Services
NLI organizes a conflict into a form that can be decided or settled. Applied work is grouped by the problem in front of you: a matter that must become answerable, a process or institution that must be corrected, or cooperation that must be made durable.
Begin With the Problem, Not a Product
We begin by identifying the condition preventing responsible decision, lawful correction, or durable closure.
The useful instrument follows from that condition—the problem, record, operation, and the person or institution authorized to use the result.
Why NLI Undertakes Work
NLI serves people facing consequential conflicts and advances a public mission to strengthen the rule of law.
A matter may be accepted principally as direct service, principally as a public-interest initiative, or as a mission-aligned engagement that does both. Public consequence, recurring institutional failure, capacity to clarify law, educational value, and reform potential may inform fit.
Public importance does not determine the merits, guarantee acceptance, or relax evidence, confidentiality, professional boundaries, and no-outcome standards. Any research, publication, advocacy, or reform arising from an engagement requires an appropriate scope and any necessary permission.
Three Problems, Three Peer Practices
A matter may cross practices. Begin with the condition creating the immediate risk.
Fit review identifies the likely practice, provisional track, missing record, professional dependencies, and useful first engagement.
Engineering decisions
Adjudicative Architecture
Make the matter answerable.
Use when: a dispute, investigation, hearing, litigation record, appeal, or court-facing question cannot yet be responsibly decided.
NLI constructs the bounded question, record, authority, burdens, causality, remedy, limits, and review path, so the decision that follows can withstand scrutiny.
Matter and record architecture
Chronology, claims, facts, custody, authority, burdens, jurisdiction, remedy, and review in one inspectable construction.
Decidability memorandum
The controlling proposition, material dependencies, tests, classification, defeat conditions, lawful limits, and correction rule.
Review, amicus, and decision architecture
Source-auditable work for authorized counsel or institutions, including what a disposition accepted, refuted, limited, replaced, or omitted.
Engineering institutions
Counter-Lawfare & Institutional Correction
Stop legal process from functioning as the weapon.
Use when: procedure, ambiguity, cost, delay, asymmetry, publicity, institutional reluctance, or state coercion creates leverage unrelated to genuine resolution—or a matter exposes recurring institutional failure.
NLI maps the mechanism, fixes the decisive merits test, and constructs lawful counter-instruments or institutional correction for authorized use, restoring function where an institution has become locked in an adversarial cycle.
Process-to-effect diagnosis
The observable mechanism connecting procedure or coercion to material leverage, including what a timely merits decision would remove.
Counter-lawfare instrument
A bounded merits test and lawful tool for counsel or another authorized actor to expose, challenge, deter, or neutralize misuse.
Institutional correction architecture
Agency, public-record, accountability, coalition, reform, legislative, or policy work tied to evidence and lawful purpose.
Engineering cooperation
Settlement Architecture
Produce closure that survives the agreement.
Use when: ending a proceeding or signing an agreement will not resolve injury, duties, governance, implementation, enforcement, succession, separation, or recurrence—or when cooperation must be designed before any dispute exists, as in founding, governance, and succession work.
NLI accounts for the conflict and constructs reciprocal, operational, reviewable, and enforceable terms for professional review, so cooperation can survive implementation.
Conflict and incentive account
Interests, injuries, transferred costs, dependencies, risks, externalities, responsibility, correction, and recurrence conditions.
Term, remedy, and governance architecture
Reciprocal duties, rights, warranties, authority, performance, restitution, review, succession, exit, and enforcement.
Closure audit
Whether the instrument terminates unresolved incentives, liabilities, ambiguities, dependencies, externalities, and avenues of recurrence.
One Matter May Cross Practices
The practices are peers, not silos or a sequence.
A dispute may expose institutional misuse and conclude with settlement or governance redesign. Begin with the problem creating immediate risk; fit review maps what follows.
What a Service Track Means
A track describes a likely first engagement—not a rank, fixed package, or required sequence.
You do not need to select one correctly before contacting NLI.
Something must be decided
The question or record is not ready. Adjudicative Architecture makes the matter answerable.
Process or institutional failure must be corrected
Counter-Lawfare exposes the mechanism; Institutional Correction constructs the lawful response.
Closure must survive implementation
Settlement Architecture converts interests, duties, governance, remedy, and recurrence into durable terms.
Current system: 26 tracks only—A1–A9, L1–L9, and S1–S8.
Explore the Track ExplorerWhat You Receive
A defined work product with stated inputs, authorized use, limits, and correction conditions.
The exact instrument follows from the record and written scope. One document does not fit every matter.
A compressed record
Your chronology, claims, facts, adverse facts, custody, authority, burdens, posture, and constraints in one document, with what is still missing marked.
A controlling question
The one question whose answer changes authority, liability, remedy, review, lawful continuation, correction, or closure.
An explicit construction
How the evidence and the authority produce the result, with the dependencies, limits, defeat conditions, classification, and correction rule stated.
A usable instrument
Blueprint, memorandum, research record, filing architecture, decision audit, institutional map, counter-instrument, term architecture, governance architecture, or closure audit.
A responsibility map
What NLI performs, what you supply, what your professionals decide, and what authority courts or institutions retain.
How an Engagement Begins
Fit review precedes substantive work.
Acceptance occurs only through a written scope.
Inquiry
Describe the problem, role, record, forum, deadlines, adviser status, restrictions, and desired work.
Fit review
NLI identifies likely practice and track, missing material, authorized user, required professionals, boundaries, and preliminary fee range.
Written scope
Define inputs, operation, deliverables, responsibilities, timing, fee, confidentiality, revisions, exclusions, and termination.
Delivery and correction
NLI performs the scoped work, marks limitations, coordinates required review, delivers to the authorized user, and preserves correction.
The current working estimate for an initial fit review is $500–$1,000, subject to confirmation before payment or work.
How NLI Works Alongside Counsel and Institutions
NLI constructs and tests the matter so the people who hold authority can act on it with less ambiguity. That work is designed to be inspected, adopted, revised, or rejected by them. Counsel retains legal advice, privilege, strategy, filing, advocacy, and professional responsibility; courts and authorized institutions retain judgment and remedy; other professionals retain their licensed or fiduciary determinations. NLI does not represent parties, guarantee privilege or result, adjudicate, mediate, or exercise public authority.
Prefer to begin with your role? See how work differs for litigants, attorneys, courts, civic actors, organizations, and founders.
Who We ServeStart With the Present Condition
Describe what is preventing decision, correction, or durable closure—not merely the document you expect.
A fit review identifies the likely practice and track, the missing material, the professional dependencies, and a useful first engagement. Do not send privileged, sealed, classified, or restricted material through the initial inquiry.