This is where the open ecosystem for digital law is taking shape.
With rulemapping, a new era of legislation and legal application begins. Laws are no longer created solely as text, but simultaneously as visual, machine-readable logic models. This allows them to be processed, validated, and applied digitally from the outset. This open ecosystem connects legal scholarship, public administration, and technology — laying the foundation for a digital, transparent, and effective legal system.
The Rulemap Builder (BETA) is the first building block of this ecosystem. It enables laws, regulations, and procedures to be represented and reviewed as visual decision models. It forms the precursor to automating legal processes with Rule AI — a technology that makes legal logic machine-executable. Future development stages will allow AI-assisted generation of Rulemaps, automatic modeling of existing laws, and the creation of legally compliant texts based on the Handbuch der Rechtsförmlichkeit — all compatible with standards such as LegalDocML or FIM.
The Rulemap Library will become an open collection of digital laws and rule models — freely accessible, extendable, and interoperable. It allows Rulemaps to be shared, compared, and further developed. For the first time, this creates a collaborative legal infrastructure that brings machine-readable law to life step by step.
Law as Code is the idea of designing law digitally from the start — creating legislation in a way that machines can process and apply directly within digital procedures. Rulemapping is the first market-ready implementation of this concept: it translates laws into visual, legally structured decision models that are both machine-readable and understandable for humans. This establishes the basis for a state that not only becomes digitalized but functions digitally — with laws that update automatically, decisions that remain explainable, and processes that act transparently and consistently.
RUML (Rulemapping Logic Format) is an open, JSON-based file format that provides a machine-readable representation of laws, regulations and decision logic. It makes legal rules understandable to software without altering their legal meaning.
What problem does RUML solve?
Currently, laws and regulations are mostly available in plain text format. This results in manual and error-prone interpretation whenever they are applied, whether in public administration, business or software development. RUML overcomes this issue by translating legal rules into a standardised, machine-readable format that can be evaluated automatically.
Who is RUML designed for?
RUML is intended for developers building parsers, validators, editors or other tools for processing legal logic. Beyond that, legislators, public administrations and businesses benefit from modelling their regulations digitally and applying them automatically.
Is RUML freely available?
Yes. The RUML specification is open and will be published for public access, enabling governments, organisations and developers worldwide to use and integrate the format into their systems free of charge.
Where can RUML be used?
Anywhere rule-based decisions are made, such as in tax law, social benefits, building permits, compliance checks, insurance logic or internal corporate policies. RUML is designed to be independent of jurisdiction and industry.
With the Rulemap Builder (BETA), laws, guidelines, and internal regulations can already be modeled as digital decision structures — free of charge, visually, and without any programming.
Further development stages will follow soon: the open Rulemap Library as a shared platform and the integration of Rule AI for automated application. Anyone working with rulemapping today actively shapes the foundation of tomorrow’s open, digital legal system.