Summary

NDA review has to be the bane of many an attorneys existences. Few people like reviewing them and few clients like paying for the review. Nevertheless, it's a necessary evil. Recognizing that much of the time and expense of NDA review is driven by the seemingly infinite number of different templates in use, the oneNDA project aims to correct this by developing a single, universal NDA template. In theory, it's a great idea. If there were one template that most parties accepted and could readily be used, the parties to NDAs could more easily and quickly draft and review the documents.

The founders of this project believe they'll be able to make it more successfully by including top law firms in the drafting effort and incorporating insights from select in-house counsel at major multinationals to determine the most common needs in an NDA and to lead internal change management efforts to get the resulting NDA approved at these companies. They've certainly succeeded in lining up an impressive list of drafters and backers. The drafting group includes Norton Rose Fulbright, Linklaters, Gilbert & Robin, Allen & Overy, and Slaughter & May. The committee of in-house counsels includes lawyers from Barclays, American Express, Coca Cola, Hexcel, pwc, and Ernst & Young, among others.

A first draft of the NDA was released in March 2021, and the group is targeting an official release of the first version of the NDA on August 2nd. Their stated goal is to sign-up at least 1,000 companies to use the resulting template by December, 2021.