A smart legal contract is a legally binding agreement that is digital and able to connect its terms and the performance of its obligations to external sources of data and software systems. The technology enables documents to be structured as machine-readable data objects and executed on or integrated with external systems. While blockchain can enhance certain operations, smart legal contracts function without it — a core principle of Accord Project technology.
Smart legal contracts should not be confused with blockchain-based “smart contracts,” which are scripts operating on distributed ledgers. A smart contract may be part of a smart legal contract, but doesn’t represent the entire agreement. A smart legal contract might trigger an on-chain transaction, or it may use entirely traditional systems like payment processors – or be called by an AI agent as a tool call via APAP.
Smart legal contracts transform agreements from static text documents into machine-interpretable assets that are searchable, analyzable, real-time, and integrated with external systems. This makes contracts a source of live business intelligence rather than an administrative burden — and a foundation that AI agents can reliably draft, validate, and execute against.
The Accord Project is a non-profit, member-driven organization that builds open source code and documentation for smart legal contracts for use by transactional attorneys, business and finance professionals, and other contract users. Open source means that anyone can use and contribute to the code and documentation and use it in their own software applications and systems free of charge.
The purpose of the Accord Project is to establish and maintain a common and consistent legal and technical foundation for smart legal contracts. The transactional working groups are assisted by the Technology Working Group, which builds the underlying open source code and specifications to codify the knowledge of the transactional working groups. More details about the internal governance of the Accord Project are available here.
The working groups have calls at least once a month and use the Accord Project’s Discord Channel for discussion. The dates, dial-in instructions, and agendas for the working groups are all listed in the Project’s public calendar and typically also in working group’s respective slack channels.
A primary purpose of the working groups is to develop a universally accessible and widely used open source library of modular, smart legal contract and smart clause templates and models that reflect input from transactional attorneys and other experts. Smart legal contract templates are built according to the Project’s Cicero Specification.
Members are expected to at least provide some feedback into the templates and models relevant to a particular working group. You can immediately get started contributing smart legal contract templates and models by using the Accord Project’s Template Playground.