LESSONS FROM THE WEB

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In this monthly column, law professors comment on the many academic opportunities and challenges presented by Web technology.

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Developing a Law School Web Culture Through Online Law

Michael Geist, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, Ottawa, CANADA

In my 1997 article, Where Can You Go Today?: The Computerization of Legal Education From Workbooks to the Web, I highlighted the need for law schools to embrace the potential of the Internet by developing a Web culture within the law school environment. I defined Web culture as "an acceptance of the Web as an integral and useful part of the legal education process." The central component of the Web culture was to be the course Web site -- a virtual extension of the class complete with administrative information such as course syllabi and assignments, an online discussion forum and the possibility of more advanced materials including simulations and Web lectures.

In the two years since the publication of that article, legal education has been involved in some exceptional Web development. As the course page section of JURIST illustrates, many law professors have launched their own Web sites extending their classroom and courses beyond their physical walls. Moreover, the popularity of LEXIS Web Course in a Box and the West Educational Network indicates that faculty value the course Web site as an important component of the law school environment.

In my article, I chided law schools for using the Web primarily as a recruitment tool and argued that the function of the school site should not end once students arrive on campus but rather that its significance could and should be enlarged. My appeal seemed to be answered in the significant commitment of law schools to improve their Web offerings. The quality of these sites has dramatically improved, with many schools creating the equivalent of a "virtual law school" at their site, featuring academic information, legal research tools, and career development assistance.

Another valuable law school contribution has been the impressive role schools have played in establishing programs that bring legal information to the Web. As a result of these efforts, the legal education community now finds itself well-positioned to take pedagogical advantage of the Web as never before. In particular, legal educators are now able to extend their use of the Web by developing Web-based casebooks and materials as well as using the Internet live within the classroom setting.

Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute (LII) is notable for its legal information achievement during the Internet's infancy. Established in 1992 with a startup grant from the National Center for Automated Information Research, the LII is the home to many Internet "firsts", including the creation of the first law Web site and the first email based legal information delivery service. In addition to setting the standard for the dissemination of legal information online, the LII has brought a core collection of legal materials to the Web, including primary source materials such as the Uniform Commercial Code and U.S. Supreme Court case law. In doing so, the LII has emerged as one of the most popular law sites on the Web and has demonstrated that the Web can be a source of reliable and timely legal information.

Building on the work of the LII, many other law schools have initiated programs to bring legal information to the Web. Although a complete review of all law school initiatives are beyond the scope of this essay, several schools' programs are worthy of mention. Pace University School of Law has quickly become a Web site leader among law schools. Highly regarded for its environmental law program, Pace hosts the Virtual Environmental Law Library, the Pace Energy Project, and the Global Warming Center, all of which have become valuable resources for environmental law specialists. Moreover, the school's site also supports the Land Use Law Center, the Battered Women's Justice Center, and the Institute of International Commercial Law. Following the lead of several other law schools that have developed ongoing programs to bring recent federal case law directly to the Web (such as Chicago-Kent College of Law (Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals) and Washington University School of Law (Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals)), Pace is also home to Second Circuit Court of Appeals case law.

An initiative of the school's law library, the University of Cincinnati's Center for Electronic Text in Law (CETL) has assumed an important role in the creation and publication of legal resources as well as in the study of electronic law publication. CETL manages two useful Web-based legal databases - the University of Cincinnati's portion of Project Diana, the world's largest human rights law database, as well as the Securities Lawyer's Deskbook, which provides free access to major U.S. securities laws and regulations.

Chicago-Kent College of Law, a leader in the use of electronic materials in the classroom, has also developed an impressive collection of Web-based legal materials. The school's IC3 Online Document Collection provides full-text access to U.S. and international documents that cover a wide range of subjects including environmental law, intellectual property, labor and employment law, and taxation law. Moreover, the school's Global Law and Policy Initiative sponsors Web sites such as Operation Kosovo: Legal Relief Initiative for Refugees and Project Bosnia, both of which contain comprehensive legal resource collections.

Two of the United States' most prestigious law schools have also been at the forefront of developing Web-based legal resources. The Yale Law School sponsors two important projects, Project Diana and Project Avalon. Project Avalon is particularly noteworthy as it contains one of the Web's best sources of historical legal documents. Stanford Law School, meanwhile, also maintains a series of unique Web-based legal resources including the Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, a site containing full text copies of complaints, motions, judicial opinions, and other major filings pertaining to securities class action litigation. Stanford also hosts the Woman's Legal History Biography Project and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue database which provides primary materials pertaining to U.S. military policy on sexual orientation.

Some schools are using the Web's multimedia capabilities to develop unique legal materials that challenge the traditional boundaries of legal research. For example, the Oyez! Project at Northwestern University maintains an archive of digital recordings featuring oral arguments from hundreds of important U.S. Supreme Court cases. The site also provides a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, enabling visitors to tour various sections of the Court building from a 360-degree panorama. The Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington also uses the Web's multimedia capabilities with its LawTalk service, which provides real audio versions of lectures given by the school's faculty.

