Legal, compliance & legal AI terms

Plain-English definitions of the terms that come up in real work — each with practical context, a worked example, and how it plays out under Indian law.

30 terms

Contract Terms

Arbitration ClauseAn arbitration clause is a contractual agreement to resolve disputes through private arbitration rather than court litigation, specifying the seat, governing rules, number of arbitrators and language.Read

Force MajeureA force majeure clause excuses a party from performing its contractual obligations when performance is prevented by defined extraordinary events outside its reasonable control.Read

Governing LawA governing law clause states which jurisdiction’s substantive law will be used to interpret the contract and resolve disputes arising under it.Choice of lawApplicable lawRead

IndemnityAn indemnity is a contractual promise by one party to compensate the other for specified losses, typically covering third-party claims arising from the indemnifying party’s acts, breaches or IP infringement.IndemnificationHold harmlessRead

Limitation of LiabilityA limitation of liability clause caps the maximum amount one party can be required to pay the other under a contract, and usually excludes indirect or consequential losses entirely.Liability capLoL clauseRead

Liquidated DamagesLiquidated damages are a sum fixed in the contract in advance as the compensation payable for a specified breach, agreed so the parties need not prove actual loss.LDPre-estimated damagesRead

Master Services Agreement (MSA)A Master Services Agreement (MSA) is an umbrella contract that fixes the commercial and legal terms governing every future engagement between two parties, so individual projects can be commissioned without renegotiating the whole relationship.MSARead

Statement of Work (SOW)A Statement of Work (SOW) is a short contract issued under a Master Services Agreement that defines the scope, deliverables, timeline, acceptance criteria and price for one specific engagement.SOWScope of WorkRead

Termination for ConvenienceA termination for convenience clause allows a party to end the contract without any breach by the other side, usually on stated written notice and sometimes on payment of a termination fee.Read

Warranty vs RepresentationA representation is a statement of fact made to induce a party to enter a contract, while a warranty is a contractual promise that a state of affairs is true — and the distinction determines the remedy available when the statement turns out to be false.Read

Indian Legal

Good LawA judgment is "good law" when it remains binding authority that has not been overruled, reversed, or superseded by later judicial decisions or legislation.Good law statusStill good lawRead

NCLTThe National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) is the specialised Indian tribunal that adjudicates company law matters and corporate insolvency proceedings under the Companies Act, 2013 and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016.National Company Law TribunalRead

Obiter DictaObiter dicta are observations made by a judge that were not necessary to decide the case, and which therefore carry persuasive weight only rather than binding precedential force.ObiterDictaRead

Per IncuriamA judgment is per incuriam when it was decided in ignorance of a binding statute or precedent that would have altered the outcome, and such a judgment does not operate as binding precedent.Read

Ratio DecidendiThe ratio decidendi is the legal principle on which a court’s decision actually rests, and it is the only part of a judgment that binds later courts as precedent.RatioBinding reasonRead

Special Leave Petition (SLP)A Special Leave Petition is a request under Article 136 of the Constitution asking the Supreme Court of India to exercise its discretion to hear an appeal from any judgment or order of any court or tribunal in India.SLPRead

Writ PetitionA writ petition is an application to a High Court under Article 226 or to the Supreme Court under Article 32 of the Constitution seeking an order against the State or a public authority, typically for enforcement of fundamental or legal rights.Read

India Regulatory

Data FiduciaryA Data Fiduciary is the person or entity that alone or with others determines the purpose and means of processing personal data under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.Read

DPDP Act 2023The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 is India’s principal data protection statute, governing how organisations collect, process and store the digital personal data of individuals in India.Digital Personal Data Protection ActDPDPARead

GST Input Tax Credit (ITC)Input Tax Credit is the mechanism under India’s Goods and Services Tax that lets a registered business offset the GST it has paid on business purchases against the GST it collects on sales.ITCInput tax creditRead

MCA / ROC FilingMCA/ROC filing is the mandatory submission of statutory forms, financial statements and returns by Indian companies and LLPs to the Registrar of Companies through the Ministry of Corporate Affairs portal.ROC filingRegistrar of Companies filingRead

RBI Master DirectionAn RBI Master Direction is a consolidated instruction issued by the Reserve Bank of India that compiles all current regulatory requirements on a given subject into a single, continuously updated document.Read

SEBI LODRSEBI LODR refers to the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015, which set the continuous disclosure, governance and compliance obligations of companies listed on Indian stock exchanges.LODRListing Obligations and Disclosure RequirementsRead

Legal AI

AI RedliningAI redlining is the automated generation of tracked-change edits to a contract, proposing specific revised wording rather than merely flagging that a clause carries risk.Automated redliningAI markupRead

Citation VerificationCitation verification is the process of confirming that every case, statute or authority cited by an AI system genuinely exists, is quoted accurately, and remains valid law.Read

Contract Health ScoreA contract health score is a single composite rating, commonly on a 0–100 scale, summarising the overall risk position of a contract based on its clause-level analysis.Legal Health ScoreContract risk scoreRead

HallucinationA hallucination is output from an AI system that is fluent and plausible but factually false — in legal contexts, most consequentially an invented case, citation, or statutory provision.AI hallucinationConfabulationRead

Jurisdiction-Aware AIJurisdiction-aware AI is a legal AI system that reasons explicitly about which jurisdiction’s law applies to a question, rather than treating law as a single undifferentiated body of knowledge.Read

Legal AILegal AI is the application of artificial intelligence — particularly large language models and retrieval systems — to legal work such as contract review, legal research, drafting, and compliance monitoring.Read

Regulatory IntelligenceRegulatory intelligence is the continuous monitoring of regulators and legislatures to detect changes in rules, and the translation of each change into who is affected, what must be done, and by when.Regulatory monitoringRegulatory radarRead

Let's build

Put these terms to work

LexVio reviews contracts against Indian statutes and case law, and tracks SEBI, RBI, MCA and GST obligations — so the terms in this glossary show up where the work actually happens.

Explore LexVio Talk to us