Nick’s most recent post on the question of contributions raises some interesting points, and I think shows that we need to strip the ‘Free Legal Web’ back to its irreducible core, and find out exactly what we think it should mean. But first, to respond to some of Nick’s points:
We already have a substantial body of authored contributions being made on blogs in particular. Nearly Legal himself has been blogging intelligent legal commentary for over 2 years; he has now also attracted joint contributors and these collective comtributions – CC licensed – now form part of the free legal web. Transform this and all similar resources to the Free Legal Web – ie repurpose them in creative ways (with permission) – and most contributions will look after themselves.
As good as Nearly Legal’s blog is, or any other specialist law blog, it cannot hope to compete with the the articles, case commentaries, and so on found in bona fide legal journals, and monographs. Academics and practitioners will continue to publish in them, and publishers will continue to make profit from them. It is (perhaps unfortunately) a mutually profitable relationship.
There’s reason to be optimistic too about leveraging law firm publications. These articles are written to be read, to reflect well on the authors and their firms and to gain them business.
The more informal/less influential practice newsletters published by firms may be useful to some degree, but I cannot see them being key to this initiative. Nobody cites those newsletters, so why should people use the Free Legal Web for research purposes, or visit it at all, if that is all it contains?
I think there are many issues here, but one of the first things that needs to be addressed is: what is the Free Legal Web? There seems to be a generally-held view (including my own), based on the comments of Nearly Legal, Geeklawyer and others, that a true ‘wikipedia of English law’ will be just that – the sum total of all knowledge and learning that English law has to offer. But that cannot be right; there can be no competition with the key texts in any area of law. Wikipedia itself is a different beast to a law Wikipedia. Why would anyone go to, and cite, the Free Legal Web’s entry on non-delivery of goods, when you could look up the section in Benjamin on Sale? Why look at the user-generated piece on choice of law in contract, when you could skim through Dicey & Morris? These will be the texts that judges use, that advocates read to inform their arguments, and that academics write. What, then, is the incentive to contribute to the Free Legal Web?
So, we may have to aim for something less, at least at first. Nick’s post seems to envisage the pooling together of all current commentary on blogs and in newsletters, and that seems eminently feasible. So, a case is published by OPSI and repurposed in to the Free Legal Web; a blog or law firm comments, and that is fed into the FLW as well, semantically linked to the case. Excellent. If the Free Legal Web is to work, then that may be where the battlelines have to be drawn.
Martin, aside from the minor quibble that I never envisaged what Nick was/is calling for as a wikiedia of sorts, I tend to agree.
What are the strengths of what exists? On the one hand, the primary material – statute and case law – is increasingly freely available and, I hope, this trend is accelerating. This is practically and morally a good thing. On the other hand, what most of the existing substative law blogs do well (and I’m thinking Conflict of Laws, Impact, IPkat, Family lore, Bloody relations/FLW blog etc.) is news, updates and what I suppose one might call the journalistic end of critical commentary. (No disrespect intended by that term. It is what I do).
Now, ways of bringing those two elements closer together or interweaving them would be fabulous. Up to the moment (within days, not months) information in some depth. The weighty ‘all of contract law ever in one authoritative tome‘ is not what online sources, free or paid for, do best.
What we need in part is an archive – both of prior statute (and the OPSI etc. are getting there slowly)and caselaw (more problematic) and of blog commentary, which will also, inevitably, take time to build.
My concern over ‘volunteers’, to be clear, was that the commentary side of the free legal web, as it exists, consists of pockets of excellence, but huge areas with no current input. Where are the detailed PI blogs? Or wills and trusts? Or Welfare/community care (although specialist sites like rightsnet go some way in this regard). Or small to medium commercial law? Criminal is a massive gap, despite the wikis. Education? Mental Health? Etc. Etc.. I’m firmly of the belief that more people will turn up and do these areas, but that it will be slow and uncertain. Until there is more or less comprehensive coverage, the Free Legal Web will be pushed to cast itself as a creditable rival to the paid for services, simply because it is patchy.
My sense – and I could be wrong – is that establishing a framework and a useage and development model is the best thing that could be done at this stage, that then being something that new entrants can pick up and both use and fit their output to work within. That and an ethos, of course. One should always have an ethos or two
The useful thing about my sense of the immediate task is that I am technically incapable of aiding in its development, although hopefully not its deployment, so I’m excused games.
NL – Quite, that’s my thinking. Establish a framework; create “stubs” for everything and incorporate all that we have. Some parts will already thus be quite well developed and I’m sure that with increased exposure etc, others will grow to meet this challenge.
NL – Quite, that’s my thinking. Establish a framework; create “stubs” for everything and incorporate all that we have. Some parts will already thus be quite well developed and I’m sure that with increased exposure etc, others will grow to meet this challenge.
This is all very interesting. One point worth making is that most legal journals do not pay their contributors. I have written (variously) for a number of them, some with strong academic credentials and others more popular (like the new law journal). I do not spend considerable time writing them for financial reward.
In fact the only times I have been paid for journal writing have been a short article for the personal tax planning review (not so surprising given its title) and Legal Action (who I am sure have no trouble attracting contributors).
One does get paid for books of course, but even then the cost/benefit is way out of skew (even if it is great fun). Print runs are really small in the legal arena (except for a few notable contributions) and royalties not large.