Other countries have mirrored the U.S. experience to varying degrees. The Australasian Legal Information Institute, better known as AustLII, is one of the finest law Web sites in the world. A joint project of the faculties of law at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and the University of New South Wales, AustLII was created in 1995 expressly to develop an Australian law research infrastructure by providing free online access to primary and secondary Australian legal materials. The AustLII databases consist of thousands of court decisions from a wide range of Australian courts and tribunals as well as copies of virtually all legislation in force nationwide.

The development of AustLII is all the more remarkable when it is considered that throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, virtually all Australian states and territories used their claim of copyright over case law and legislation to grant a single company a monopoly over computerized legal information. In the face of no affordable public access to legal information, the founders of AustLII gradually convinced state governments and courts to reverse this longstanding policy by granting it electronic publication rights. Today AustLII has emerged as the leading source of legal information in Australia and it is testament to the power and potential of the legal academic community to make a fundamental difference in the dissemination of legal materials.

While no other country can point to an endeavor comparable in scope to AustLII, there have been noteworthy initiatives launched by law schools in several other countries. In Canada, the Centre for Research in Public Law (CDRP), an initiative of the University of Montreal Faculty of Law, has worked to bring Canadian legal materials to the Web. The CDRP currently publishes all Supreme Court of Canada decisions since 1989 as well as decisions of the Human Rights Tribunal of Quebec, the Quebec Civil Code, and the Quebec Charter of Personal Rights and Freedoms.

The University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, better known as the Wits Law School, has seized upon the legal and political changes in that country to maintain an electronic library of legal materials freely available on the Web. The Wits Law School collection includes complete coverage of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and the Land Claims Court of South Africa, as well as post-1998 decisions of the Labor Courts and copies of policy papers from the South African Law Commission.

In Europe, several law schools maintain sites dedicated to providing free access to legal materials. For example, the German Case Law Project, maintained by the University of Wuerzburg, provides court decisions from German constitutional courts, some with English translation. At the same time, the Institute for Information Law, a University of Amsterdam Faculty of Law program, is the largest research facility in the field of information law in Europe. The Institute works with several other law schools and organizations throughout Europe to maintain a comprehensive documentation center.

As this brief review illustrates, law schools have played an integral role in creating a new, Web-based legal information infrastructure providing legal educators and researchers with a veritable treasure trove of materials, many of which were unavailable before the advent of the Internet. Moreover, jurisdictions such as the United States and Australia have reached a threshold level such that the Web now stands alongside other recognized law sources as an indispensable research tool.

Notwithstanding these advances, many challenges and opportunities remain for legal education. From a pedagogical perspective, building a Web-based legal information infrastructure is only the beginning. It now falls to the legal educators to use these materials in innovative ways to enhance legal education. For example, Web casebooks are now a realistic alternative in certain legal specialties. In my own specialty, Internet law, Web-based resources are sufficiently comprehensive such that this past year I was able to rely exclusively upon electronic Web materials for my classes. Using the Web lecture format, I provided students with context and commentary on a wide range of Internet law materials. In addition, using the Web enabled me to provide examples of actual legal doctrine applications such as shortcomings in the online legal privacy protection framework or intellectual property rights complications.

The possibilities of a Web casebook are by no means limited to Internet law -- business law, trade law, constitutional law, and many other legal areas now enjoy sufficiently broad coverage so that Web-based materials can serve as a key source of course materials. My Web lecture series, hosted at the LEXIS-NEXIS Law School Web site, provides many illustrations of the wide range of Web sites that can be used in the teaching process.

Web-based materials can also be integrated into the classroom experience to provide students with real-life examples and enhanced presentation of case law and statutory materials. Law professors teaching in schools with classroom network connectivity are currently experimenting with Internet use in class in real time by highlighting relevant portions of case law and legislation found on the Web, examining public filings, and assessing the application of the law to actual Web sites. By conducting my Internet law classes in a networked classroom and accessing relevant Web sites as needed, I was able to graphically demonstrate many Internet law issues, such as online defamation and the proliferation of online hate speech.

With the continued development of the legal information infrastructure, the stage is set for a new era in the use and dissemination of legal information. Legal education has so far played a critical role in this initial development and now stands to become one of its primary beneficiaries. Legal educators worldwide must take note of these exciting changes and consider for themselves how they can contribute to, and make use of, the opportunities presented by the Web to further develop a Web culture within their institution.

© 1999 by Michael Geist. All rights reserved.
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 The views expressed in this column are solely those of its author, and do not reflect those of JURIST, its Advisory Board, its staff or its host institutions.
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Talkback

Where you have the last word...

  • Michael Geist's comments are great and developments are hard to keep up with. I do not see any comment about partnership with info providers, a.k.a. librarians, nor discussion of how to deal with the academic who refuses to look at the developments, therefor refusing to give the students the start in their working life they need.

    With law jobs just as hard to find in NZ as anywhere else academics are impeding the full development of the students they teach. Is there any solution to this?

    Pat Northey
    NEW ZEALAND

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