Internet Newsletter for Lawyers |
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The internet has opened up access to the law immeasurably over the last few years, but with this comes greater expectation year on year that free access to resources will improve. In this article I explore what is available, both free of charge and at a price, starting with the main providers of Statutory and Case Law, before moving on to consider the diverse offerings of others.
The Statute Law Database has been a dream of Government and others for a number of years. The idea was that the LCD would maintain a database of law, which would present statutes and SI’s as they stood at any point in time, taking account of amendments. Current progress on the SLD can be found at www.lcd.gov.uk/lawdatfr.htm but when I contacted the team in charge of the project they could offer no date for its rollout, nor could they assure me that the databases would be free to the public.
There are two main sources of up to date statutory provisions, and both are to be found with commercial publishers. Both Sweet and Maxwell (via Westlaw) and Butterworths (via Legislation Direct), offer impressive services. An individual subscription to the Butterworths service (www.butterworths.com) would set you back £1,995. The Westlaw service (www.westlaw.co.uk) is priced as part of an overall package and is negotiable; it is not however aimed at individual users, and the pricing I was able to discuss with them would make it a mere dream for most legal aid practitioners.
Several sites cover individual pieces of legislation in more detail, for example, the Lord Chancellor’s Department has a Bill tracking facility for the Courts Bill, presently before Parliament (www.lcd.gov.uk/courts/courtsbill.htm) and the Home Office consistently provides excellent coverage of legislation within its remit (www.homeoffice.gov.uk).
Butterworths provides an impressive free updater through its LexisNexis site (www.lexisnexis.co.uk/law). The free offering, for which you must register, is a scaled down version of its £295 subscription counterpart. The free product offers access to summaries of recent judgments and notification of articles and statutory developments.
The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting provides free summaries of important cases at www.lawreports.co.uk. Similar reporting is offered by Court Commentary at www.courtcommentary.com, although there is a nominal charge (£1.95) for some transcripts.
For ECHR decisions the only place you need to look is www.echr.coe.int, although a similar database, with the added attraction of case commentary (of very high quality) is to be found at www.onecrownofficerow.com.
Whilst the above services are somewhat selective in nature, they are free, and do give enough of a taste of important cases to alert you to what is important. For full transcripts beyond those offered by the services above you really need to look at Smith Bernal and its casetrack service (www.casetrack.com). Smith Bernal is the official shorthand writer to the High Court and Appellate Divisions, and so is ideally placed to offer most of the important judgments. They must be praised for allowing free access for some educational and charitable organisations, but access to criminal (including relevant administrative court) judgments will normally cost £300 per year.
For paying customers, the choices are the Butterworths updater (see above) or the similar Alerter offering from Sweet and Maxwell (www.smlawpub.co.uk), priced from £125 for a sole practitioner, but having tried the service it is in my view a rather poor offering compared to the Butterworths Updater.
Butterworths also offer All England and All England Direct, which includes not only access to the AER archive but daily updates. This illustrates where the large stable of Butterworths offerings begin to cross over and duplicate, making it very important to research the offerings available to find the right combination for your needs.
Westlaw includes full text amended statutory resources, and case law, including the criminal appeal reports series. In addition, there is a criminal package which includes Archbold. The downside to Westlaw is the price.
My overall vote goes to the Butterworths Crime Online service, which offers the full text of Blackstones’s Criminal Practice, articles on legal issues, case awareness and full amended text of criminal statutes. Butterworths also offer Stones’ Justices Manual online and Halsbury’s Laws. Criminal appeal cases have recently been added to the service. The service is complete, authoritative and competitively priced from £430 per user. For larger practices Lawtel may prove to be better value and much will depend upon how much you value the amended statutes - if that is not important to you, then stick with Lawtel.
Returning to Sweet and Maxwell, they offer Current Legal Information, a now rather dated product and New Law Online. I personally feel that the choice for a criminal lawyer is between Lawtel and Crime Online but if you have a mixed practice this may not be the case.
Criminal Law Week is both paper and web-based, providing digests of recent cases and statutory provisions, as well as references to articles, the service starts from £145 per year and is remarkable value for money, with commentary provided by James Richardson who is the editor of Archbold (www.criminal-law.co.uk).
One of the oldest web services, provided by David Swarbrick is now offered under the title Law Index Pro (www.lawindexpro.co.uk). This digests case law from a large variety of sources, with links were appropriate to full text transcripts. It remains competitively priced.
CrimeLine (www.crimeline.info) is the website that I maintain, and is a vehicle for updating the CLSA Duty Solicitor’s Handbook, written by me, and for advertising courses and books. The main part of the site is the free CrimeLine Updater, a weekly newsletter, delivered via email, and also available on the site, which seeks to digest the previous week’s legal offerings in respect of criminal matters. I keep an eye on all of the main free internet resources and report new cases and legislation, providing links wherever possible to free resources. To save time checking the free resources mentioned in this article simply register to receive the CrimeLine Updater.
The main criminal lawyer associations, including the Criminal Law Solicitors Association (www.clsa.co.uk), London Criminal Courts Solicitors Association (www.lccsa.org.uk), and Legal Aid Practitioners Group (www.lapg.co.uk), maintain website presences. Only the LAPG provides anything by way of up to date news though, with the CLSA’s main draw being the ability to sign up to an email newsgroup - if you want to know the answer to anything related to criminal law someone on this group is sure to be able to assist. Be prepared to be swamped by the shear number of emails though!
The Lord Chancellor’s Department (www.lcd.gov.uk) maintains pages related to criminal law, as does the Home office (www.homeoffice.gov.uk). Issues in relation to the criminal contracting regime can be found on the legal services website (www.legalservices.gov.uk). Criminal lawyers will now be more concerned than ever with issues relating to prison discipline, now that inmates are allowed legal representation in relation to prison offences which might attract a loss of day’s sentence; important documents, including the discipline manuals can be found online at www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk. More prison law materials can be accessed via the site maintained by Mark Leech at www.prisonshandbook.co.uk.
Campaign groups, particularly Justice (www.justice.org.uk) and Liberty (www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk) provide high level briefings on current issues and legislation.
Andrew Keogh is a higher courts advocate and supervising solicitor at Tuckers (www.tuckerssolicitors.com) in Manchester. He is author of "Criminal Appeals and Review Remedies" (Blackstone Press, 1999), "CLSA Duty Solicitors Handbook" (Law Society Publishing 2002), and the forthcoming "Guide to the Criminal Justice Act 2003" (Law Society Publishing 2003). His own site is at www.crimeline.info. Email Keogha@tuckerssolicitors.com.
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