Law Doesn’t Have To Come From Government. Here’s How.

Our partners at The Startup Societies Foundation and Institute for Competitive Governance are proud to launch the Ulex crowdfunding campaign. We, at DecentraNet, fully support this fantastic project. Here’s why.

Published in

DecentraNet

3 min readSep 19, 2018

What is Ulex? It’s an open-source legal system.

Ulex allows those who use it to quickly and efficiently resolve disputes by having two parties both select a judge, who in turn chooses a third. Ulex draws on the American Law Institute’s restatements of the common law and other known equitable doctrines. The problems of exorbitant court fees, summons, government bureaucracy and inefficiency of the court system all around the world can be traversed.

What problems does Ulex aim to solve?

Currently, organizations and individuals are dependent upon the legacy legal system. Accomplishing even simple goals has significant obstacles when faced with bureaucracy bottlenecks, poor policy and obstructive legal personnel. Such delays and blockades stop many entrepreneurs, communities and families from functioning in a healthy way. In an increasingly global and interconnected world, the laws and courts of yesteryear simply no longer function as they should.

The Solution

Just as Visa and other private payment processors connect into commercial relations people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to trade, Ulex makes clear the law that will govern the relations between persons anywhere in the world. Both human and computer readable rules will be provided so that users of all stripes can use Ulex to handle their disputes: from sales contracts to torts and divorce law. Smart contract and escrow solutions may be used as needed, but having a private law that anybody can refer to is a world above current international business.

Ulex believes in making it easier and more efficient to resolve disputes, and that properly aligning incentives and assuring trust between parties are keys to successful projects — attributes enabled by Ulex. Ulex has the potential to change the way people do business, marry, resolve property disputes and much else.

The crowdfund is an opportunity to get involved in future solutions. Creating an open-source solution which will be available to all (much like Linux) is not free. Codifying the restatements of the common law in computer-readable language is the task of the Ulex development community, who will be compensated with bounties upon solving specific tasks. To this end, the Ulex Crowdfunding campaign is underway — to ensure access to justice to a world yearning for it.

Real World Applications

The Ulex team has gone into detail on the applicability in various environments, from Silicon Valley startups to open-air markets in Lesotho. Suffice it to say that Ulex is solving a problem of access to justice, which is being underserved worldwide. After all, are you satisfied with that time you used the court system, or even private arbitration?

Conclusion

The best way to solve a legal dispute is never to have it. Ulex functions in a way that promotes negotiation and cooperation rather than adjudication, as the loser will always have to pay the legal costs. This makes private solutions and stopping a dispute before it even happens the wisest course for people and organisations running Ulex — and a network effect can only amplify the power this bears.

The result can be a web of open collaboration where trust is less necessary: less friction, lower costs and faster solutions allow for greater agility in all walks of life.