As reported here, in April 2022 The National Archives launched its Find Case Law service, and 6 months on John Sheridan of TNA described the progress that had been made.

Meanwhile, ICLR systematically monitored the publication of listed cases by TNA over its first 12 months of operation. The resulting report, Publication of listed judgments: towards a new benchmark of digital open justice, by Paul Magrath and Greg Beresford, introduced on The ICLR Blog, combines statistics for the efficiency and coverage of cases listed for judgment in the Daily Cause List with other publication data, and monitors the relationship between the listing and publication of judgments as part of the overall judgments data ecosystem and its importance to Open Justice.

The transition from reliance on the charity BAILII as the de facto publisher of free case law to TNA as the official publisher of open case law has largely been a smooth one. Whilst some problems remain, the most significant aspect of the transition is that Find Case Law judgments may be freely republished under its Open Justice Licence. And under its Transactional Licence, third party publishers may extract and process data (structured in Legal Document Mark-up) for use in the development of their products.

Nick Holmes is Editor of the Newsletter.

Photo via Piqsels.