CaseCheck (www.casecheck.co.uk) is a free, fully searchable, online archive of continually updated Scottish Court and EAT Case summaries. Built upon an open source blogging platform the content for the site is user generated and archive is composed of a back catalogue of previously issued email newsletters. However, the site is also designed to be a platform to give lawyers, barristers and experts a stage on which to demonstrate their expertise by summarising and commenting on developments and court decisions that the legal community needs to keep up to date with.

A few years ago CaseCheck would not have been possible. Financially the commitment would have been considerable – too considerable for a fledgling business determined to self fund – but the proliferation of open source content management systems has rendered this venture 100 per cent possible. As a development platform we have customised the Dot Net Nuke framework (www.dotnetnuke.com) which is a free open source framework for creating many types of commercial, publishing and intranet applications.

The archive content

As a trainee solicitor I established Intersettle.co.uk, Scotland’s online negotiation platform. This involved obtaining the strategic involvement of seven of Scotland’s leading litigation practices. Online negotiation as a concept in the UK did not really take off and I think that the main reason for this is that it asked lawyers to manage the negotiation process differently. Instead of dictating a letter of negotiation, the lawyer was required to start up a browser, open a website and initiate the process. As I was struggling to get lawyers and claims handlers to put cases through the system I began, as a marketing exercise, to summarise Scottish Court Decisions and to send out an email containing these summaries, free of charge, to solicitors. My reasoning was that if 10 lawyers in a law firm were spending an hour each per week trawling websites to find out what was relevant to them then that was a lot of time wasted. The Intersettle Scottish Court Newsletter did this work for them and the circulation grew until such time as I began charging for it to help pay my way through a Masters degree in IT. (I did not want to do this, but, as they say, “needs must”). Once I stopped practising as a solicitor I became aware of my increasing limitations from a summarising perspective and others, keen to gain a profile, became involved in the summary writing process. The CaseCheck case summary archive uses a lot of the content included in the Intersettle Scottish Court Newsletter.

User generated content

I am not naïve enough about the law and lawyers to think that suddenly, just because the platform was there, potential contributors to the site would come banging at my door.

The CaseCheck case summary providers all have an interest in keeping up to date with the law and an interest in enhancing their own profile and some of them wrote summaries for the Intersettle Newsletter in its latter stages. The Case Summaries section is just the first phase and the summary providers are using their involvement to market themselves to clients, potential clients and others. They feel it is one of the best ways to actually, truly demonstrate skill in their field. Euan Dow, the advocate, believes that as a result of the time he has spent writing summaries his ability to interpret, determine and discern a good judgment from a poor one has dramatically increased.

Increasingly, I am being contacted by solicitors keen to add their commentary to a case. Recently one of Scotland’s most highly regarded civil QCs took the time to add his comments.

CaseCheck objectives

The objectives behind CaseCheck are numerous, but here a few of the more significant ones:

• To make effective use of work previously completed under the guise of the Intersettle Scottish Courts Newsletter. The newsletter was a flat html bulletin updating recipients with summaries of recent court decisions.
• To implement a solution that knocks the pants off expensive, cumbersome, proprietary case law databases.
• To develop a flexible, efficient system which demonstrates that the amount of benefit enjoyed from technology is not directly related to cost. All one needs is imagination and conviction.
• To develop an application that allows its users to contribute to a resource in order to create something rich in terms of learning.

I launched the site, with some trepidation, at the beginning of October. During my working life I have often been ahead of the pack in terms of technology and the law and I have to say that this is not always a good idea! However, I am glad to report that the feedback has been 100 per cent positive, with many of the comments relating to ease of use.

In Scotland there are just under 10,000 solicitors. In its first month CaseCheck, from a standing start of 0, was visited over 3,000 times by over 2,000 unique visitors and the bulletin list itself grew to over 2,000 email addresses. In its second month CaseCheck is due to double its first month’s traffic statistics, which is pleasing. What is equally pleasing is that the visitors are spending, on average, 3.5 minutes on the site.

Functionality

In terms of functionality and content the site now:

• Links all case reports to their associated legislation
• Contains a directory of legislation. This is not exhaustive, but it is being continually updated.
• Has a facility whereby articles on a variety of different subjects can be added to the site.

Using CaseCheck means that lawyers have to do less rather than more to keep pace with developments; they don’t even have to wonder if they can afford it. What they should also find is that CaseCheck has been developed upon core principles of ease of use, flexibility and simplicity.

Business plan

My plan is that CaseCheck will remain free at the point of use. As I mentioned earlier, using an open source content management tool has meant that the cost involved in delivering such a rich application is not budget breaking. As the community builds up I will introduce some advertising.

In addition, I see CaseCheck as the perfect marketing platform for my own legal technology consultancy. Recently I was speaking to a commercial law firm’s chairman about CaseCheck and about my consultancy work in general. He explained to me that technology consultants often reminded him of the couplet “Too many protest singers, not enough protest songs,” in the Edwyn Collin’s track ”˜Never Met a Girl Like You Before’. His point was that CaseCheck, like Intersettle and a couple of other litigation technology projects, further enhanced my back catalogue of “protest songs”.

Conclusion

In summary, what I am looking to do is create a resource for lawyers, paralegals, law students and anyone interested in the law and the business of law. This resource is based not around the “read what I write” model but around the “read what we all think and hopefully learn something” model. CaseCheck is designed to be platform on which those with something to say can stand up and be counted. Recently QCs, solicitor advocates, solicitors and students have added their own comments to case reports.

CaseCheck is a way to engage with various elements of the legal community, building bridges between employers and potential employees, advisers and potential clients and, hopefully, between experience and youth.

Stephen Moore is a qualified lawyer who also holds a masters degree in IT. As well as setting up CaseCheck, he runs Moore Legal Technology which provides lawyers with legal technology and consulting services. As a trainee solicitor Stephen established Intersettle.

Email stephen.moore@moorelegaltechnology.co.uk.