University of Technology, Sydney Law Review
|
|
Home
| Databases
| WorldLII
| Search
| Feedback
University of Technology, Sydney Law Review |
|
Volume Four of the UTS Law Review is the second of two editions of the Review focussing on recent developments in the field of legal information technology. It comprises a selection of the papers delivered at the most recent conference of the Australasian Legal Information Institute held at the University of Technology, Sydney. The four papers in the Part One describe recent developments in legal information technology relevant to Asia, and the three in Part Two concern issues closer to home.
The first paper in the selection, World Law: Finding Law After Google by Graham Greenleaf, Philip Chung, Russell Allen, Madeleine Davis and Takao Hasuike of the University of New South Wales and the University of Technology, Sydney, reflects the recent research preoccupation of AustLII, the development of tools that enable worldwide legal research. The benefits of worldwide access are manifest, in particular to comparative and international lawyers. In their paper, Greenleaf et al explore the coverage of legal materials provided by the major worldwide search engines and demonstrate that the catalogs currently available need improvement to be comprehensive. World Law continues to be the largest multinational catalog of law sites on the internet, and its features are explored in the paper, including the recent development of a new option on the search interface of every catalog page allowing the user to search for “Law on Google”. The search results also give the user the additional option of repeating the search over WorldLII. The authors conclude that for a comprehensive search it is desirable to use each of the catalogs. Finally, they describe recent initiatives funded by the Asian Development Bank for training in the use of these tools in China, Indonesia, Mongolia, The Phillipines and Vietnam, and plans to conduct training sessions in Cambodia and Pakistan. World legal research tools are of special value to lawyers in developing countries grappling with new global legal rules, particularly in international trade and related fields.
In the second paper, IT and Transformations in Legal Practice and Education in Japan and Australia, Professor Makoto Ibusuki of Kagoshima University and Luke Nottage of the University of Sydney set out preliminary findings from empirical research focussing on the impact of information technology on legal practice and legal education in Japan, and introduce similar research now underway in Australia. The paper explores the extent to which Richard Susskind’s predictions about the future of legal information technology — in particular the extent to which advances in the use of legal information technology would create a paradigm of proactive legal information engineering rather than the (current) paradigm of reactive lawyering — have been realised. The authors write that while a significant proportion of Japan’s corporate sector has boosted IT capabilities generally, the potential for IT to revitalise legal education remains relatively unexploited. The conclusion describes a project currently being undertaken by a group of researchers including the authors (ITLEPP: IT in Legal Education, Practice and Politics) that surveys Australian legal educators, law students and lawyers about usage of IT in their work.
In Re-Engineering Online Case Law: Legal Research in Singapore, Ken Hwee Tan of the Singapore Academy of Law and Singapore Attorney-General’s Chambers recounts the development of legal research tools in Singapore and the ongoing search for a “content nirvana” where various databases might be brought within a single overarching content management structure. LawNet, the first attempt, comprised various databases and host systems, and in 1998 Singapore’s second generation online legal research tool, the Legal Workbench, was developed. Tan describes the database services available, their technical underpinnings and the content creation chains relating to each service. Unreported judgments from the Supreme and subordinate courts, information regarding prevailing levels of compensation in personal injury claims, the Heritage Law Reports (comprising reports pre-dating the inception of The Malayan Law Journal) and Military Court of Appeal cases are now available. Efforts to rationalise and consolidate the disparate databases are also discussed and Tan concludes with a consideration of the technical options available for the achievement of a unified case law database.
In the final paper in Part One of the Review, Allan Roger considers the Hong Kong experience of statute database publication (Statute Database Publication: How to Keep Statutory Law Current, Historical, Free and Useful: Hong Kong’s Experience and Copyright Policies). Roger traces the development of the Bilingual Laws Information System (BLIS) and the special challenges confronting the people who publish legal information in electronic form in that jurisdiction. Roger makes the important point that the rule of law cannot be achieved unless knowledge of the law is communicated to affected persons. The government has a moral obligation to communicate legal information and the sums of money required to make law freely available are paltry in comparison to the benefits that flow from making that information available.
The first paper in this part, Electronic Pre-Lodgement Notices, is by Dr Andrew Cannon, the Supervising Magistrate of the South Australian Magistrates Court, who is also Adjunct Associate Professor of Law at Flinders University of South Australia. Dr Cannon’s paper illustrates how legal information technology initiatives have improved access to justice in that court, in particular in small claims cases. Improving availability of court services online has provided great benefits to claimants and saved costs and court registry time.
In Public Access to Legislative and Judicial Decisions in New Zealand: Progress and Process, Judge David Harvey of the District Court of New Zealand, a regular contributor to AustLII conferences, considers the steps being taken to make legal information available on the Internet in New Zealand. Judge Harvey notes the common law recognition of the citizens right to know, and implicitly, to have access to, the law. This is linked to the recognition that our system works on the proposition that ignorance of the law is no excuse. It is therefore incumbent upon the state to make sure that laws are available to citizens, and necessary to ensure that resources are available for the citizenry to have access to that legislative information with ease, perhaps through the public library system. Judge Harvey also elaborates on a court-based model for management of legal information. He notes that the increasing availability of legal information online accelerates the pace of change, causing us to re-examine our preconceptions about the certainty of the law.
The final paper in the collection is by Philip Kellow: The Federal Court of Australia: Electronic Filing and the eCourt Online Forum. This paper examines two recent initiatives of the Federal Court and their development and implementation. These initiatives will help to extend and enhance the accessibility of the Court and the ways in which proceedings that come before it may be managed.
* * *
Editorial Note: Volume Four reflects the adherence of the UTS Law Review to a subject specific format: the UTS Law Review is not a generalist law review. In Volume Four we have returned to the editing policy adopted in Volumes One and Two: each of the papers has been fully, independently and anonymously refereed by experts in the relevant discipline, here, legal information technology. A mix of footnotes and endnotes has been allowed in this Volume to ensure timely publication in light of the mix of formats in which paper were received.
Volumes One, Two and Three of the UTS Law Review are now available online at the AustLII website.
Enquiries about editorial matters relating to the UTS Law Review can be directed via e-mail to utslawreview@law.uts.edu.au. Enquiries from universities about exchange relationships can be directed to the same address. Enquiries about sales can be directed to halstead@halsteadpress.com.au or to Halstead Press, 19A Boundary Street, Rushcutters Bay, NSW, 2011 or on (02) 9360 7866.
[*] Editors, Volume Four of the UTS Law Review. Patrick Keyzer is Senior Lecturer and Director of Research at the UTS Faculty of Law and Andrew Mowbray is Associate Professor and Associate Dean of the UTS Faculty of Law and Co-Director of the Australasian Legal Information Institute.
AustLII:
Copyright Policy
|
Disclaimers
|
Privacy Policy
|
Feedback
URL: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UTSLawRw/2002/1.html