--- title: Are you a civil society organisation looking to turn your expertise into practical legal resources? date: 2026-10-19T15:20:30Z modified: 2026-10-19T15:32:45Z permalink: "https://chancerylaneproject.org/news/are-you-a-civil-society-organisation-looking-to-turn-your-expertise-into-practical-legal-resources/" type: post status: publish excerpt: Civil society organisations hold specialist knowledge that could help shape how businesses operate. Find out how working with The Chancery Lane Project can turn that expertise into practical legal resources and contractual change. wpid: 11713 categories: - Legal Design - Press and media featured_image: "https://chancerylaneproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/markus-spiske-P5BDtCqLvTc-unsplash-scaled.jpg" timestamp: 2026-10-19T15:32:45Z tags: - Legal Design - Press and media --- Civil society organisations (charities, research institutes, advocacy groups and environmental organisations) hold evidence, networks and trust. They have the potential to translate their expertise into the terms of a commercial contract, but often lack the legal knowledge to know how or where to start. The Chancery Lane Project (TCLP) works with organisations to turn specialist knowledge into practical legal resources, including model clauses, guidance and tools that help put climate, nature and social commitments into practice. We’re looking for partners who want to explore what we can achieve together. Our Principal Legal Engineer, [Simone Potter](https://www.linkedin.com/in/simone-potter-76701426/) and Legal Engineer [Humzah Khan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/humzah-khan1/) are ready to help. [Get in touch](mailto:contact@chancerylaneproject.org) ## Contracts reach where policy stops Almost every commercial relationship runs on a contract. Supply chains, workplaces, buildings and loans all depend on them. New laws can take years to pass, and court decisions resolve individual cases. Contracts offer another route, turning ambitions into agreed obligations between the parties. Most campaigners do not use this tool. Not because their cause lacks force, but because writing contract terms takes legal skill, and that skill largely sits with companies. TCLP exists to change that. We publish model clauses for free, under an open licence, so anyone can use them. ## Build legal resources together You bring your subject expertise, research and understanding of the people who will use the result. We bring user research, legal design and legal engineering: the skills needed to structure legal knowledge so that people and AI tools can find, understand and use it. Together, we develop practical legal resources shaped around a real need. These might include model clauses, guidance or structured content that AI assistants can draw on. You retain ownership of the work, publish it under your name and decide how to share it. We can also help you find lawyers to review the wording. ## Test small, then repeat We use a seven-step, design thinking process to develop, test and refine practical resources. By bringing together your expertise, TCLP’s knowledge and feedback from users, we develop solutions grounded in real needs and improve them through testing and iteration. 1. Agree a small first test: define the aim and scope, with either side able to stop at no cost. 2. Build a content base: bring together your evidence and expertise with relevant material from TCLP’s knowledge library 3. Build a draft or prototype: turn the material into something people can use and test. 4. Test it with your users. you invite participants; we design and lead the session. 5. Review and improve: use feedback to iterate and refine the resource 6. Arrange legal review: involve lawyers early so they can review the wording while the resource is being developed and tested (steps 3 to 5) 7. Release the resource and hand it over. ## Connect your evidence to the law Your evidence can do more than inform a report. It can sit alongside the legal knowledge lawyers and AI assistants draw on when drafting contracts. TCLP’s knowledge graph is a structured library of almost 200 model clauses, alongside guidance and glossary terms. It links this content to relevant laws, regulations, standards and frameworks. Our [Model Context Protocol (MCP) connector](https://labs.chancerylaneproject.org/project/knowledge-graph-mcp/) lets AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT access TCLP’s knowledge within existing workflows. This creates opportunities to connect specialist evidence directly to the legal terms it can inform. For example, we have built a separate knowledge graph of evidence on heat interventions. This supports the checking of claims in our heat stress clauses against the underlying evidence. For partners, the potential is to make specialist knowledge easier to find and apply when people are drafting contracts, rather than leaving it in reports that may never reach the people writing the terms. ## Who are we working with? We’re working with organisations across several areas. We cannot name them yet, but the projects include: - A global health research funder and an Australian university research group. Together we are turning evidence on workplace heat into contract terms that protect workers. - A research and training charity for the food and grocery industry, focusing on food supply chains. - An international network that funds and supports climate campaigns, focusing on automotive supply chains. - A national environmental regulator. ## Start with a conversation The first step is a talk, not a commitment. Tell us your aim, who you want to reach, and any limits on time or content. If it makes sense, we write a one-page scope together and run a small test. Funders can use the same route. If you fund organisations whose evidence never reaches a contract, talk to us about what a joint test could look like. Your evidence already exists. A contract is a different place to put it. [Contact us](mailto:contact@chancerylaneproject.org) ## Topics **Categories:** [Legal Design](https://chancerylaneproject.org/wp-content/uploads/wp-mfa-exports/taxonomy/category/legal-design.md), [Press and media](https://chancerylaneproject.org/wp-content/uploads/wp-mfa-exports/taxonomy/category/press-and-media.md)