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.

As with all JURIST columns, you're invited to Talkback. This month...
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Planning a Law School Web Site

Mark Gould, Department of Law, University of Bristol, UK

This is not a 'how to' of web design or authoring, but a few personal views about the basic issues involved in planning a web site for a law school.

In the beginning ...

I wrote my first web pages in 1994. It does not seem so long ago now, but those pages are the poor relations of modern HTML, Java and Javascript creations. Writing for the web has obviously changed, at least superficially. However, I am less convinced that the basic principles which should underpin the creation of a law school web site have changed at all. I want to elaborate those principles, as far as I see them.

There are many law schools on the web, providing a variety of different types of site. However, many more have yet to take the plunge. A web site is not an absolute necessity, but it is not hard to create one, and it is straightforward to create a good one, which will serve a valuable purpose, either for the law school itself, or for the wider community.

An essential question

The first and most important question any web author has to ask themselves is "What is this site for?" This is particularly important for a law school. In the UK, at least, law teachers have always had an ambivalent relationship with computers. This may have a number of causes (the fact that UK law schools are less clearly vocationally oriented than their US counterparts may be significant, for example), but the reasons are less important than the effects. An analogy may be drawn with the experience of Computer Assisted Learning (CAL). Whilst the US law schools have invested heavily in CAL through US-CALI, initiatives in the UK were piecemeal and driven by enthusiastic individuals until government funding permitted the creation of the Law Courseware Consortium. Even now, CAL is not pervasive in UK law schools. A similar, but more public, process is occurring in the development of the web.

Whilst the use of CAL is an internal matter, invisible to the outside world, a law school's use of the web is very public. A poorly implemented web strategy is likely to show the institution in a poor light. Unfortunately, many law schools have fallen into this trap. I am sorry to say that my own is one of them. The reason is a complete lack of strategy in their adoption of the web as a tool. That strategy must begin with clear objectives. What objectives might there be?
A law school might use the web to recruit new students

In the UK this is likely to have minimal impact, except on postgraduate recruitment, since the majority of law students have come straight from school. Good contacts with the schools is likely to be more productive. In the US, things may be different.

Law firms may be enticed to employ graduates of a law school because of the web site

Again, it is more likely that personal contact would produce better results. In addition, despite the kudos enjoyed by law schools which have a high level of graduate employment, that success is at least equally attributable to the quality of the graduates themselves. Even the fanciest web site will not change that.

A web site offers legal academics the chance to 'display their wares' in a new and attractive way

This is a worthy aim, but the effectiveness of the medium is still limited by virtue of the fact that few academics have taken the opportunity to use it in this way. Until a critical mass is reached, web publishing will remain secondary to traditional forms of publication. There may also be differing views on the extent to which academics should rely on their institutions to support this, as opposed to managing their on-line publications themselves.

A web site is an ideal way to present internal information for teaching, research or administration

This represents one of the major benefits of the web. (Indeed, it is the reason the web was invented.) However, it is not an easy task, and a successful web site of this type may require the internal information presented to be adapted for the web.

Hypertext is ideal for the presentation of legal material

It is certainly true that the very best legal web sites do make full use of the power of hypertext to cross-reference statutes, cases, and other legal materials. The Australian Legal Information Institute is a fine example. However, it is not necessary to go to such lengths.

If it is not clear to the law school why it should have a web site, then it would be wisest not to have one. (I have expanded on these views elsewhere.)

Take it from here ...

Once the law school has identified why it wants a web site, someone has to invest time and energy in building and maintaining it. It is at this point that the 'enthusiastic individual' may be identified and given the task. Some law schools have computer support staff. However, they may be stretched already, and (apart from the actual installation and running of the web server) this is not necessarily a technical task. In fact, there may be a number of reasons why the academic or administrative staff should be closely involved with, if not actually responsible for the site's design and content. These reasons may include the following:
  • The web site is part of the law school's presentation to the world -- its design and content should, therefore, be consistent with publications and publicity in other, more tangible, formats.
  • It is wise to spread the load. If the web site is seen as a technical task, it is unlikely that other members of staff will take the trouble to learn HTML and make their own web pages (or assist with making pages for the institution).

If it's worth doing ...

