A Page on the Web, published in the Solicitors Journal, November 2001

BAILII

BAILII (www.bailii.org) should now be a familiar name to all. If not to you, then go to Laurie West-Knights pages at www.lawonline.cc/ukileli.htm for a run-down (he, the driving force behind it). A full transcript of the recent ‘Freeing the Law’ meeting is published there (www.lawonline.cc/freeingthelaw.htm) and provides a full, if not concise, summary of the current state of play. Unfortunately, guest speaker Michael Wills MP – one of the three Parliamentary Secretaries in the Lord Chancellor’s Department, responsible for the Court Service, for IT and e-Government policy – arrived late and had to leave early, thus depriving the eager crowd of the opportunity to elicit answers to specific questions such as those posed by Neil Cameron: ‘(a) Are the Government going to tell the Court Service to provide an electronic record of all court judgments to BAILII as a matter of course? It seems bloody obvious, and would cost very little. (b) [What is] the last word on the current status of the Government’s pronunciation on the Statute Law Database, and when it is going to be available? Is it still 12 to 18 months?’

Browsers

In the beginning there was Mosaic, then Netscape. Then Bill Gates claimed the internet as his own and we have Internet Explorer. Like it or loathe it, to surf the web you now click the ‘e’ icon. Although a faithful and significant band of users (14%) still persist in using Netscape, some developers do not trouble themselves to acknowledge this.

Building, construction and engineering

Adjudication.co.uk (www.adjudication.co.uk/) promotes the resolution of disputes by adjudication as described in Part II of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996. The site provides case notes, links to legislation etc.

Corbett & Co (www.corbett.co.uk/) is a specialist construction law firm whose site includes discussion forums and links.

The Joint Contracts Tribunal (www.jctltd.co.uk/) produces standard forms of contracts, guidance notes and other standard documentation for use in the construction industry. Unfortunately, they’re not available in electronic form or otherwise from the JCT which ‘does not sell contracts directly, these are sold through our approved resellers’. Their newsletter is on the site in pdf.

Masons (www.masons.com/) is a specialist construction law firm and provide an Adjudication service, including case summaries, commentary and Q&A.

The Society of Construction Law (www.scl.org.uk/) – not to be confused with the Society for Computers and Law site (www.scl.org/) – publishes information related to the construction industry and links to relevant sites of interest.

Winward Fearon (www.winwardfearon.co.uk/) are construction law specialists with briefings, articles and cases and an impressive list of links.

C is for …

Civil procedure

Your first port of call should of course be the Lord Chancellor’s Department’s Civil Procedure Rules site (www.lcd.gov.uk/civil/procrules_fin/cprocfr.htm) where the consolidated Rules and associated PDs and amendment notes are published. The site has recently been revamped. Some of the more significant improvements are:

• top-of-page content indexes have been added
• amendments are ‘redlined’
• a complete set of zipped copies of the rules, correct as at each update from Day 1 in 1999, is now available from the site

Upcoming improvements are:

• from the next update, the static index will be fully html-linked
• the search engine will be ‘updated’ within the next few months.

Two other long-standing CPR sites deserve another mention. Firstly, LawOnLine (www.lawonline.cc/locked/cpr/woolf.htm) from Laurie West-Knights QC provides news and commentary on primary sites covering the Civil Procedure Rules and is updated frequently. A little patience is required to make ones way through the idiosyncratic structure.

Roger Horne’s Yet Another Woolf Site (opal.he.net/~hrothgar/YAWS/index/text.htm) is a version of the Rules and associated PDs and cases with added value hypertext links, cross-referencing just about everything to everything. An impressive and colourful display, though not for the unwary.

Compliance and regulation

Regulatory Law (www.regulatorylaw.co.uk/) is a web journal designed for practitioners representing clients before disciplinary tribunals, as well as to those involved in authorization, registration and admission procedures and those responsible for drawing up and administering regulatory and disciplinary procedures.

Compliance Exchange (www.compliance-exchange.com/) is a resource for compliance officers and other professionals who manage investments and for those who study, service or regulate investment business.

Also useful is the Directory of Ombudsmen (www.bioa.org.uk/) which provides details of and links to all members of the British and Irish Ombudsman Association.