A Page on the Web, published in the Solicitors Journal, March 1997.

March has seen the launch of two significant new content-rich UK legal websites: significant because they have been put together with a lot of planning, effort and investment by lawyers and for lawyers and not simply by opportunistic Web entrepreneurs with an optimistic view of the pickings to be had from the legal ‘industry’.

Online Law

Online Law does not officially launch its site until 2 April, though it is accessible and most features are in place in the beta version at www.online-law.co.uk. It is intended as a daily starting point for legal research for solicitors and barristers and consists of a set of searchable databases together with further information on the Bar and the solicitors profession.

The databases offer details of:

• Firms – nearly all (6,000+) firms of solicitors in England and Wales, excluding sole practitioners, searchable on firm name or town.
• Chambers – all of the main barristers’ chambers in England and Wales, searchable on name/address or town and/or specialisation.
• Barristers – individual barristers practising in England and Wales, searchable on name
• Courts – all magistrates’, Crown, county, youth, family and coroner’s courts in England and Wales, searchable on type or town
• Expert witnesses – 3,000 UK-based expert witnesses in over 1,000 areas of expertise, searchable on town and/or area of expertise
• Lawtech suppliers – most of’the UK legal technology suppliers, searchable on name or town and/or specialisation.
• Legal links – over 2,000 legal links (not in place at 21 March)

Records are more than just names and addresses, with useful additional information being provided in all cases. Where firms have email addresses and websites, these are also given and hyperlinked. The intention is to charge lawtech suppliers and expert witnesses for these links in future.

Searches of the databases are quite straightforward and results well presented in summary form with links to access further information. A quick check revealed no significant omissions, except that many of the web address links did not appear to be in place.

Firms can add or amend entries from appropriate search screens. It is not clear if these will be editorially screened by Online Law. However carefully the initial data has been prepared, the integrity and usefulness of the databases is bound to degrade if users are free to determine the style of their entries.

There is currently no registration requirement and all access is free. Online-law would appear to be seeking to earn revenue purely from their website design services and advertising (including the chargeable links mentioned).

Graphic design is on the whole pleasing apart from the hugely awful graphic for the Legal Links page. Navigation is straightforward – by means of graphical side-bar menus and links at the foot of each page.

All-in-all this is a high quality site, carefully put together, and I’m willing to believe the data is as comprehensive as is claimed. There is clearly a place for a reliable and comprehensive directory site of this nature, which will undoubtedly compete well with any mounted by the hardcopy directory publishers seeking to convert their products to the web.

SCL Online

The Society for Computers and Law has maintained a website at www.scl.org for some time (late 1995 if my memory serves me), though ‘maintained’ is somewhat of an overstatement since there was little updating or enhancement to the site until very recently. At its Internet, Intranets and the Law conference on 14 March the Society officially unveiled its new look site (designed by Go Interactive (www.gointeractive.co.uk) which promises to provide an immensely useful resource for the lawyer on the web (who by definition has an interest in computers and the law). It is currently available to all. Some parts require a user name and password, for both of which at present ‘sclonline’ may be used. Society members will be advised of registration requirements in due course.

The principal elements of the site are:

• Diary – details of SCL activities.
• eMag – the latest issue of the Society’s magazine Computers and Law available to SCL members and archive copies available to all. Volume 7 issue 6 is online now, including the SCL’s response to the Government Direct green paper.
• Groups – information about geographic and interest groups.
• Buzz Board – an online notice board.
• The Chamber – discussion chamber.
• Resources – not yet in place: suggestions sought.
• Council – information about Council members.
• Members – currently a link to Yahoo’s People Search database with a recommendation that users register there. No doubt a membership register will be added soon.

The site represents an impressive effort with the fullest possible information about the Society and its activities and an array of features consistent with the leading edge interest to be expected from the Society and its leading activists.

However, this leading edge interest does seem to me to cloud judgement of what the average intended viewer will experience. In this regard my main criticism is in the over-use of frames. Frames are intended to aid navigation and indeed this is given as the reason they have been employed on the SCL site. My view, however, is that they often have the opposite effect.The site contains no less than six frames: two banner frames at the top, two menu frames below running across the full screen and two further frames splitting the bottom, with generally a narrow menu frame to the left and finally the main frame bottom right occupying whatever’s left of your screen. There is thus a lot to distract one from the main focus of ones attention. Further, SCL admit that ‘you will have to maintain [a monitor resolution of at least 800 x 600] as [the frames] limit the amount of available screen real estate’. On top of this is the recommendation that one should use Internet Explorer 3.0 or above to view the site, as not even last year’s dominant Netscape 2, is good enough. It strikes me that an awful lot of people will thus be viewing the site at less than its best.

Future additions include a facility to search the whole site, and it is intended that transcripts of the proceedings of the Internet, Intranets and the Law conference will be published on the site shortly. (For a companion set of links to the conference see last month’s comment and [page deleted]) It is also to be hoped that in addition to the eMag further useful resources will quickly come on stream.