We already have a substantial free legal web, but it is not joined up. We have the resources and the technologies to join it up — now — for the benefit of lawyers and the community at large. Those of us who have an interest in access to the law and justice and the efficient provision of legal services have a duty to make this happen.

There has in the past 18 months been a sea change in Government’s attitude to the provision of Public Sector Information (PSI) and the encouragement of user-generated services supporting government. In particular, the independent Power of Information Review recommended changes that have been substantially accepted by Government, who, through the Power of Information Task Force are now committed to making this happen.

The time has come to build the Free Legal Web.

The dream

Writing in Times Online in April 2006 the eminent Professor Richard Susskind, legal tech guru and adviser to the great and good, spelt out his vision for a “Wikipedia of English law”:

This online resource could be established and maintained collectively by the legal profession; by practitioners, judges, academics and voluntary workers. If leaders in the English legal world are serious about promoting the jurisdiction as world class, here is a genuine opportunity to pioneer, to excel, to provide a wonderful social service, and to leave a substantial legacy. The initiative would evolve a corpus of English law like no other: a resource readily available to lawyers and lay people; a free web of inter-linked materials; packed with scholarly analysis and commentary, supplemented by useful guidance and procedure; rendered intensely practical by the addition of action points and standard documents; and underpinned by direct access to legislation and case law, made available by the Government, perhaps through BAILII. … A Wikipedia of English law could be an evolving, interactive, multimedia legal resource of unprecedented scale and utility.

He was perhaps not the first to have this vision, but he was certainly the first to articulate it publicly and it remains a good statement of the type of ultimate service (give or take) of which many of us have also dreamt. There are differences of emphasis but Susskind’s dream and our dreams are in essence the same dream.

How do we achieve that dream?

What we have

Consider the free resources we already have:

• We have more or less open access primary law resources and other official documents, forms and guidance from government and a commitment to making these resources more accessible and encouraging user generated services. See Appendix.
• We have another substantial free access primary law database — BAILII.
• We have a number of specialists already maintaining (or planning) specialist law wikis and enthusiasts contributing law articles to Wikipedia.
• We have a growing number of law bloggers, many of whom provide succinct, expert ongoing commentary and analysis.
• We have many other individuals, firms and publishers who publish case summaries, articles, updaters and guidance for free access on their websites.
• We have public, charitable and private services providing free guidance and fora for the public faced with legal processes.
• And finally, we have Web 2.0 technologies that enable (potentially) all these sources to be aggregated, “mashed up” and repurposed.

We have the resources and technologies now to build a free legal web — to achieve a result that will, in time, evolve into “a corpus of [UK] law like no other”. The dream is ambitious, but it is not pie in the sky.

What we need

What is needed, I have said, is an imperative (a compelling reason to participate) and a bit of organisation.

Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: the power of organizing without organizations is an eminently readable analysis of the social revolution now taking place as groups of people come together to share with one another and work together.

Instead of my “imperative” Shirky suggests what is needed is a “plausible promise”, creating the basic desire to participate, and an “acceptable bargain” with users as to what they will get out of it. Here’s a plausible promise that resulted in a well-known success:

“I’m doing a (free) operating system … I’d like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t promise I’ll implement them ” — Linus Torvald (Linux)

So what’s the plan?

Here’s my plausible promise:

I will spearhead the development of the Free Legal Web — a service that joins up the law and legal commentary and analysis on the web and delivers a useful service to both lawyers and the community at large. I need a commitment from a handful of others with complementary skills and expertise to kick-start the project. All suggestions are welcome and necessary to drive this forward.

To this end I have set up this blog to discuss the issues and progress the project. Follow it for all latest developments.

See the About page for more details about contributing to the project.

Go forth and contribute!

Nick Holmes, August 2008

Appendix: POI — key extracts

The Power of Information Review

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/advice/poi/

Recommendation 1

To improve service delivery and communication with the public, the Central Office of Information (COI), in partnership with the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI), should coordinate the development of experimental partnerships between major departments and user-generated sites in key policy areas.

The Cabinet Office response

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/advice/poi/

Accept [Recommendation 1]

This recommendation moves government from taking a passive role in this area to actively encouraging experimental partnerships between public bodies and the creators of user-generated information, in particular consulting sensitively with user groups and learning from them. Government will also consider how the insight and enthusiasm of those engaged in online self-help could inform the design, delivery and governance of public services.

COI welcomes the opportunity to work with OPSI in developing experimental partnerships between user-generated sites and major departments. COI will, on behalf of government departments, and in consultation with policy owners, identify opportunities in this area that may be developed.

…

Where resources are available, OPSI is well positioned to provide specialist advice, guidance and support to all those involved in such partnerships, in particular about intellectual property rights and the re-use of public sector information. These issues are often perceived as barriers, but such barriers are rarely insurmountable. The role for OPSI here is to encourage, inform, facilitate and reassure both departments and site creators.

The UK Report on the Re-use of Public Sector Information 2008

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/advice/psi-regulations/reports.htm

Power of Information (POI) Review
…

4.26 The Minister for Transformational Government, Tom Watson, has driven forward [the POI] agenda, announcing in March 2008 the creation of a POI Taskforce, chaired by Richard Allan, of Cisco Systems. The Chief Executive of The National Archives, of which OPSI is a part, is a member of the Taskforce with OPSI providing Secretariat support to the Taskforce.

4.27 The POI team launched a blog in June 2008 for discussions on exemplars of, and barriers to, PSI and re-use and progress made in the POI arena. It offers users a forum to express their ideas and build on existing work. The importance of new, emerging methods of communication and discussion such as blogs, has been realised by government which issued guidance for civil servants when using social media, on 18 June 2008.

4.28 The POI Taskforce launched a competition on 2 July 2008 inviting the public to suggest ideas for new products which re-use PSI, with a prize fund of up to £20,000 to take the best ideas to the next stage of their development. It was showcased at the OpenTech Conference on 5 July 2008.

…

4.39 The use of Semantic Web Standards is important to ensure information is presented in the most accessible form possible. OPSI is engaging with partners and organisations to develop and enhance new technologies to deliver new formats. There are a number of options for enabling this type of re-use, using the web as a platform to deliver data such as application programming interfaces (APIs) for structured data. … The UK Government has been exploring the use of semantic markup inside XHTML documents in order to facilitate access, use and re-use of data.