Legal Information Model
7. Electronic Publication of Authorities (back to Contents)
This section describes two recommendations concerning the publication of Unreported Judgements on the Legal Information website.
We understand that 85% of authorities quoted by lawyers in Court are from unreported sources.
7.1 Searching for Relevant Authorities
7.2 Linking Judgements to Legislation
It is not currently possible to search the full text of all Unreported Judgements on the website in order to locate those containing particular words. The text of an Unreported Judgement can only be searched once that specific document has been opened in the system.
Therefore to carry out a search across all Unreported Judgements on the website (for example to locate cases involving "homicide" or "extension of time"), only the text appearing in the headers can currently be searched. These headers are relatively brief and may not contain all words for which a search might be desired.
It is recommended that a search engine be added to the Legal Information website to enable searches to be carried out across the text of all Unreported Judgements (and other areas of the website).
Without this facility, there is a need for indexes of cases relating to different subjects, which are time-consuming to compile and are dependent on the compiler’s assessment of what subjects to include and which Judgements have significance for each subject. Such an index could be added to the website, but would be subject to these issues. A global search engine may be a better solution, providing a more comprehensive facility for all to use. (Clearly, this can only assist in locating Judgements which are included on the website, currently those from 1997 onwards.)
It could also be useful to add a more direct link from Unreported Judgements to the legislation which they relate to. The full name of a law will appear in the text of the Judgement, so a search engine as recommended in 7.1 above will allow a search for all judgements referring to a particular piece of legislation.
However, a direct reference from the header, perhaps using the code number of the legislation (L number or R&O number), could be of additional value to the user.
It is recommended that consideration be given to including in the header information of each Unreported Judgement a list of the L numbers and R&O numbers for all legislation involved in the Judgement. This might be provided as a drop-down list, where clicking on one of the entries would link to the text of the legislation if available.