Since the mid-1990s the Internet’s World-Wide-Web has provided the necessary technical platform to enable free access to computerised legal information. Prior to the web there were many online legal information systems, and numerous legal in..

Since the mid-1990s the Internet’s World-Wide-Web has provided the necessary technical platform to enable free access to computerised legal information. Prior to the web there were many online legal information systems, and numerous legal information products distributed on CD-ROM, but there was no significant provision of free access to legal information anywhere in the world. Both government and private sector online legal publishers charged for access. The web provided the key element required for free public access – a low cost distribution mechanism. For publishers it was close to a ‘no cost’ distribution mechanism if they were not required to pay for outgoing bandwidth. The ease of use of graphical browsers from around 1994, and the web’s use of hypertext as its principal access mechanism (at that time) meant that the web provided a simple and relatively consistent means by which legal information could be both provided and accessed, an attractive alternative to the proprietary, expensive and training-intensive search engines on which commercial online services largely relied. The development of free access Internet law services was based on these factors. 

This article analyses the complexities involved in providing free public online access to the ‘public legal information’ of the Indian legal system. It starts with some of the causes of the complexity of Indian legal information, then ..

This article analyses the complexities involved in providing free public online access to the ‘public legal information’ of the Indian legal system. It starts with some of the causes of the complexity of Indian legal information, then describes the considerable progress that has previously been made in the provision of free access to some types of legal information, but why the result is still below international standards.

Developing a free access legal information system for India involves more complex technical and organizational issues than is the case for most other countries. This is because of the complexity of India’s constitutional structure and resulting legal institutions, the value it places on democracy (and the particular form of ‘monitory democracy’ it has developed), human rights and the rule of law, the litigious nature of its citizens, its linguistic complexity, and its expanding market economy. Although India’s constitutional right of freedom of speech has been interpreted to include access to information, this constitutional principle has not yet been developed in relation to legal information to require governments to meet the needs of the ordinary citizen to access legal information for free or to international standards of quality. The English language is likely to retain its privileged, but not exclusive, position in the legal system for some time to come.

In addition to the separate deficiencies of each of the existing sources of free access online resources in India, the over-riding problem is that no free access source have created facilities so that all of these sources – case law, Central and State legislation, treaties, open access scholarship and law reform – to be searched together. There is no comprehensive site which allows users to search any one of these ‘five pillars’ of legal information across India, let alone all five of them.

The article then presents a project that attempts both to build on, enhance and consolidate much of the good work that has already been done by Indian government organizations, and NGOs, to develop free access to legal information in India, and to overcome many of the deficiencies identified in the previous section. The Legal Information Institute of India (LII of India) is being developed by eight Indian law schools and an international partner (AustLII, the Australasian Legal Information Institute). It has developed in its first year of public operation, the LII of India, a system with over 750,000 searchable documents and 151 databases. The national launch of LII of India was organized and hosted by National Law University, Delhi on 9 March 2011 by Union Minister of Law and Justice, Dr M Veerappa Moily. It was followed by ‘satellite launches’ in Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Kolkota during March and April 2011, hosted by the respective National Law Universities in those cities. The system is therefore only now becoming known but is receiving over 6,000 page requests per day, and will have received approximately 2.25 million accesses in the 2011 calendar year.

The considerable remaining challenges for creation of a world-standard and sustainable system are then outlined, and steps proposed to address them. The extent to which this collaborative project might be a model for development of free access to legal information in other countries is considered. The future of LII of India depends on a number of factors, including establishment of an effective technical team and servers in India, an Indian-based governance structure, collaboration with organizations in India with similar goals, establishment of local financial sustainability, and continuing technical support from AustLII during the establishment phase. These challenges are discussed, as well as the difficulties in extending development at the State level, and the longer term challenges of providing information in languages other than English, and the legal issues surrounding that task.

Free online access to legal information is approaching maturity in some parts of the world, after     two decades of development, but elsewhere is still in its early stages of development. Nowhere     has it..

Free online access to legal information is approaching maturity in some parts of the world, after     two decades of development, but elsewhere is still in its early stages of development. Nowhere     has it been realised fully. The main question asked in this paper is what should 'free access'    mean in relation to legal information in order for it to be fully effective?”  As with  software, we    must  ask whether free access to law is ‘free as in beer, or free as in speech?’ The six most     significant attempts over the last twenty years to answers this question are analysed to show that a  substantial degree of international consensus has developed  on  what ‘free access to legal    information’ now  means.  Of thirty separate identifiable  principles, most are found in more than one    statement of principles,  and  many are now  relatively common  in the practices of  both    States  and  providers of  free  access to legal  information (government and  NGO). Many concern measure to avoid the development  of monopolies in publication of the core legal documents of   a    jurisdiction. Which  principles are essential to the meaning  of ‘free access to legal information’,    and which are only desirable, is usually clear. Two  complementary  meanings of ‘free access to  legal information’ emerge. The first states the obligations of the State in relation to ensuring     free access to legal information – but  not  necessarily providing it. The key elements  concern the     right of republication. The  second  meaning  states the conditions under which an organisation     can correctly be said to be a  provider of free access to  legal information. We argue that  a    better definition is needed than the ‘consensus’ suggests,  and  propose one based  on the     avoidance  of  conflicts with  maximisation  of the quality and quantity of free access.
One use of such a set of principles is to help evaluate the extent to  which any particular jurisdiction  has implemented free access to legal information. A brief  example is     given of Australia, a county with a generally good record but some deficiencies. Finally, the     paper considers what steps should be taken to most effectively realise a  reformulated concept     of ‘free access to legal information’, by civil society, by states at the national level, and at the    international level.

India being a huge country by population has lots of court judgments available on print format to various law libraries of the country. Keeping in view the user demand into the library, this article touches the need for computerized legal text ret..

India being a huge country by population has lots of court judgments available on print format to various law libraries of the country. Keeping in view the user demand into the library, this article touches the need for computerized legal text retrieval and information services for providing effective services to the users. Part of the discussion in this paper is the process of legal text retrieval that includes search file, search strategies and legal metadata, where search strategies include constructing a search request with the use of Boolean operators. Problems of synonyms and homonyms are also covered in this article and in the end the legal information services in modern era are discussed which include online and offline databases

In this digital age, users require immediate access to information. To foster the process of research, the legal fraternity demands efficient online legal information systems. Raj Kumar Bhardwaj provides a view from India and reports on a case stu..

In this digital age, users require immediate access to information. To foster the process of research, the legal fraternity demands efficient online legal information systems. Raj Kumar Bhardwaj provides a view from India and reports on a case study that has been conducted on the use of various legal information databases in the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi, India. In his paper, he also reviews and discusses the various aspects relating to legal information retrieval systems, with particular reference to the various essential legal databases that cover Indian law