Robert Ambrogi Blog
At its inaugural Future Contracts Miami conference today, Law Insider announced the launch of oneSaaS, a standardized template for cloud services agreements, developed through a community-driven process that drew on input from more than 300 legal professionals and software-as-a-service providers and that analyzed nearly 1,000 public SaaS agreements.
The initiative aims to address unnecessary inefficiency, complexity and inconsistency in SaaS contracting, in an industry that processes more than 30 million contracts annually, Law Insider said. The template is being released as a free, open-source document available to organizations of any size.
The launch follows Law Insider’s acquisition in October of oneNDA, an organization that had developed an open source contract standard for non-disclosure agreements that has been adopted by more than 6,000 organizations and that Law Insider estimates is being used in some 10 million agreements annually.
oneNDA has also previously developed oneNDA M&A for mergers and acquisitions and oneDPA, a standard data processing agreement.
A Universal Standard
The development of OneSaaS followed the methodology established in creating oneNDA. The template was developed using AI analysis of nearly 1,000 public SaaS agreements from the Law Insider database to identify common elements and variations.
A steering committee then distilled those findings into a practical template that maintains core standard principles while allowing for configurability to meet specific business requirements.
“Our goal with oneSaaS is simple: to provide a universally recognized standard for cloud services agreements that fosters efficiency, collaboration, and innovation across the industry,” said Electra Japonas, chief legal officer at Law Insider and the former founder of oneNDA. “We believe this tool will save legal and business teams significant time and resources while promoting the network benefits of a global standard.”
Organizations including H&M, United Nations, IATA, and OneTrust participated in the development process, which included multiple rounds of community feedback and revision. The standardized agreement aims to reduce negotiation times and legal costs while increasing consistency in contracting.
“The methodology is an integral part of all our initiatives,” Japonas told me in a episode of my LawNext podcast that will be published this week. “We make sure that we get as much buy-in from as many people at the outset, and I think that’s key to adoption.”
In that same LawNext episode, Law Insider President Preston Clark told me that the launch of oneSaaS is part of a broader strategy to create a comprehensive suite of standardized agreements. He said that Law Insider plans to develop additional standards and to integrate them with contract automation technology through a second company he owns, SimpleDocs.
“The leverage that lawyers get from adopting a standard is in the volume of that standard’s adoption,” Japonas said. “If everyone’s buying into one standard, then that will by default give people more benefits and they will veer towards that.”
The template is free and open source and available at no cost to all organizations, regardless of size. “It’s completely free and it always will be,” Japonas said. “This is an open source document.”
She encourages organizations that adopt one of these standard templates to declare that they have done so by adding their name to a directory of adopters.
“Adoption is effectively a declaration that you’re committed to this cause,” she said. “It also shows that you’re a forward-thinking organization that isn’t trying to negotiate over words and details that are slowing down deals.”
Along with today’s launch of oneSaas, the company is providing a collection of supporting materials, including adoption guides and tutorial videos. It is available for download at lawinsider.com/standards/onesaas.