The most important part of building a web site is preparing the ground. Once the decisions to which I have already referred have been made, all that is left is the actual act of creation. At this stage it is essential that the site looks as good as possible under all conditions in which it might be viewed. If the site is only for internal use (providing administrative information, for example) it will be known which browser staff and students will be using, so it may be possible to design for the features of that browser. If, however, the web site is intended to assist with promoting the law school in the world at large, no account can be taken of the hardware and software with which it might be viewed, or of the standard of communications in the country where it is seen. Likewise, the person viewing the site may be visually impaired. A site which commands the widest audience is one which assumes nothing. Instead, it conforms to some basic standards. Of course, there is nothing particularly special to law school web sites about these standards, but I like to think that institutions as dedicated to pedantry, precision and excellence as law schools must be should have a special regard for standards wherever they occur.
Write it right

This is the essential requirement. You may have discovered a neat trick to make your text fit with a background image, or just to make the page look good on your machine. However, there is no way of knowing how that HTML will look to a user on a different operating system, with a different (perhaps older) browser, who has fonts set to white 18-point on a red background; or to the blind user. The only way to be sure that the information comes across properly is to use HTML in the way approved by the World Wide Web Consortium. All browsers should be able to cope with this, and if they can't you can blame them, rather than be blamed for your HTML. Allied to this, it is not wise to use a browser to test HTML. There are a number of on-line HTML validators, such as that at WebTechs and A Kinder, Gentler Validator, as well as validators that will run locally.

Keep the size down

How big is a 'page' of HTML? This may look like a meaningless question in the absence of printed pages, but someone on the end of a slow modem in a country with poor telecommunications will have a fairly good idea when a page is too big. For pages whose prupose is to be seen widely, it may be best to keep the amount of text down to less than 10Kb. There are other issues. People like to see something on the screen whilst the page is being downloaded. Most browsers will present what they already have. However, they can only do this if what they have can be formatted. If you put all your HTML in a big table (because it made the fomatting easier) the browser will not be able to parse it until it reaches the final tag (much like a sentence in German). Images present another problem.

Make your images work

Images do have their place on the web, despite its origins being textual (hence HTML -- HyperText Mark-up Language). They can also be a hindrance to efficient browsing. There are a number of ways to make images work well.

  • Use the right image format..
  • Use the ALT tag -- even an empty one makes life better for those who can't or don't want to see the pictures.
  • Image maps: if you have to use them, include client-side maps, so that you can add ALT tags and they can be used by text browsers; and provide a text alternative elsewhere on the page.
  • Declare the image size, so that the browser can construct the page properly before the picture arrives.

Use headings, not font sizes

There is a tendency to ignore the heading level tags built into HTML in favour of explicit font sizes. A blind user, who is using a text-to speech synthesizer with a text-mode browser will not get the benefit of those headings, since the browser will not recognise them as such. It would also be a bit disorientating for the sighted user of the same browser.

Don't rely on a specific browser or screen size

Often there is no need to rely on a specific browser. All browsers should be able to cope with good HTML. The only time a browser needs to be specified is when a site uses a feature specific to that browser (Netscape 4 and Internet Explorer 4 both feature Dynamic HTML, but Netscape's is different from Microsoft's). You need to be sure that the feature really is essential to your web site.

Be kind with frames

Frames do have their uses (although many dislike them intensely). If you do use them, be sure that the content of your site is enhanced by them, and provide an alternative for those browsers (and there are plenty) which do not handle them, or for users who prefer not to use them.

Keep right on ...

A law school web site may be small, with the barest information about the institution. It could also be huge, with the latest innovations, such as dynamically created HTML, Java applets, and Javascript. So long as the latter is as usable as the former, and the content of the former is as up to date as the latter, they are both equally valid approaches to the process of web site creation. Creation, however, is not the end of the matter. Most law schools will change, at least in their personnel or in the courses they offer, over time. The maintenance of the web site is probably more important than its initial creation. Outdated information is worse than no information at all. For that reason, most web sites are perpetually 'under construction'.

© 1998 by Mark Gould. 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...

  • I would make a couple of [additional] suggestions:

    1. Use Meta tags at the start of each page to ensure that when robots and spiders index the site they do so correctly (they index the site according to the correct subject matter).
    2. Programs such as 'A Smaller GIF' can easily be used to reduce the size of images.
    3. Register the site with all of the major search engines. Sites such as "Submit It" can automate this process.

    Tony de la Fosse
    High Court of Australia
    Canberra, AUSTRALIA

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