So my motivation for contributing is about 75% recognition/marketing, 10% fun and 5% a desire to have the thing said. For articles in academic journals the percentages are more like 50%, 20%, 30%.
Now, if you can harness *that* sort of energy for what you want to do, then you will get at least my quality (I hesitate to say good quality, but saleable quality may be) of lawyer producing content for you of a substantive kind in reasonable quantity.
Wikis have a big flaw: lack of recognition/frustration with editing and so on. I speak with a lot of experience, if you look on wikipedia’s wikiproject:law you will see that I am the second member to join. That is a nightmare.
Blogs/newsy articles are all over the place. Too many and too shallow and little or no synthesis. What synthesis there is is not that good. I mean no disrespect for blogging: my first Nearly Legal blog post will (I hope) appear real soon now. Its useful. It helps all of us keep up to date. But its no replacement for a really systematic work.
Why would anyone look at our work not Expensive on Law? For a start there may not be a work: the last decent synthesis on assured tenancies is getting a bit long in the tooth, the two reasonable books on forfeiture are getting quite out of date and so on. It would be great fun to write either or both – indeed I’ve made a start privately on some material to publish about succession rights for secure tenants.
Dammit. This stuff ought to be free.
This is all very interesting. One point worth making is that most legal journals do not pay their contributors. I have written (variously) for a number of them, some with strong academic credentials and others more popular (like the new law journal). I do not spend considerable time writing them for financial reward.
In fact the only times I have been paid for journal writing have been a short article for the personal tax planning review (not so surprising given its title) and Legal Action (who I am sure have no trouble attracting contributors).
One does get paid for books of course, but even then the cost/benefit is way out of skew (even if it is great fun). Print runs are really small in the legal arena (except for a few notable contributions) and royalties not large.
So my motivation for contributing is about 75% recognition/marketing, 10% fun and 5% a desire to have the thing said. For articles in academic journals the percentages are more like 50%, 20%, 30%.
Now, if you can harness *that* sort of energy for what you want to do, then you will get at least my quality (I hesitate to say good quality, but saleable quality may be) of lawyer producing content for you of a substantive kind in reasonable quantity.
Wikis have a big flaw: lack of recognition/frustration with editing and so on. I speak with a lot of experience, if you look on wikipedia’s wikiproject:law you will see that I am the second member to join. That is a nightmare.
Blogs/newsy articles are all over the place. Too many and too shallow and little or no synthesis. What synthesis there is is not that good. I mean no disrespect for blogging: my first Nearly Legal blog post will (I hope) appear real soon now. Its useful. It helps all of us keep up to date. But its no replacement for a really systematic work.
Why would anyone look at our work not Expensive on Law? For a start there may not be a work: the last decent synthesis on assured tenancies is getting a bit long in the tooth, the two reasonable books on forfeiture are getting quite out of date and so on. It would be great fun to write either or both – indeed I’ve made a start privately on some material to publish about succession rights for secure tenants.
Dammit. This stuff ought to be free.
This is all very interesting. One point worth making is that most legal journals do not pay their contributors. I have written (variously) for a number of them, some with strong academic credentials and others more popular (like the new law journal). I do not spend considerable time writing them for financial reward.
In fact the only times I have been paid for journal writing have been a short article for the personal tax planning review (not so surprising given its title) and Legal Action (who I am sure have no trouble attracting contributors).
One does get paid for books of course, but even then the cost/benefit is way out of skew (even if it is great fun). Print runs are really small in the legal arena (except for a few notable contributions) and royalties not large.
So my motivation for contributing is about 75% recognition/marketing, 10% fun and 5% a desire to have the thing said. For articles in academic journals the percentages are more like 50%, 20%, 30%.
Now, if you can harness *that* sort of energy for what you want to do, then you will get at least my quality (I hesitate to say good quality, but saleable quality may be) of lawyer producing content for you of a substantive kind in reasonable quantity.
Wikis have a big flaw: lack of recognition/frustration with editing and so on. I speak with a lot of experience, if you look on wikipedia’s wikiproject:law you will see that I am the second member to join. That is a nightmare.
Blogs/newsy articles are all over the place. Too many and too shallow and little or no synthesis. What synthesis there is is not that good. I mean no disrespect for blogging: my first Nearly Legal blog post will (I hope) appear real soon now. Its useful. It helps all of us keep up to date. But its no replacement for a really systematic work.
Why would anyone look at our work not Expensive on Law? For a start there may not be a work: the last decent synthesis on assured tenancies is getting a bit long in the tooth, the two reasonable books on forfeiture are getting quite out of date and so on. It would be great fun to write either or both – indeed I’ve made a start privately on some material to publish about succession rights for secure tenants.
Dammit. This stuff ought to be free.
Francis, I don’t think ‘all over the place’ is a fair characterization of the law blogs. The good substantive law ones, in which I will immodestly include the one we both write for, have a close focus, but it is a question of medium. Blogs are not good (as a medium) at ’systematic work’. As a form, they are good at comment, updates and (perhaps overlooked by many) easily searchable archives (for our field, think LAG reports with an instant topic based search). Synthesis, in any broad sense, is not what blogs, or the format, is for.
What a free online systematic work might look like is still up for candidate models, I think.