A Page on the Web, published in the Solicitors Journal, April 1997.
The rate at which the UK legal internet is growing shows no sign of abating. There is a sufficient quantity of published materials and sufficient numbers of users now for it to be considered a mainstream law publishing medium, not some fad or hobbyists’ platform.
The growth in published materials has primarily been in promotional materials: the majority of new sites are ‘electronic brochures’ for law firms, chambers, suppliers etc wanting to take advantage of the new medium to expand their marketing efforts.
The growth in access to these legal pages is hard to guauge. It is likely than many firms will have been disappointed by the response to their initial efforts; on the other hand some will report them a resounding success, based on even just one or two deals which would not otherwise have been made.
But these pages are primarily designed for clients and potential clients; what are lawyers themselves browsing and what do they want from the web?
A front page
All users need a convenient launch pad for their web session. This may be a list of favourites or bookmarks they have built themselves over time, or a ‘front page’ specifically designed by the firm (in the most up-to-date firms as part of an in-house intranet); but most will seek an alternative or additional jumping-off point. This is what the sites maintained by me at www.infolaw.co.uk and Delia Venables at www.venables.co.uk/legal are designed to provide.
Indexes and directories
Users do not like searching; they like browsing. The web made browsing the internet possible and that is why it has been such a phenomenal success. A search engine is the right tool if you have a very specific query or do not know where to start looking, but for most purposes you will use a web index, directory or database designed for the purpose.
I use the term ‘index’ to refer to a static index of web links; ‘directory’ and ‘database’ to refer to searchable databases of information. With these directories and databases we’re back to searching again, but because we’re searching structured database fields rather than free text, we can usually use drop down lists to specify the categories or search criteria.
One of the best known web indexes is Yahoo and there is a specifically UK edition at www.yahoo.co.uk from which ultimately can be found relevant legal sections.
The front pages mentioned above serve as the best first level UK legal web indexes and there are also many other legal links collections both general and specialist of varied quality.
The law society at www.law-services.org.uk maintains a searchable database of legal links. At one point this looked as if it would develop into a comprehensive and reliable source, but it appears to suffer from reliance on user-submitted entries so that it is neither as comprehensive nor as consistent and accurate as it might be.
A new site which appears to deserve the comprehensive and reliable mantle is the Online law site of searchable databases at www.online-law.co.uk (see last month for full review).
There are a number of other web law directories, including web editions of several existing hardcopy directories. If you’re simply looking for names and addresses, you’re spoilt for choice, but it’s worth pointing out that most of the entries will be dead-ends (ie no web links). The better known directories on the web are: Martindale Hubbell at www.martindale.com, Wests Legal Directory at www.wld.com, Proflist (The Lawyer’s Diary) at www.proflist.com, and the Centre for Commercial Law (the Legal 500 and Law Firms in Europe) at www.link.org.
For searching the web my own favourite is Alta Vista at www.altavista.com, or you can access all major search engines from www.search.com.
Content
But ultimately what lawyers want is legal content and here the web has yet to deliver sufficient substance. Nevertheless, the last 12 months has seen significant developments.
Primary sources
The texts of both statutes (since January 1996) and statutory instruments (since January 1997) are published by HMSO at www.hmso.gov.uk. However, these are published as enacted, ie unamended, and may therefore be dangerous to rely on. It is not widely known that HMSO does maintain the statutes in a form that can (potentially) be published in amended form, under the name of the Statute Law Database. However, HMSO seems to regard this version as a value-added version of the statutes which it intends to licence to private publishers for publication in due course – at a cost to them and hence to us Her Majesty’s subjects. There will be many who agree that this is the wrong course and that this version should be published by HMSO and made available to us all free of charge as of right.
So far as case law is concerned, the only official law reports available are the House of Lords’ judgments since 14 November 1996, available on the Parliament site (see below).
Parliament
The Parliament site maintained by The (recently privatised) Stationery Office at www.parliament.uk includes both Commons’ and Lords’ Hansard, as well as Bills before Parliament, the Weekly Information Bulletin and Lords’ judgments since 14 November 1996. (It is worth noting that HMSO retains the role of Queen’s Printer; hence its continued publication of the statutes and statutory instruments.)
Secondary sources
Subsequent articles will look at secondary sources and other ‘web lawyering’ sites.
