The Free Access to Law Movement is the umbrella name for the collective of legal projects across several common law countries to provide free online access to legal information such as case law and legislation. The movement began in 1992 with the creation of the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute by Tom Bruce and Peter Martin.[1] The name Legal Information Institute has been widely adopted by other projects. It is usually prefixed by a country or region identifier.
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In October 2002 the meeting of LIIs in Montreal at the 4th Law via Internet Conference, made the following declaration[2] as a joint statement of their philosophy of access to law. There were some further modifications of the Declaration at the Sydney meeting of LIIs in 2003[3] and at the Paris meeting in 2004.[4]
| “ | Legal information institutes of the world, meeting in Montreal, declare that,
Public legal information means legal information produced by public bodies that have a duty to produce law and make it public. It includes primary sources of law, such as legislation, case law and treaties, as well as various secondary (interpretative) public sources, such as reports on preparatory work and law reform, and resulting from boards of inquiry. It also includes legal documents created as a result of public funding. A legal information institute,
All legal information institutes are encouraged to participate in regional or global free access to law networks. Therefore, the legal information institutes agree,
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The World Legal Information Institute is the umbrella project for all the other LII projects. From the WorldLII website all other databases can be searched.
The Australasian Legal Information Institute is the project providing Australian and New Zealand legal information.
The British and Irish Legal Information Institute (pronounced 'Bailey') is the project providing legal information on England and Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, United Kingdom, and the European Union.
It was set up after a long and hard campaign by barrister Laurie West-Knights QC, Lord Saville and Lord Justice Brooke, who were concerned about the lack of availability of court judgments to ordinary court users and were inspired by the Australian LII.[5]
The Canadian Legal Information Institute is the project providing legal information on Canada. It is a non-profit organization managed by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada.
From http://www.slaw.ca/2011/07/28/colin-lachance-34-well-spent:
Recognizing from the outset the interdependency of succeeding in the CanLII project and addressing the legal profession’s interest in affordable electronic access to legal information, Canada’s law societies knew that progress required substantial and ongoing commitment. Accordingly, through their umbrella organization, the Federation of Law Societies of Canada, the 14 member societies committed in 2000 to an initial 16-month funding allocation of close to $500K. Viewed from the perspective of individual lawyer and notary members of the law societies, that worked out to approximately $7.40 per full-time-equivalent law society member.
When CanLII officially launched in 2001, it did so with 18 collections comprising approximately 20,000 documents.
By early 2003, with annual law society contributions now at $14 per member, CanLII featured 65 case law and statutory collections containing over 150,000 documents and the database was growing at a rate of 1000 decisions per week. As the goal of access to current information was nearly achieved, attention turned to enhancing site functionality and utility through the addition of hyperlinks between decisions, de-identification of named persons where required to meet privacy obligations, and addition of historical collections.
10 years from launch, CanLII now hosts nearly 1 million documents across over 170 collections; adds over 125,000 decisions each year; and receives over 20,000 visits each day. Beyond mere usage stats, CanLII also boasts several professional grade tools such as the Reflex record for case citations, the Satal tool for point-in-time comparison of statutes, and, more recently, search-based RSS feeds and deep-linking functionality to support sophisticated research and reference practices.
Annual funding of CanLII’s core operations continues to come from the provincial and territorial law societies. The current contribution is approximately $34 per FTE law society member.
Critical contributions from many other parties have supported the development of a free resource that is both deep and broad. To help CanLII approach (or in some cases far exceed) a targeted case law depth of at least 10 years for superior and appellate courts, Canada’s provincial law foundations have provided substantial funding grants for the scanning, digitizing and publishing of pre-2003 case law. CanLII has also received considerable indirect financial benefit from LexUM through low cost access to leading edge technology and service as LexUM’s prior affiliation with the University of Montreal allowed it to attract support from a variety of sources and LexUM’s own passionate commitment to CanLII led to the sharing of its technological advancements. Beyond these resources, CanLII has benefitted from contributions of incalculable value from the many volunteers and supporters among its board members, law society and Federation representatives and professional advisors, and the Courts and other public agencies.
Through a decade of investment by the legal profession, CanLII has become a robust and respected legal research tool, however much of what is desirable and technologically possible has not been pursued for lack of funding. CanLII has room to improve in delivering on its core functionality, but its stability also allows it and its users to dream of much grander possibilities.
Law society funding at current levels could support evolutionary growth, but the demands of today’s sophisticated user of legal information and search call for development at costs and at a pace that may exceed the appetite of CanLII’s traditional funders. Moreover, responding to public demand for improved access to justice and to legal information requires that CanLII direct greater energy and resources to generating public awareness of its service and to the education of users.
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Cylaw provides since 2002 free access to primary legal materials from Cyprus.
The Hong Kong Legal Information Institute (HKLII - pronounced 'H K Lee') HKLII's mission is to provide free access to primary legal materials from Hong Kong (and some publicly available secondary material through computer technology.[6] HKLII was developed and is jointly operated by the University of Hong Kong's Department of Computer Science and Faculty of Law, with the assistance of the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII).[6]
The Legal Information Institute at the Cornell Law School provides free legal information for the United States. It was the original LII project, founded in 1992.
New Zealand Legal Information Institute (NZLII) is run out of AustLII but the majority of the data is provided by staff at the Universities of Otago and Canterbury. It contains decisions of many decision generators that are not available anywhere else, including from commercial operators. It operates using voluntary labour and grants from the New Zealand Law Foundation.
The Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute collects and publishes legal materials from 20 Pacific Islands Countries on its website www.paclii.org which is hosted by AustLII. These countries are American Samoa, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn Island, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.
The documents on the PacLII website consist mainly of primary materials such as court decisions and legislation but also include decisions of various tribunals and panels or secondary information such as court rules or bench books. There is additionally a Pacific Islands Treaty Database.
PacLII is an initiative of the University of the South Pacific School of Law with assistance from AustLII. PacLII is a signatory to the Montreal Declaration on Public Access to Law and participates in the Free Access to Law movement, a grouping of a number of world wide organizations committed to publishing and providing access to the law for free. PacLII is based at the Emalus Campus of the USP in Port Vila, Vanuatu.
USP School of Law is has its headquarters in Port Vila. Its students come from more than 12 Pacific Island countries. Most of them do not have easy access to the legal materials from across the region which they need to undertake their studies. PacLII was started by the School of Law as a means to overcoming the tyrannies of distance. It has grown to become a service to governments, legal professionals, NGOs, students, academics and members of the public and has been widely recognized as an example of excellence in promoting access to legal information.
Southern African Legal Information Institute (SAFLII) provides free legal information from 16 countries in Southern Africa from Angola to Zimbabwe including South Africa.