Writing in Times Online in April 2006 Professor Richard Susskind 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.”
This being the modern age of co-design, a group has come together to rise to his challenge. See the Free Legal Web site and if you can help with this ambitious project, why not?
I was alerted to this project an hour ago by email. That’s also the wonder of the modern age – I get to pick up projects before they’ve been pitched to officials ten times over. I think I can help and I’m going to talk to colleagues in the Ministry of Justice and the power of information team to see what can be done to give support.
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Thanks Tom!
Mmm, looks worth a conversation.
Might be a useful exercise – any chance you could stop the government attacking our right to trial by jury while you’re on the subject?
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Tom, I’ve just posted a summary of what needs doing in terms of raw data from the public sector (and associated charities such as BAILII and the law report people).
Some is easy (opening up new court decision data feeds), some organisationally tricky for you but v. important (freeing the Law Reports), some hard but not essential so good long term goals (improving the structure and completeness of the Statute Law Database).
A quick mention for http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk – one of those hidden gems of e-government. Obviously, it’s written in legal / Parliamentary language, which won’t help most humans… but it’s pretty cool to look back at stuff from the 13th century, which still (I think) is in force today.
Tom, My view is Gov should walk properly the Web 2.0 way and only then then attempt to run like we’d like you to. I know there’s a huge mountain to climb in delivering the data nirvana we’d all love to see across the board, but first tell us where it all is and what’s being added with rich RSS feeds (full DC metadata including the standard Gov subjects and bibliographic citations). That shouldn’t be too hard. Currently it’s a mess.
As Gramsci, I think, said “the struggle takes many forms”.
Thanks for you comments. Nick – it is possible to pursue different strands of work at varying rates of speed. I take your point fully though. There are basic – elemental even, things we have to implement much more quickly. Search, usability, common access standards to name but a few.
Francis – the easiest way for me to help with the tricky stuff is to bring this initiative to the attention of Jack Straw and Michael Wills. I’m sure they’d want to help.
[...] man at the top, Cabinet Office Minister for Transformational Government Tom Watson. is on the case! I think I can help and I’m going to talk to colleagues in the Ministry of Justice and the power [...]
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