Free Access to Law
Arguably the biggest societal change triggered by the advent of the Internet has been the availability of free information. One big upside is that everyone can gain access to legal authorities without having to enter the Great Library at Osgoode Hall.
In Canada, we have the benefit of CanLII (operated by the Canadian Legal Information Institute) which is available free to everyone and provides access to current statutes and up to date case law.
On the other side of the pond there is a new service called Judgmental (website currently under repair/construction), the content of which includes case law from the UK, ECJ, ECHR, and Ireland. Judgmental differs from CanLII's sister service BAILII (British and Irish Legal Information Institute) database as was noted recently in the Legal Informatics Blog, an excerpt of which reads as follows:
"The service distinguishes itself from BAILII on the ground that while BAILII seems to let Internet search engines (including Google) index only its metadata and full-text from only selected cases, Judgmental lets Google index the full text of all of its case law; Judgmental therefore enables the use of Google and other Internet search engines for full-text retrieval of much UK case law Judgmental cases appear to be available only in HTML format, and only individually; no bulk access seems to be available. For each case, some citation (noter-up) information — i.e., citations and links to citing and cited cases — is provided. Also, Judgmental appears not to provide any on-site search tool, so users must either browse to find the case they seek, or search using Internet search engines."
David M. Smith - Click here for more information on David Smith.
