Stored data
In most cases, it is not a good idea to store personal data inside of clauses & templates, but some users nevertheless do.
For the sake of exhaustivity, we therefore also provide an extensive overview of all the types of data that gets stored on behalf of the users on the ClauseBase platform.
Clauses
Clauses are one of the most important data elements in the ClauseBase platform. They have an owner (user), filename, body and optionally a description, comments and attributes assigned to them. In Clause9, they can also have various other elements associated with them, see below.
Documents
Documents have a filename and owner (user).
In Clause9, documents are collections of clauses, accompanied by information about how the clauses are structured internally (e.g., first clause 1001, then clause 2023, then clause 5001, then a subclause 5023, etc.). Documents can hold layout information.
In ClauseBuddy, documents contain the entire contents of a DOCX file.
Q&A answers
End-users can optionally save the answers to a Q&A into a separate file ("answer set"), typically to prevent that the answers would need to be entered again a few days later (e.g. while negotiations are still ongoing). Those answers can deal with any type of data deemed relevant by the template author, e.g. commencement date, salary, interest rates, optional clauses to be inserted, free text added to the contract, etc.
In Clause9, template authors can also specify that answers from anonymous users must be saved in an encrypted way, using a password chosen by the end-user (optionally associated with an expiry key).
Attributes
Clauses can have attributes assigned to them, i.e. predefined metadata types, such as "length", "pro buyer", "aggressive?", "industry", etc. The ClauseBase platform stores both the blueprint for such attributes as the effective value assigned to each clause.
Security-related data
Access bundles
Expiry date of folders
Folders can optionally be assigned a user-definable expiry term. Every night, the files stored in an expired folder will get automatically removed, to prevent accumulation of data.
Logins
For each login performed by a user, the ClauseBase platform will store the user ID, a unique random token and the expiry date. This record will be deleted upon logout.
SSO settings
If a customer account is protected with SSO, then relevant settings (login expiry, launch URL, return URL, certificate) are stored by the ClauseBase platform.
Clause9-specific items
Binders
Binders are collections of Documents. Similar to Documents in Clause9, they can also have custom styling information.
Global placeholders
Clause9 allows to define "placeholders" at the level of a customer, group or user. Those placeholders will be dynamically replaced with concrete values, typically for use in a Clause9 template or in disclaimer messages. A placeholder has a name and a data type assigned to it.
Recently used Q&As and documents
Clause9 keeps track of the most recently used Q&As and documents, to show them as a short-list towards the user. (A user can also manually clear this list.)
Sub-elements of clauses
Action buttons
A clause can host one or more "action buttons" for modifying a clause inside of the Clause9 Assemble Document environment. Stored data includes the name of the button, its position, the database query it optionally executes, the subclause(s) it inserts when clicked and the insertion method.
Audit trail
Enterprise customers can optionally activate auditing for clauses. This will cause each updated version of a clause to be separately and integrally stored by the platform, so as to see how the contents of clauses evolved over time. In addition the full contents of each clause, the audit trail also stores the timestamp of the event, the system function or user command that triggered it, and the associated user.
Cross-tags
Clauses can be associated with "cross-tags", i.e. cross-reference target elements.
Custom layouts
Clauses can have a custom styling associated with them.
Links to Concepts & other clauses
Clauses can optionally contain links to other clauses and to concepts, e.g. to indicate that a certain clause is an example of a certain legal concept.
Memos
Clauses can optionally have one or more memos with text associated with them; typically used in a Q&A to show additional legal information (e.g., case law or legal doctrine) relating to that clause.
Metadata: timestamp & owner
For each clause and each folder, the ClauseBase platform will store a timestamp of the last change, as well as the "owner" (user) of the clause/folder.
Status
In Clause9, clauses can be assigned a status (such as "validated" or "draft").
Versions
Clause9 can store related versions of a clause — e.g., a version that was used before some relevant legislation was changed, and a current version used after that change in legislation.
Concepts
For each Concept, essential elements such as its datafields, data-expressions, concept-labels and links to other concepts can be stored.
Bookmarks
Each user can store bookmarks ("favourites") to interesting folders.
Custom home pages
Administrators can create one or more customised home pages, and assign them to certain user groups. Those home pages store the following information: title, styling (hide title, alignment, border, background colour, width, height), layout (number and type of columns, region to occupy, header & footer, padding), expiration date, max. amount of files to show, specific files to show.
Custom branding
Enterprise customers can store deviating CSS styling and custom logos, to brand their Clause9 portal.
Layout objects
On the level of the customer, group, user and individual document, so-called layout objects can be stored. Those layout-objects contain a title and owner, as well as specific layout information (e.g., font, paragraph settings, numbering scheme, locale style, enumeration settings, cross-reference styling).
Spreadbases
Clause9 allows to create "spreadbases", i.e. integrated spreadsheets that host commonly used business information (such as addresses of legal entities or names of signatures) that may be relevant in Q&As. Spreadbases can host multiple types of records (numbers, texts, lists of texts, dates, durations, etc) and may therefore store substantial amounts of data.
Third party integrations
Clause9 can be integrated with various third party services, such as Contractify and Corporify. Such integrations can have their own access bundle to define which users can use those integrations. Depending on the service considered, a password, OAuth token or API key may also get stored.
ClauseBuddy specific items
Curator inboxes
In ClauseBuddy, so-called "curators" automatically get an inbox, where messages are being stored that get sent by other users. Those messages contain a timestamp, title, note, language, body (usually some interesting new clause or feedback related to a certain clause or template) and the name of the sender.
Doc Chat
Previous prompts and chat sessions are temporarily saved in the browser's LocalStorage.
Multi-document Table
Users can save (and even publish towards colleagues) the question sets they formulate, to foster easy reuse. It is very atypical for hose questions to contain any sensitive data.
Write & Rewrite
Administrators can create default prompts for the entire organisation and/or specific groups.
Users can save their own prompts on the server, to facilitate future reuse.
Recent prompts get automatically saved in the embedded brower's LocalStorage.
Summarise
Users can save the structure of their summaries, to foster future reuse of that structure (e.g., which information gets extracted, in which other, ...).
Legal guides
Review sets
Search folders
Style schemes
Those schemes store detailed settings that reflect the settings of an MS Word template, such as the style names used for headings/body/table paragraphs; text snippets to recognise templates.
Subscriptions
Truffle Hunt baskets
Bulk Operations
Users can store (and even publish towards colleagues) the sets of operations they have configured (e.g., "accept all changes; swap all footers containing X by Y; concatenate all files into one DOCX-file). Those saved operation-sets do not typically contain any sensitive information.
Updates
2 April 2025:
removed information relating to Bulk Import, as that module was deprecated
added information regarding various new modules added to ClauseBuddy (Doc Chat, Multi-Document Table, Write & Rewrite, Summarise, Bulk Operations)
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