Practice areas & tags

A template library is only as useful as it is findable. Practice areas label a template with one or more areas of law from a fixed list. Custom tags add your own dimensions on top: document types, jurisdictions, internal codes, anything that makes the library work for your firm.

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Why two systems

Practice areas are the firm-wide cabinet. The list is fixed — the same nineteen areas for every firm on Libra, so there’s no drift between teams — and a template can carry as many of them as genuinely apply. Tags are the labels you stick on individual templates. They’re free-form, you invent them, and a template can carry as many as you find useful. The two work in different directions: the practice area answers what kind of work is this?, the tag answers what’s specific about this one? — NDA, English, German law, or an internal client code. The practice-area list isn’t configurable. There’s no setting for adding your own area, which is exactly the gap custom tags fill. The nineteen areas, alphabetically as the Practice area filter lists them, are:

• Administrative
• Arbitration
• Commercial
• Corporate
• Criminal
• Employment
• Family & Inheritance
• Finance
• General
• Intellectual Property
• IT & Data
• Litigation
• M&A
• Other
• Real Estate & Tenancy
• Regulatory & Compliance
• Restructuring & Insolvency
• Tax
• Tort, Liability & Insurance

Both General and Other exist; the dropdown inside a template’s editor lifts them out of the alphabet, putting General at the top and Other at the bottom. Agree as a firm which of the two is your catch-all rather than splitting unclassified templates across both.

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Setting a practice area and tags

Both fields live in the configuration panel of a template’s editor — the column down the left of the page, headed for whatever you’re editing (Playbook Configuration, Assistant Configuration, Discovery Configuration, Workflow Configuration). On a narrow screen it collapses behind the Configuration gear in the header. Both fields are marked optional. The Select practice area field is a dropdown that rests on Select — it reads simply Practice area when you’re viewing a template you can’t edit. Options toggle, and every area you pick becomes a chip in the field, each with a cross that removes just that area. There’s no clear-all in the editor; that’s the Clear selection row in the Practice area filter on the Templates page. Tags is a dropdown too, not a free-text field. It rests on Select or create your own tags and opens onto a search box — Search existing tags or add a new one… — above the tags already in use. Typing filters that list; when nothing matches, a Create tag for row appears with your text and makes the tag on the spot. Tags are capped at 40 characters. Picking an existing suggestion instead of inventing a near-duplicate is the single habit that keeps the vocabulary tidy. Once the template is saved, its tags show up in the Tags column of the Templates list view and in the Tags filter for everyone who can see that template.

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Filtering the library

The Templates page carries a horizontal filter bar above the results. From the left: Sort by, Practice area, Tags and Author. On the right sit the search box, an Advanced filters gear, and the grid/list view toggle. Clear all filters appears at the end of the bar as soon as one filter is active and drops all of them at once — which is why you won’t see it on an unfiltered library. Two rules govern how the filters combine. Within one filter, selections are alternatives: two practice areas return templates in either. Across filters they narrow each other: a practice area plus a tag returns only templates that satisfy both. Filters apply to the tab you’re on, and the counts beside each practice area and tag describe that tab only. The pattern that works in practice: treat practice areas as the primary axis, since they’re stable and consistent across the firm, then use tags for the dimensions they don’t cover. Resist tagging things already in the template’s name — if a template is called NDA Consistency Check, it doesn’t need a check tag.

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Cleaning up tags

There is no rename and no merge. Tags are created and deleted, nothing else, and any user can do both — no admin role, no tag screen in settings. To delete one, open the Tags filter on the Templates page — or the Tags dropdown in a template’s configuration panel — and click the cross at the end of that tag’s row in the list. Don’t confuse it with the cross on a selected tag’s chip: that one only takes the tag off the template you’re editing. If nothing uses it, the tag disappears immediately. If it’s in use, a Delete tag dialog reports how many items are affected — This tag is currently used in N items — and confirming strips the tag from every template and project you have permission to edit. Read that count carefully. It covers everything carrying the tag, including items you can only view — those keep the tag, so a shared or Libra-curated template can still show a label you thought you’d deleted. Chats are outside this altogether: a tag you’ve put on a chat isn’t counted here and isn’t removed, so tidy those from the chat itself. The templates themselves are untouched either way; only the label goes. Consolidating duplicates therefore runs in one direction: add the canonical tag to each template carrying the duplicate, then delete the duplicate. Filtering the library by the duplicate first gives you the working list.

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Tips for a tag system that scales

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Next steps