Application of internet computer in legal research

Dr. Tabrez Ahmad
Professor of Law
www.technolexindia.com
tabrezahmad7@gmail.com
technolexindia.blogspot.com

2
www.technolexindia.com,
http://technolexindia.blogpot.com

Agenda
3
1. Identify Web sources of value for conducting
legal research ( Open Source)
2. Identify subscription databases for
conducting legal research

Digital Revolution Internet Infra in INDIA
4
4.8 Mil. High
Speed Internet
65 Mil.
Internet Users
248 Mil.
Mobile Phones
8 Mil. Mobile Phones being
added per month
Interne
t
BSN
L
Bhart
i
TATA
Communicatio
ns
Relianc
e
ERNE
T
Mail
Servers
1Mil. Domains
(0.5 Mil. “.in”)
DN
S
130+
IDCs
134 Major
ISPs
`
VOIP,
IPTV
NIC
INDIA Internet
Infrastructure:2008.5
Govt.
Academia
Enterpris
e
Home
Tele Density 24 per 1000
person
IT /
ITES
BPO
Targetted Broadband connection = 10
Mil. (2010)
4

The Research Process
 Develop a research strategy
 Identify appropriate information sources
 Keep organized records
 Critically evaluate resources
 Analyze legal issues
 Put it all together
5

Select a Legal Topic
 Select an area of the law: define the problem or
identify the legal issue
 Determine “jurisdiction,
6

Primary Authority =
The Law Itself
 Statutes(Legislation)
 Case Law(court decisions)
 Constitutions
 Administrative regulations and decisions
 Rules of procedure and ethics
7

Secondary sources =
Everything else/Not the law
 Database articles (scholarly & popular)
 Nonfiction books (Print or electronic)
 Blogs
 Treatises
 Encyclopedia articles
 Law Review Articles
8

Where to Start
 Secondary authorities help explain and interpret
primary sources of the law
 Secondary authorities provide the foundation for
finding, analyzing, and applying the law
 Secondary authorities point you to significant
sources of primary authority
9

Legal Research on the Web
GOOD FOR:
 Current and recent documents
 Significant or recent cases; SC cases
 Central & state codes, statutes and regulations
 Government publications
 Foreign and international materials
10

Legal Research on the Web
NOT GOOD FOR:
 Older cases; historical materials
 Full-text journal articles
 Treatises
 Complete overview of the law
 In-depth, thorough legal research
 Most of the Indian Law Journals are not in e-forms
 Most of the Law Books by Indian authors are not
available in e-form
11

What to do if you are unfamiliar
with the Internet
 In short, what do you do if you know little or nothing
about the Internet and computers? The prominent
educational philosopher, John Dewey, long ago
established that the best way to learn anything was by
doing it
http://technolexindia.blogpot.com 12

Where to Start Your Internet
Research and Study
 Thankfully, there are numerous overviews and guides
available for inexperienced users of the Internet.
 The Internet Society's "Guide to Internet
Law," (www.isoc.org/internet/law) offers links to and
brief discussions of the more useful legal research sites
on the Internet.

 The "Virtual Chase," a mega site sponsored by a major
law firm, is strong on research articles and Internet
strategies. It has an excellent section called "Other
Legal Information Guides"
(www.virtualchase.com/resources/otherguides.shtml)
that has numerous links to international legal
websites.
 "Guide to European Legal
Databases." (www.llrx.com/features/europenew.htm)
Authored by Mirela Roznovschi, Reference Librarian
of the New York University School of Law Library. It
includes search engines for international and foreign
law; search tips; indices; guides; journals; dictionaries;
European legal databases; constitutions; and
transnational/international organizations.

 "Guide to Foreign and International Legal
Databases." (www.nyu.edu/library/foreign_intl/) New
York University's huge collection of international
information under the direction of the same person as
the above guide.
 "Guide to International Trade Law Sources on the
Internet." (www.llrx.com/features/trade.htm). This
comprehensive research guide to the best Internet
sources for international trade law is compiled by
Marci Hoffman, the Foreign and International Law
Librarian at the University of Minnesota Law Library.

 "University of Minnesota Human Rights
Library"(www.umn.edu/humanrts). More than a research
guide, this is a collection of over 6,500 human rights
documents and materials including bibliographies and
guides; refugee and asylum resources; human rights search
engines; treaties and international instruments; with over
2,500 links to other sites.
 "Law on the
Web" (http://lawlib.slu.edu/library/LawOnTheWeb.html).
Compiled by James Milles, the Law Librarian at St. Louis
University, this is a well-organized list of legal resources on
the Internet including general guides; selected subject-area
guides (including Comparative and International Law);
search engines; statutes and cases. Milles uses a star system
to recommend sites.

