Author: Nick Holmes
Nick Holmes is Editor of this Newsletter. He is a publishing consultant specialising in the legal sector and is Managing Director of legal web services company infolaw Limited. Email nickholmes@infolaw.co.uk. Twitter @nickholmes.
The new UK legislation service
Since late July we have a shiny new official home of UK legislation at legislation.gov.uk. In due course this will completely replace the two current legislation services at OPSI and the Statute Law Database. At present some functionality currently available on the Statute Law Database is not yet available on legislation.gov.uk, including full content search, […]
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Free case law – an overview
Free case law is old hat now. The House of Lords posted its first judgment on the web in 1996 and BAILII “freed the law” in 2000. But how far have we come since then? This article sums up the current position. Public sector provision The Supreme Court at www.supremecourt.gov.uk publishes its Decided cases in […]
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FreeLegalWeb launches
I’ve reported previously on progress of the FreeLegalWeb project I initiated which is designed to provide better, affordable, joined-up access to the law. At long last we have a public Beta service at www.freelegalweb.org. Given our modest budget, the Beta service is limited in its initial functionality but strong on aspiration. The site provides core […]
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Crown Commons
With the launch of the data.gov.uk beta website – providing access to over 2,500 central government datasets – comes a new licensing model for government information which it is intended will be launched government-wide by the end of May 2010 to replace the existing “Click-Use” licence. The new licence is interoperable with the Creative Commons […]
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Google Law – the beginnings
It was only a matter of time before Google turned its attention to the law – and we now have Legal Opinions on Google Scholar which opens up access to full text legal opinions from US federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts and via a Cited By feature links to other cases and […]
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Search engine optimisation – a holistic approach
Most users don’t look past the first two or three pages of results returned by a search engine, so understanding and implementing search engine optimisation (SEO) is critical. SEO is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engines via natural (or “organic”) – as opposed to paid […]
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Improving legislation on the web
In 1996 HMSO started publishing new legislation on its website. Comprehensive coverage was later extended back to 1987 for Acts and 1988 for SIs. Although publication of legislation was timely and presentation competent, we yearned for what had been promised for many years – a comprehensive, up-to-date version of the statute book. Finally it arrived […]
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Social networks – how they work
Facebook has over 200 million users; LinkedIn, the network for business and professionals, has over 40 million; Twitter is all the rage; and don’t forget blogs. Although these services are hugely popular, it’s safe to say that amongst lawyers use is still largely confined to so-called early adopters. Should you be using these (public) social […]
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FreeLegalWeb progress
I reported in the November issue on the FreeLegalWeb project I initiated which is designed to provide better, affordable, joined-up access to the law. The idea has been fleshed out and a number of potential stakeholders have been approached. The Pilot Project which will focus on Housing Law is now under way thanks to initial […]
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Law publishing at the crossroads
You? In the current climate of rapid technological change, upheavals in the legal profession and global recession, what does the future hold for law publishing? The publishing revolution I have been fortunate to have been involved at first hand in the entire modern publishing revolution. When I first started out in law publishing, authors […]
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The future of lawyers
In his new book The End of Lawyers? (Oxford University Press) Richard Susskind challenges the legal profession to ask what elements of their current work could be undertaken more quickly, more cheaply, more efficiently or to a higher quality using new methods. He makes his case firstly by mapping the path that almost all legal […]
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FreeLegalWeb
You might think that we have a thriving free legal web of legislation, judgments and other materials on OPSI, the SLD, BAILII and government websites, and thousands of useful free guides, articles and updaters published by law firms, barristers and other private law publishers. But it is not joined up. We have the resources and […]
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