A Page on the Web, published in the Solicitors Journal, July 1999.
A portal (or gateway), as the word implies, is a site designed to provide access to the web. Portals are flavour of the month these days, as a successful site will attract a high volume of traffic which will in turn attract advertising revenue and other commercial opportunities. It is considered that each registered user of a (portal) site will generate in the region of £1,500 per annum. Hence the rush to attract users with free services.
But what defines a portal? how much use are they to lawyers? and are there any specifically designed for UK lawyers?
Many sites will claim to be portals – don’t take their word for it.
All the well-known search engine sites have developed into portal sites. Recognising that most web users do not like just searching for things (or are not very good at it), these sites now provide classified indexes to their content. The first and most popular index of this type is that provided by Yahoo, though all the major search engines have followed suit. On most of these sites, being geared to the market at large, ‘Legal Services’ or some such categorisation will be buried a layer or two below the top level ‘Business and Finance’ classification. Although these sites index a very large number of web pages (but even the best mange only 15% or so), there may often be surprisingly few entries under a particular classification. Alternatively, if classifications are not specific enough, there may be too many entries for easy browsing. Nevertheless, despite these shortcomings, these indexes provide an alternative path into the web – and one which will often deliver results which would not as readily be found with a word search.
Internet service providers have also generally developed their sites into portals. By their nature, they are the sites which many users initially access when logging on to the internet (whether by default or choice) and, rather than relying on revenue from subscription payments for their services, they are rapidly recognising the opportunities that their large user bases provide – developing business relationships and alliances with providers of other services which can all be accessed from the one entry point. But, while these sites may provide access to a wide range of services, within any one market sector the services will be limited to those provided by their business partners. So, for example, in the UK, the much-publicised Freeserve offers only a single (chargeable) service under its Legal Services heading.
So what is available specifically for lawyers?
The US FindLaw site is an example of the type of portal site described above specifically for the legal community, with a focused search engine, classified indexes and other facilities. It will, however, be of limited use to the UK lawyer apart from those areas of practice where the international dimension is of importance. While there is no direct equivalent in the UK, there are a number of sites providing useful indexes of legal resources for the UK lawyer. Two with the longest provenance are the infolaw site which I maintain and Delia Venables’ Legal Resources pages. Both these sites present, in different ways, classified indexes of lawyers, legal resources and lawtech on the web. Another useful index is Go Interactive’s Access to Law on the Internet, also published on the Society for Computers and Law site. As well as UK law, this index covers Australian and New Zealand resources. Also long-established is the Internet Law Site, a database of links maintained by DMR Computer Services and formerly hosted by the Law Society on the first incarnation of its website. This is largely generated direct from entries provided by users which leads to some unreliable classification and errors. For a more academic slant, two of the best indexes are those maintained by Sarah Carter for the Templeman Library at the University of Kent at Canterbury and the Law Links by Subject Area at the National Centre for Legal Education at Warwick University.
A number of providers have attempted to set up online legal communities. These differ from portal sites in that they seek to provide a one-stop-shop for the lawyer rather than facilitating access to the wide world beyond. In this category fall Lawlink UK, the UK version of the like-named Irish service established with some success at a time when there was little else available for Irish lawyers. Lawlink provides secure email and discounted access to services such as Extel company reports, RM Online company searches Dunn & Bradstreet company credit reports and Infolink legal and business news and reports. A more recent entrant is Lawyers Online which describes itself as a ‘dedicated internet service provider for lawyers’. It provides free internet access and secure email, hosts discussion groups and is developing other content and services. (For those hoping for a quick look, note that there are no less than 25 graphics on the home page.)
Featured links
www.findlaw.com
www.infolaw.co.uk
www.venables.co.uk/legal/
www.scl.org
www.law-services.org.uk
libservb.ukc.ac.uk/library/netinfo/intnsubg/lawlinks.htm
www.law.warwick.ac.uk/ncle/html/subject-areas.html
www.lawlink.co.uk
www.lawyersonline.co.uk
