Blueprints: API-first Legal Templates
Blueprints are Magistrate's legal templates. The Magistrate team creates and publishes official blueprints for you to use. You design and create custom blueprints for your business to automate its legal paperwork.
Blueprints have two components:
- The template itself, written in a language called Jinja2, with custom extensions described in the blueprint designer reference.
- The schema of inputs to the template, written in JSON Schema, with a custom Magistrate metaschema described in the blueprint designer reference.
Every blueprint automatically gets a unique API to generate a legal document from the blueprint and optionally send it for signature. That unique API is generated automatically from the blueprint's schema which is exposed as the context property in the API call.
Every blueprint also automatically gets a web form that allows a non-developer to use the blueprint without having to make an API call. There is a 1:1 relationship to what is available in the API and what is available on the web, so your team can use whichever mechanism they are more comfortable with.
With blueprints, you put in key information, and Magistrate generates a legal document. It's that simple.
Official blueprints
A client goes to their lawyer and says that they're hiring an independent contractor or that they need to form a complex multi-member LLC. The lawyer sits them down, asks them questions, and then uses those answer to prepare a legal document specifically tailored to the situation.
Magistrate's official blueprints emulate this process by asking similar questions to what a lawyer would ask and preparing the corresponding document. Except, it's not a human asking you the questions, it's a web form or an API. Magistrate generates the legal document from the answers to the questions (or the API inputs) and generates the personalized legal document, ready to send for signature.
Magistrate's official blueprints can be found after logging in. The API reference for each of the official blueprints is also available in this documentation.
Custom blueprints
Custom blueprints are the ideal way for your business to automate its routine paperwork. If your company has an employment agreement or a sales agreement, for example, that constantly undergoing routine edits by your legal team, you are a great candidate for custom blueprints.
For now, custom blueprints are created by the Magistrate team in collaboration with you. Self-serve custom blueprints where you create your own blueprints on your own are in private beta.