is bound by the principle of legality, so it must always abide by the law. This sometimes turns out not to be the case, resulting in major scandals. For organizations that face strong regulation, such as financial institutions, it is true, they must always be compliant with the applicable rules. That, too, is often not the case, resulting in large fines.

This leads to costly projects within organizations – think of the big banks that were forced to hire huge numbers of consultants in response to previous fines related to AML and privacy regulations. These organizations are now looking at huge costs because the regulations were not properly implemented at the time and, as a result, they did not perform their gatekeeping function correctly.

With Legal analysis, we aim to help organizations be demonstrably compliant, both for current legislation, and when it changes.

When Legal analysis offers a solution

You need to translate legislation into executable processes/ICT.

A law change is coming and you want to know impact, risks and costs in a timely manner.

You want to set up or improve automated or semi-automated decision-making.

Audit/assurance requires explainability and demonstrable compliance.

You work with multiple parties and want uniform interpretation and interoperability.

Welke expertise is er nodig om Wetsanalyse uit te voeren?

Het toepassen van Wetsanalyse vraagt om een multidisciplinair team. Het correct interpreteren van wetgeving vraagt immers om experts uit verschillende hoeken. We adviseren organisaties die met Wetsanalyse aan de slag gaan om zo’n team in ieder geval te laten bestaan uit één of meer juristen, kennismodelleurs, uitvoeringsdeskundigen en business analisten.

Juristen, die het doel en het maatschappelijk belang van een regel begrijpen en ervoor zorgen dat de analyse conform de intentie van de wetgever is.

Kennismodelleurs, die abstracte juridische concepten veranderen in duidelijke datastructuren, beslisstromen, en systeemlogica. 

Uitvoeringsdeskundigen, die met kennis van hoe regels werken in de dagelijkse praktijk, anticiperen op uitzonderingen, knelpunten, of onbedoelde neveneffecten. 

Business analisten, die de brug slaan tussen juridische inhoud en organisatorische processen, en helpen om de regels werkbaar te vertalen naar de praktijk. 

What does it take to perform Legal analysis?

A suitable modeling tool

A tool for efficient modeling is needed. We offer our iKnow suite to capture the results of Legal analysis in a structured way and make this knowledge widely applicable. The software secures both the legal model with annotations if it knowledge model Of a Legal analysis conducted.

Knowledge of Legal analysis.

MiKnow Logo

Sufficient knowledge of Legal analysis and of all the elements to be annotated and modeled is essential. We offer both classroom workshops as online training courses to.

An MDT

A multidisciplinary team (MDT) that can develop the knowledge model of the laws and regulations within the chosen scope is a requirement.

A clear scope

A clear delineation is needed of the legislation to be analyzed. – for example, legislative texts, policy documents, internal regulations or, of course, a combination of these.

What is Legal analysis?

Legal analysis is the systematic and complete dissection of a legal source. Thus, Legal analysis explicates the structure and content of laws and regulations in a standardized and complete legal model, with full traceability to the source. Legal analysis is based on CogNIAM and uses its principles to coherently model data, (derivation) rules and processes from laws and regulations. The result of this analysis – the legal model – can then be converted into a knowledge model that can be fully and cleanly executed and tested by information systems. Moreover, this model refers back to the original laws and regulations, making it always transparent on which legal basis a provision or legal rule is based – hence the double-sided arrows in the image below.

A bridge between legislation and information systems

In many organizations, (legal) rules are specified, or even “programmed away” in information systems in such a way that they are barely maintainable. Legal analysis has made it possible to record these (legal) rules in such a way that they are easily implementable and maintainable.

Why is there Legal analysis?

UniformSecure unambiguous interpretation and thereby reduce ambiguity.

Reduce complexity of laws and regulations to a great extent, thereby improving compliance and enforceability.

Be able to put the perspective of citizens and businesses at the center.

Enable testing of law implementation before implementation.

Legislation agile and questionable making.

From legislation to information systems: common bottlenecks - and how Legal analysis contributes to the solution

Lack of traceability

Legal analysis makes the structure and logic of laws explicit.
Every fact, rule and process element is directly linked to its legal source.

