Thanks to Robert Ambrogi for pointing me to two nascent, but nevertheless significant, new US sites:
Wiki-Law‘s mission is “to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable world-wide legal guide and resource”. Unlike most wikis I’ve seen, this is not an encyclopedia but a highly-structured resource, with page templates for entries on Blogs, Links, Dictionary terms, Statutes, Case Briefs, Forms, Law Firm Profiles, Law School Profiles and Law Journal Profiles.
Lawbby.com is a sort of MySpace.com for Lawyers – a social network for the legal world.
It’s a place where legal professionals can go for business, leisure or both. We’ve made it as easy as possible for anyone to create a profile on Lawbby.com and, essentially, create their own corner of the web. … users can easily publish their own blogs, create their own discussion groups, and quickly build up a network of friends and contacts. This is the perfect setup for lawyers that are looking for referral partners or even their next job because of its more personable atmosphere.
How could I resist signing up?
Hi Nick
Have you seen this German Law Wiki with English bits:
http://www.jurawiki.de/
Law Wikis are coming into being all over the world. We are globally trying to record the laws of the world. The task is enormous but not infinite but then or is the number of lawyers who can contribute. In a good mood, I see it happening. When busy in the office, I see that I will never have time to contribute to these Wiki’s properly. Will the good lawyers ever have the time to do it or will the Wiki’s end up full of obvious garbage or even worse half-right but half-wrong sensible seeming information? What would happen if we in England just cut and pasted Halsbury’s laws into a Wiki? If we did who would do the updating? Will a Wiki ever be up-to-date? Should it carry a health warning? What is the purpose of a Law Wiki? Will a Law Wiki ever be safe to use? Who by?
Steve
Too many questions! The short answer is a wiki will only be as good as its publiher, who should aim to inspire the right sort of editors and contributors, provide suitable editorial guidelines and moderate the contributions.
Nick