Open Legal Publishing Network (OLPN)
The Open Legal Publishing Network, or OLPN, is the open framework that connects the legal web. It defines how legal professionals, publishers, and platforms can identify themselves, verify their work, and share it across systems—without relying on any single company or platform.
A Common Language for the Legal Web
Today, most legal content exists in silos. Firm sites, news outlets, directories, and marketing platforms all use different systems and formats, making it difficult to verify authorship, track reputation, or connect related work.
OLPN helps solve that by defining a common data layer—a shared language for identity and publishing that any platform can use.
It’s not a network you join. It’s a set of standards and open tools that make the legal web interoperable.
How It Works
OLPN establishes three simple building blocks:
- Decentralized Identity – Every lawyer, firm, and publication can be identified by a verifiable, domain-rooted ID (for example,
§:entity:firmname.com). These identities can be confirmed and linked across sites using public keys and resolvers, creating a chain of trust built on ownership, not accounts. - Verifiable Publishing – When an article, post, or update is published, it can include a machine-readable record that points back to its author’s verified identity and original source. That ensures proper attribution, prevents impersonation, and allows automated systems—like search or AI—to understand context and authorship.
- Structured Data – OLPN uses open standards like JSON-LD and schema.org to describe people, organizations, and publications in a consistent, machine-readable format. That makes legal content portable, searchable, and easier to preserve.
Together, these principles make legal content more discoverable, verifiable, and future-proof.
Why It Matters
The legal web is becoming increasingly fragmented and automated. AI systems already remix and summarize professional content without attribution or context.
OLPN provides the framework to reverse that trend—making it possible for attorneys and publishers to prove authorship, verify identity, and maintain reputation in an open, machine-readable way.
It’s not about decentralization for its own sake. It’s about durability and trust—ensuring that the legal record stays tied to real people and real organizations, even as technology changes.
Built and Maintained by Alt21
OLPN began as an Alt21 development project to solve problems we encountered building The Legal Examiner and publish.law. It’s now an open framework that anyone can adopt.
Alt21 continues to maintain the resolver service, specification, and documentation—laying the groundwork for OLPN to evolve into an independent, community-governed project.
Our role is to keep the protocol stable, transparent, and freely available. The network belongs to the ecosystem, not to us.
Learn More
Visit docs.olpn.org for technical specifications, examples, and implementation guides.
For discussion or collaboration, reach out through mastodon.law or contact the Alt21 development team.