What is OLPN?
A decentralized protocol for verifying the identity, properties, and credentials of legal professionals and organizations across the open web.
The protocol
The Open Legal Publishing Network (OLPN) is an open protocol for publishing identity, verifiable credentials, and ownership of digital properties for legal professionals and organizations. It is decentralized. No single service holds the source of truth for any identity. Every entity publishes its own data at a domain it controls, and a resolver at olpn.org verifies claims by fetching both sides of a back-link.
OLPN is not a platform, a directory, or a SaaS product. It is a set of document formats, a few fetch rules, and a reference resolver. Anything that can serve a JSON file at a URL can participate.
What OLPN solves
A lawyer's professional identity is fragmented. A firm bio, a LinkedIn profile, a bar directory entry, a handful of contributor bylines, and a state-licensing record rarely point at each other in a way a machine can verify. The web has no native way to ask "is this credential real?" without calling the issuer.
OLPN gives each entity a single public record (olpn.json) at a domain they own, and a format for mutual back-links between that record and the records published by credential issuers and property owners. A third party can verify a claim by fetching both documents and checking that each side names the other. No central registry. No trust anchor.
The pieces
Three document formats do the work:
- Entity document at
{domain}/olpn.json. Profile plus lists of credentials, properties, and connections. - Property document at
{domain}/olpn-property.json. Confirms that a domain or site is claimed by a given entity. - Credential document at
{issuer-domain}/{username}/olpn-credential.json. Names the subject the credential was issued to.
Each document has an equivalent HTML embed (<script id="olpn-hub">, <script id="olpn-property">, <script id="olpn-credential">) for hosts that cannot serve arbitrary JSON paths.
Who it is for
Individual attorneys publish an entity document at a domain they own and list credentials issued to them by firms, bar associations, schools, and legal publishers.
Organizations (firms, bars, law schools, publishers) publish their own entity document plus credential documents for the members they want to attest. A firm that publishes an OLPN identity makes every credential it issues independently verifiable.
Hosts and platforms implement OLPN so their users get the protocol for free. publish.law is one such host; the protocol is not tied to any single provider.
What this site covers
These docs are the reference for implementers. If you are writing a client, a publishing host, or a credential issuer, you should be able to build from this documentation without reading the resolver's source. Where the spec is incomplete or the reference implementation at olpn.org is the final word, we flag it explicitly.
Non-implementers looking for the elevator pitch should read olpn.org or publish.law instead. This site assumes you want to build something.