Author: Paul Magrath
Paul Magrath is Head of Product Development and Online Content at the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England & Wales. He is also the co-author of Transparency in the Family Courts (2nd ed, Bloomsbury Professional, 2024). Email paul.magrath@iclr.co.uk. Twitter @maggotlaw.
How ICLR is leveraging free law
The idea that the law should be freely accessible to all the people is nothing new, but it is technology that has enabled that aspiration to be realised. ICLR has taken advantage of that to provide, alongside its reported case law subscription service, a freely accessible version of both unreported judgments and legislation. Recent developments […]
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ICLR.4 and the genie in the bottle
Some years ago the editor of this Newsletter complained of the over-use of the description “artificial intelligence” in legal products: “hyping AI is unhelpful”, he said. “AI is just what computers do.” And he’s not alone in expressing scepticism about the often extravagant claims of AI. Much of the mystique around it stems from simple […]
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Remote hearings and open justice under lockdown
Remote hearings are here to stay, thanks to Covid-19. That might have happened anyway, sooner or later, but the pandemic has made it both sooner and more certain. On 3 March 2020 the government’s coronavirus Action Plan declared that “The Ministry of Justice’s HM Courts & Tribunal Service have well-established plans to deliver key services […]
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Public Information Online
Public Information Online (PIO) at publicinformationonline.com is an online database provided by Dandy Booksellers, who are well established suppliers of official government print publications. The PIO database collects and provides access to digitised parliamentary papers going back for more than a century. The material held includes Public General Acts since 1900, House of Lords Papers […]
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Collaboration using web based apps
What do a family law barrister in Bristol, a law lecturer in Cardiff and a legal publisher in London have in common? The answer is that Lucy Reed, Julie Doughty and I are collaborators – both as members and trustees of the Transparency Project and, more recently, as co-authors of a book, Transparency in the […]
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A justice system fit for the future
The ambitious courts modernisation programme known as HMCTS Reform continues to grapple with the process of creating a justice system that not only is suitable for the digital world of today but also won’t look out of place in fifty years’ time. How is it getting on? Online courts The headline-grabbing feature of the project […]
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Online courts and cyber judges
Courts in England and Wales have been struggling with information technology for so long now, that expectations of any improvement remain stagnantly low. Nevertheless, the current project to create an Online Court with its own procedure and staff goes beyond anything hitherto attempted. Can it overcome a long history of failed IT projects and deliver […]
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Free content in your inbox
A good way of keeping up to date with recent developments in law – and to collect quite a bit of free content – is to sign up for email alerts. But take care to choose wisely, lest your inbox be flooded with updates you don’t have time to read. It’s best to choose a […]
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Developments at ICLR: expanding online
At a time when some other publishers are struggling to make the case for their law reports, ICLR is embarking on a massive expansion of its coverage. In a brace of new developments for 2016, we have begun publishing unreported transcripts on ICLR Online, and we will be expanding the leading general series, the Weekly […]
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Transparency: promoting public understanding of the law
Law is a complicated subject and its effect on people’s lives can be hard to explain. But in certain areas the traditional media, particularly at the tabloid end of the spectrum, are notoriously prone to bias and misrepresentation. Three areas of law where this is particularly noticeable are family, crime and human rights. In all […]
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Custodians and gatekeepers: maintaining access to public legal information
Most people would now agree that public information should not only be publicly available, but also freely available. In the area of law, this is assumed to include not only legislation but also case law. This is, after all, the law of the land, ignorance of which is considered no defence. It is probably impossible […]
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The future of law reporting
The legal professions, however unwillingly, and indeed the English legal system itself, are undergoing profound changes. Law reporting is bound to adapt. The range and type of information which needs to be published is changing. The model of a carefully curated selection of momentous precedents – cases which marked out a path of stepping stones […]
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