Legal Resources in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands
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Last updated on November 22nd.
The Commonwealth Lawyers Association exists to maintain
and promote the rule of law throughout the Commonwealth by ensuring that the people of the Commonwealth are
served by an independent and efficient legal profession. There is information on the site about all
Commonwealth countries.
AustLII is operated jointly by the Faculties of Law at the
University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and the University of New
South Wales (UNSW). It is funded by grants of around $.5 million
per year from the Australian Research Council, the Law
Foundation of New South Wales, the Council for Aboriginal
Reconciliation, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and
other bodies.
There is a very comprehensive index to Australian legal resources
here -
definitely the place to start any search for Australian legal sources or bodies.
FindLaw Australia
provides free access to cases and legislation, hundreds of articles, a directory of
law firms and an email alerting service.
This is a sister site of the main USA and international site
FindLaw.com.
The Australian Government
presents a large amount of information on the Federal Parliament and on
Government Departments, agencies and official publications. There are also links to State
resources and other major Australian sites.
The New South Wales Law Society is
probably the most advanced of the State Law Societies and offers
a Directory of Legal Practices, a database of Members of the Law Society,
the "Law Society Journal" online (and an archive since 1995),
information on its services and activities and a wide
ranging set of links to Australian and International legal resources.
CourtAppearances.com.au is a free legal directory which
locates, identifies, and profiles Court Lawyers specialising in court appearances, litigation, court work,
and associated areas of law in 750+ Courts, Tribunals, and Quasi-Courts (Courts) throughout Australia.
It assists the public and legal profession locate suitably qualified, conveniently located Court Lawyers.
Major firm Gilbert & Tobin
provides a large number of articles online relating to Commercial and Corporate Law,
IT and media topics, with particular relevance to Australia (but not limited to
Australian significance). These seem to be kept well up to date.
Legal Business Online (ALB)
contains latest legal news, events and developments in Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, China,
Asia and the international business community.
Each issue contains in-depth features examining changes in legislation, important areas of practice, overseas
jurisdictions along with revealing profiles of major industry leaders. The information on the site is
free (subject to registration) although it is also possible to subscribe if you want to receive it automatically in email form.
There is also a jobs site
for the same regions which is
here.
The Ministry of Justice provides
information on the department and on various consultation processes and reports.
The Auckland District Law Society
provides extensive information about the Law Society itself
and is also an important legal resource
for New Zealand and the whole Asia/Pacific area. There is an extensive
overview of the new Zealand legal system, a source of current legal news,
a data base of New Zealand lawyers
and a particularly good set of links for the whole Asia/Pacific area
(China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malasia, Singapore and Taiwan.)
There is a also good set of legal links for other Commonwealth countries.
The New Zealand Law Society provides
information about the New Zealand Legal System as well as information directly
for its members (including consultation processes and reports).
The University
of Waikato Law Library lists the Courts, Tribunals, Statutory
Authorities, and such other bodies in New Zealand which make legal or
quasi-legal decisions and reports. It also provides, or links to,
brief information on their jurisdiction; governing legislation;
administering bodies; contact details; the availability of reported (published)
and unreported (unpublished) decisions; information on indexes to the
decisions; and library holdings of decisions.
New Zealand Lawyers' Society
is an informal body which was established in March 1993 to
promote the interests of New Zealand law and lawyers in England. They have a membership of
approximately 300-400, comprising solicitors, barristers, academics,
corporate, banking and business lawyers, and students. The site
provides information on a range of issues of interest to members (jobs,
immigration, work permits etc), and to English lawyers who might wish to
emigrate and practice in New Zealand.
LawFuel.co.nz is a legal jobs and news site based
in New Zealand, covering Australia and New Zealand. Lots of news stories and lots of jobs.
There is also an international edition
lawfuel.com.
Pipers Virtual Intellectual
Property Library (Pipers are Patent Attorneys in New Zealand) is a wonderful
example of how a firm or individual with a real vision of what the web can do, can
provide an international resource which becomes the world authority on the subject.
On this site, you can find a list of patent attorneys worldwide, with postal and
email contact details, and also links to their firms' web sites, if they have one.
There is also a definitive list of patent, trademark and IP sites worldwide.
Legal publishers
Brookers offer
Court of Appeal Judgments from November 1995 onwards. There is a search facility.
New decisions will usually be included within two weeks of the date of judgment.
There is also a section of current legal news and a lawyers' Directory.
The University of the South Pacific
covers Cook Islands, Fiji Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Samoa,
Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. The Universty site includes
Commonwealth
The Commonwealth Legal Information Institute (CommonLII)
is a cooperative legal information initiative led by AustLII (the Australasian Legal Information Institute)
providing access to freely available legal materials from all Commonwealth countries. CommonLII contains
over 400 databases providing case law, legislation, treaties and law reform reports from more than
50 Commonwealth and common law countries and territories.
Australia
The
Australian Legal Information Institute (Austlii)
provides free internet access to Australian legal materials. AustLII is one of the
largest sources of legal materials on the net, with over seven gigabytes of
raw text materials and over 1.5 million searchable documents.
The AustLII collection contains full-text databases of most Australian
decisions and legislation. Current databases include
Commonwealth, ACT, Northern Teritory, Victorian, Western Australian,
NSW and SA legislation and regulations, most
federal courts (High Court, Federal Court, Family Court, AAT etc)
and most state courts and tribunals. AustLII also includes a
number of more specialised (subject specific) databases.
New Zealand
New Zealand Government Site is a cheerful
and well designed site providing information for ordinary people
(e.g. "The Citizen's Guide to Government") as well as
profesfssionals. There is a list of agencies online and their contact points,
and an index of services, functions, or responsibilities for central government agencies.
A search engine allows full keyword indexing of all government agencies' web sites.
All current consultation papers are on the site and comments
invited.
The Pacific Islands
The Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute (PacLII) is a prototype system produced from data developed and
published by the University of the South Pacific School of Law with assistance from the
Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII).
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Comments or queries or new suggestions?email delia@venables.co.uk