Internet Newsletter for Lawyers |
|---|
Where do you go to discuss the latest legal developments in your speciality? Unless you work in a large specialist firm there may be few in your office who share your interests. Meetings organised by associations such as the Employment Lawyers Association or the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers are another possibility but that means waiting until the next event. Specialist Counsel with whom you have built up a relationship may be willing to discuss a specific case informally before being instructed but for more general discussions it would be nice to be able to instantly call a meeting of scores of specialists from around the country. In theory at least, this can be done using an Internet discussion group.
In the past 10 years Internet discussion groups have appeared covering every conceivable topic from mobile telephones to genealogy. The discussion groups work in a variety of ways. At the simplest level a discussion group might have in effect a single discussion: everything that is typed in by members of the group is sent to every other member by email. More sophisticated discussion groups allow a number of discussions on different topics to be carried on and the member can log on and chose which to read and participate in.
Some discussion groups are open to everyone whilst others are limited to members of a particular organisation or profession. For a group to be viable it must be used by a sufficient number of people to keep the discussion going but groups which are open to all can lose their way and end up being of limited value to those they were initially designed to appeal to.
Discussion groups are different to mailing lists. Mailing lists (such as, for example, Daniel Barnet's employment law mailing list, reached at www.danielbarnett.co.uk) provide news on a particular topic but are not intended to allow the recipient to discuss the news electronically with others.
The Internet originated in America and there are 11 discussion groups on various aspects of the law in the U.S.A. listed at the website of the University of Texas - www.ilrg.com/ng.html. The site also lists some discussion groups in other countries.
In the UK the longest running discussion group is uk.legal. In technical terms this is a traditional "Usenet" discussion group which can be accessed either via a "news reader" of by simply going to the website groups.google.co.uk and typing in "uk.legal". Lawyers visiting the site will find that it is frequented mainly by non-lawyers and that, though there are some discussions of legal matters, it is a bit of a scrum with many posts on politics and current affairs and just about anything else.
Other discussion groups aimed solely at lawyers have come and gone. Just Mooting was started in 1991 by the Society for Computers and Law but like the Link discussion group which started shortly afterwards, it was not an Internet discussion group and relied on users dialing a special phone number. It may well have been the resulting phone costs for users which caused their demise.
Some discussion groups work via the medium of email. Every time someone contributes to a discussion their contribution is automatically emailed to all members of the discussion group. The Irish Law discussion group set up by Darius Whelan and reached at www.irish-law.org and the English Trusts Discussion Forum set up by James Kessler at www.trustsdiscussionforum.co.uk both use this method which is best suited to discussion groups with a relatively low level of "traffic". When contributions are relatively infrequent users can get fed up with logging on to a discussion group only to find that there have been few contributions since they last logged on. Sending every contribution by email avoids this problem as the user receives the email automatically without specifically "logging on" to the discussion group.
LawZone has a number of discussion groups at www.lawzone.co.uk covering different areas of law. The discussions are visible to everyone but to join in you must register. There are no restrictions on who can register, however. Unfortunately, however, there seems to be very little activity on these groups.
The Personal Injury Forum set up by Cyrus Katrak at www.piupdate.co.uk is the first forum in recent times to be restricted to lawyers. Anyone can view the discussions but only solicitors and barristers can register and contribute to them. This discussion group is quite active and has discussions under a number of headings: News, Costs (including CFA's), Practice and Procedure, Law, Quantum, Interesting Cases, Industrial Disease, Clinical Negligence and Catastrophic Injuries.
The Employment Law Discussion Board at www.employmentlaw.ibforums.com (a new discussion group of which I am the "moderator") has a greater level of privacy in that the ability to both view and contribute to discussions is limited to registered users and careful checks are made to ensure that users registering are practising solicitors or barristers. There are discussions under the headings of News, Unfair Dismissal, Discrimination, TUPE, Employment Status, Remedies for employees with less than 12 months' service, Remedies for non-employees, Psychiatric injury caused by workplace stress, Practice and Procedure and Interesting Cases .
How long these new discussion groups will last ultimately depends on how may users contribute so, today, take ten minutes out and support your colleagues by contributing to the discussion.
John Antell is a tenant at Godolphin Chambers. He specialises in employment and personal injury and is the author of Employment Status published by Butterworths. He is moderator of the Employment Law Discussion Board.
Website www.john.antell.name email john@antell.name.
Back to Contents.