Internet Newsletter for Lawyers |
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From one of the pioneers of the legal web in the UK
Back in the distant days of 1993, I mistakenly rose to a friend's challenge of finding something ... anything ... "useful to do with a spreadsheet" in a solicitor's office - and he was a mathematician. I ventured "I am sure you could keep an index of cases …" and I tried it. Three weeks later, I had got just that little bit too far to abandon it, and as each week went by, I fell tighter into its grip.
At first, we indexed just the law reports in the Times. We moved on soon to add cases from the Law Society's Gazette "Legal Update" section. These two were chosen because they are resources readily and freely available within most solicitors' offices, and the two series together provide a broad coverage of general UK case law. Their coverage is substantially equivalent to or better than the cases later to be reported through the All England Law Reports and the Weekly Law Reports. At this stage we provided very brief head notes and a reference to the paper resource. At an early point the index was backdated for the Law Society's Gazette entries to cover 1992.
When we developed the internet version of the case law database, we called it law-index and it was available free, first via the Internet Usenet group uk.legal and then through our firm's web-site at www.swarb.co.uk. This site has been graciously supported by the Law Society by providing hosting facilities.
The law-index served as an advertisement for the firm, and as confirmation of the fact that we treated the law seriously. More than that, we used it as an index to the paper resources we had in the office. At last the mound of copies of the Gazette in the corner would be of some practical use.
As the Internet grew, several of the courts began to put their own case law on-line. Latterly has come also the wondrous resource, Bailii. As yet, the different court sites work independently and most provide very little or nothing by way of supporting analysis or differentiation of cases.
The result is that finding case law on-line remains problematic. Each site is organised differently, with its own style, structure, search facility, and range of coverage. If you know the precise name of the case, and the court in which it was heard, and if you are experienced in accessing that court's site, you have a sporting chance of finding what you want. On the other hand, you may spend a great deal of time searching, and still not find what you need.
We began to transform the law-index to add links direct to the full texts of cases, and, in due course, the law-index became lawindexpro. In the course of this, we more than trebled the number of cases in the database.
In order to provide some income from this mammoth task, it is a subscription site.
However, law-index continues to be available without charge from www.swarb.co.uk. It has broadly similar coverage to lawindexpro, but without the links to the full text decisions, and the most recent cases are held back. It still remains a useful and popular service with still some 14,000 entries, from 1991 to 2001.
Lawindexpro, at www.lawindexpro.co.uk, includes links to nearly all free case law which is available on-line. Having combined that dataset with our own and now extended series of head notes, it constitutes a unique resource. As of April 2002, we provide over 35,000 links to full text decisions, and 12,000 head-notes. We average over three thousand cases per year. This compares to the major text based series, which will provide the text of approximately 350 cases a year at the most. We also started our headnotes in 1991, and lawindexpro goes further in time back than do some other on-line series.
We depend upon the external resource as they are made available. The European Court of Justice and European Court of Human Rights both now give access to their full case law. Other courts, the House of Lords, and Privy Council, make all their judgments available from more recent dates. The Employment Appeal Tribunal provides all decisions of substance. Other courts publish a smaller proportion of their cases, but less is not necessarily worse. Judges have time and again complained about the excessively wide range of cases which are now reported, and I do welcome greater selectivity in reporting of cases. Almost at the bottom of this heap remains the Family Division, whose cases are reported only fitfully at best.
It seems clear that the trend of making more and more full text case law available for free will continue, and our database structure will grow with these resources.
The new service is subscription based. We are rather less expensive than comparable services. Our prices range from £30.00 per annum for student subscriptions, to £1,000 for larger professional firms. Free trials are available. We will soon also be offering short term "library passes" which will provide access for a few days, and paid by credit card.
As lawyers, we often set out to look for one thing, but in the course of finding it, we also find alternative resources which suggest an unanticipated alternative approach. Simple database search solutions can be sterile, removing the possibility of such serendipity. They limit rather than encourage creativity.
How a case will be found in lawindexpro depends upon what information is already known. If you have a case name, we have several case lists which can be searched by simply opening the file, and using the browser's own find function. This is simple, effective, and transparent. The case list is searched, and any case which is located provides a link to its entry in the database. That will show any case analysis and links. The simple browser search reveals whether the case is listed. Where the case is available, the user can click on the case, to be taken on-line, and straight to that case in lawindexpro. If a headnote is available that will be shown, together with the references and or links to external resources. One more click will take the searcher directly to the full text where available. A similar case list indexes case by any statute they refer to.
When lawindexpro is used on-line, other facilities are available to reflect different approaches. Case lists, similar to the above, are provided for each of the different courts, and for different periods of time. Cases are organised by the area of law to which they relate, and then shown in reverse date order, with one page for each year. This allows a mixture of simple browsing through case summaries, which is when the service gets nearest in feel to reading a book, and also searches within each page using the in-built browser function (usually control+F).
Another use list gathers cases together by statute. It is easy to see and open up the cases for any particular statute, and often even by the section number. This has proved to be very powerful, and further development will at some time in the future add links direct to the text of the statute where that is available.
For each individual area of law, there is a search facility which will point the user direct to any appropriate cases, and again link from there to the paper based or on-line full text decision.
An overall search facility is also provided which can find any text in any part of the database. This is more sophisticated, but it is clear that users do not make use of the Boolean operators.
The layout of the main pages is designed to allow the kind of fruitful enquiry referred to earlier. When one case is presented, other cases on the same topic are also accessible. Lawyers are used to skimming through lists of cases and case summaries, and assessing relevance. One type of search is 'What has happened in this area of law since … (the date this book went to press)?' Our structure is particularly well suited to such enquiries.
The system will open several windows on the users computer. This may annoy some, but again reflects the way in which lawyers actually do work. It is not unusual to want to jump back and forth between different cases or other documents, and it is necessary to keep them open. The pages being loaded are usually nearly all text, and this has not been seen as a problem We believe we should also acknowledge that we are referencing material created and placed on the web by others. Opening a new browser window for somebody else's content shows that proper respect.
David Swarbrick is a consultant solicitor with the firm Wrigley Claydon of Oldham.
law-index is at www.swarb.co.uk.
Lawindexpro is at www.lawindexpro.co.uk.
Email david.swarbrick@lawindexpro.co.uk
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