The content of services and processes is often not systematically linked to the original laws and regulations. As a result, insight into the legal correctness of implementation is lacking.

Full transparency and traceability from implementation to law.

Unclear and inconsistent translation process

The translation of laws and regulations into service and product requirements is often unstructured and person-dependent. Lawyers, process designers and IT specialists each use their own perspective, leading to misunderstandings and inconsistencies.

Legal analysis provides a standardized method based on CogNIAM.
It provides a common language between legal, operational and technical disciplines.

A clear, reproducible and manageable translation process.

Limited management and analysis support

By structuring laws into data, rules and processes, Legal analysis enables efficient management of legal information. Models can be directly tested and reused in information systems.

It is often difficult to effectively search, manage and update within large amounts of laws and regulations.
Changes are error-prone and difficult to oversee.

Faster maintenance and consistent compliance.

What does Legal analysis look like?

When applying Legal analysis, delineating information and using a source inventory is essential to arrive at the correct outcome for a given situation without having to model all irrelevant laws and regulations. We then cite practical examples for the given scope, which we convert into legal scenarios.

A legal scenario is the description of an implementation process of legislation from the perspective of the legal subjects involved, divided into legal acts. A legal act consists of a legal initial state, a legal fact (change of state), a legal consequence (change of state) and a legal final state.

While modeling of legal scenarios we link objective and subjective law to each other. Also, the practical examples allow us to agree with the domain expert(s) whether everyone has the same interpretation of the legal sources.

Objective law is the law as described in laws and regulations. It is the general rules that apply to everyone, recorded in law books. For example, a speed limit of 50 km/h applies to every driver within built-up areas, and a natural person is legally competent from the age of 18.

Subjective law arises when a concrete case is brought under objective law. This involves the application of general rules to a specific person, organization or situation. For example, T.E. Snelreyder driving 55 km/h in built-up areas gets a personal fine, André Rieu can claim copyright, or ASML can apply for a permit to expand its factory in Veldhoven.

This allows us to then explicate the structure and legal elements, including annotation of the legal source, for each legal scenario. From this we can check and validate the results of this model with the domain expert and indicate if and where missing policies have been found. With the legal model of a given scenario, we can then design the associated knowledge model, including concept definitions of the legal concepts, data model and decision logic.

When is Legal analysis of interest to you?

Everyone in the Netherlands has to deal with legislation, organizations of course too. The government is bound by the principle of legality, so it must always abide by the law. This sometimes turns out not to be the case, resulting in major scandals. For organizations that face strong regulation, such as financial institutions, it is true, they must always be compliant with the applicable rules. That, too, is often not the case, resulting in large fines.

This leads to costly projects within organizations – think of the big banks that were forced to hire huge numbers of consultants in response to previous fines related to AML and privacy regulations. These organizations are now looking at huge costs because the regulations were not properly implemented at the time and, as a result, they did not perform their gatekeeping function correctly.

With Legal analysis, we aim to help organizations be demonstrably compliant, both for current legislation, and when it changes.

When Legal analysis offers a solution

You need to translate legislation into executable processes/ICT.

A law change is coming and you want to know impact, risks and costs in a timely manner.

You want to set up or improve automated or semi-automated decision-making.

Audit/assurance requires explainability and demonstrable compliance.

You work with multiple parties and want uniform interpretation and interoperability.

What does it take to perform Legal analysis?

A suitable modeling tool

A tool for efficient modeling is needed. We offer our iKnow suite to capture the results of Legal analysis in a structured way and make this knowledge widely applicable. The software secures both the legal model with annotations if it knowledge model Of a Legal analysis conducted.

Knowledge of Legal analysis.

MiKnow Logo

Sufficient knowledge of Legal analysis and of all the elements to be annotated and modeled is essential. We offer both classroom workshops as online training courses to.

An MDT

A multidisciplinary team (MDT) that can develop the knowledge model of the laws and regulations within the chosen scope is a requirement.

A clear scope

A clear delineation is needed of the legislation to be analyzed. – for example, legislative texts, policy documents, internal regulations or, of course, a combination of these.