Access to justice
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 […]
Read More
Towards a new benchmark of digital open justice
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: […]
Read More
Generative AI and access to justice
It’s been almost a year since ChatGPT was released to the public back in November 2022. Although much has been written about the impact of generative AI on the legal sector as a whole, there has been less focus on its potential to improve access to justice for the ordinary citizen who cannot afford a […]
Read More
Find Case Law – six months on
Find Case Law is a new public service providing access to court judgments and tribunal decisions. It was launched in April 2022 and has been funded and developed by The National Archives, working with the Ministry of Justice, HMCTS and the Judicial Office. We set out with three goals for the Find Case Law service: […]
Read More
Open case law is here at last
From today judgments of the superior courts of England and Wales have a new, official home at The National Archives (TNA) which has now taken over the HMCTS publishing contract from BAILII. The Case Law website at https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk is dubbed an “Alpha”. Essentially it is a work in progress and it is best not to […]
Read More
Court judgments to be publicly available from The National Archives
As announced in June 2021, from April 2022 significant court judgments past and present from the High Court, the Court of Appeal, the Crown Court, the House of Lords, the Supreme Court, the Privy Council, and other courts and tribunals, will be available as public records from The National Archives (TNA). At present, there are […]
Read More
Triage should be properly built in to the Online Money Claims process
Addressing the latest monthly members’ meeting of the International Council for Online Dispute Resolution on 6 May 2021, Lord Michael Briggs expressed his disappointment that, almost five years since his Final Report on The Civil Courts Structure Review, in which he recommended that a form of early triage be introduced to an online civil court, […]
Read More
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 […]
Read More
Online Courts and the Future of Justice
Four years on and Professor Richard Susskind has written the same book he wrote last time, so he says. He jests, yet again. The message and the underlying arguments remain constant; the same analogies are deployed (you know, the drill); but tech has moved on, more is feasible and the vision is developed and refined […]
Read More
Access to justice through technology: the providers
The Law Society, in its report Technology, Access to Justice and the Rule of Law, published September 2019, defines the “Access to Justice Sector” as “Comprised of all organisations supplying access to justice services. It includes law firms, Not for Profits, individual practitioner barristers and solicitors, in-house legal teams, government bodies, academics, LawTech businesses and […]
Read More
The Online Court and the digitisation of justice
In its Report to the Civil Justice Council in February 2015, Online Dispute Resolution for Low Value Civil Claims, the ODR Advisory Group, chaired by Prof Richard Susskind recommended the establishment by HMCTS of an online court for low value civil claims, called HM Online Court (HMOC). This would overcome the fact that current practice […]
Read More
Open access to case law – how do we get there?
Open access to case law in England and Wales is in a very poor state of health, both in terms of the amount of case law that is freely accessible to the public and in terms of the sustainability and development of the open case law apparatus in this jurisdiction. It is true that the […]
Read More