 "Guide to Law
Online" (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/glin/worldlaw.html) prepar
ed by the U.S. Law Library of Congress is an annotated
hypertext guide to sources of information worldwide on
government and law. Strong U.S. and international links
including area guides, international organization links
(UN, OAS, and so on), worldwide reports on human rights,
international and comparative law reviews, political system
and economic guides for many of the world's nations.
 "InSite" (http://128.253.118.14:8080/insite/insitetp.html) Th
e law librarians at Cornell University evaluate useful
websites, select the most valuable ones, and provide
commentary and subject access to them. "InSite" highlights
selected law-related websites in two ways: first, as an
annotated publication issued electronically and in print;
and second, as a keyword-searchable database.

Comprehensive or "Mega" Legal
Websites
Comprehensive or "mega" sites are those that include a wide array of
services, functions, resources, and subject areas. Because of their
extensive nature, each of the following websites provides an
excellent starting point for legal study and research:
 "Findlaw" (www.findlaw.com) has often been billed as the best site
to find other legal resources. It is designed in easy-to-view sections
for legal professionals, students, businessmen, and the public. Its
features include: current news, community boards (on legal issues
such as immigration and cyberspace law), newsletters, a lawyer
finder function, and the noted search engine, "LawCrawler." This
search engine includes an international option for searching
individual country domains. Some 38 legal subjects are indexed at
"Findlaw" including Communications Law, Cyberspace Law, Dispute
Resolution and Arbitration, Family Law, Intellectual Property,
International Law, International Trade, Law and Economics.

"Global Legal Information
Network" (Library of Congress)
(http://lcweb2.loc.gov/law/GLINv1/GLIN.html).
 The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) maintains
and provides a database of laws, regulations, and other
complementary legal sources. The site can be viewed in
English, Chinese, French, Korean, Portuguese, and
Spanish. The documents included in the database are
contributed by the governments of the member nations
from the original official texts that are deposited, by
agreement of the members, at the Library of Congress of
the United States. This database contains: (1) full texts of
the documents in the official language of the country of
origin, (2) summaries or abstracts in English, and (3)
thesauri in English and in as many official languages as are
represented in the database. Information can be searched
in English.

"Hieros Gamos" (www.hg.org)
 touts itself as the "#1 Global Law Site With 2+ Million
Links." Global it is: it can be read in most of the world's
major languages, and has extensive international links and
information. HG's content--divided into business,
consumers, attorneys, and students--is somewhat similar
to "Findlaw." Its object was to be the comprehensive
starting-point for all law and law-related information. It
has a search engine to search 11,000 law and government
sites. HG, incidentally, is Greek for the harmonization of
seeming opposites (such as earth and sky) and in this case,
electronic and written information. Recently, its content
and layout has become so large and extended beyond the
law, that the site has begun to lose focus of its original
purpose.

"Jurist" (www.jurist.law.pitt.edu)
 it has parallel sites in Australia, Canada, the United
Kingdom, the EU, and Portugal, so it is a superb global
source.

"LawGuru" (www.lawguru.com)
 is a cornucopia of legal materials including a "QA"
section with frequently asked questions (FAQs) and
their answers; a database of thousands of free forms
with a search engine for forms; law news; chat rooms;
discussion lists; and more. Its key feature is its legal
research section that allows you to do extensive legal
research with access to over 500 legal search engines,
tools, and databases. For a listing of its resources by
topic, use the pull-down menu on the "Legal Resource"
page.

Legal Information Institute (LII)"
Cornell (www.law.cornell.edu)
 This site is one of the oldest and still one of the best legal
information sources on the Internet. It is maintained by
Cornell University. The site offers an encyclopedia called
"Law About" where you can initiate your topical research.
There are also vast amounts of materials (core materials for
major law school courses; the UCC; Introduction to Legal
Citation, and so forth that can be downloaded, some for a
fee. It has a very strong collection--under "Law from
Around the Globe"--which breaks down international
materials country-by-country for each continent. The
"Spotlight" section on the home page features law events in
the news from around the world.

"MegaLaw" (www.megalaw.com).
 This site is geared toward the practicing lawyer (with
sections, for example, on "Expert Witnesses" "Process
Service", and finding court reporters). It also features
"LawBot", a search engine. Unfortunately, its
"International" section focuses mostly on countries
outside Asia. From the Far East region, only China and
Australia are listed)

"Student Law Centre"
(www.studentlaw.com)
 Sponsored by Britain's BPP Law School, this site is not
as vast as others in this section; yet, it presents good
information for students and from the European
perspective. Features include a search engine, many
links, and a "Studentlaw Wire" with site news
delivered free to your e-mail address.

Virtualchase“
(www.virtualchase.com).
 Sponsored by a law firm and with over 500 pages of
information pertaining to Internet legal resources, this
site is especially good for research strategies. It is
designed for lawyers and other experienced legal
researchers and has a good search engine and
hundreds of links.

"The World Wide Web Virtual
Library-Law" at
(http://www.law.indiana.edu/v-lib/)
 is presented by the Indiana University School of Law
at Bloomington. You can search with its search engine
or browse the library by subject matter (all of the usual
academic subjects of law) or by information source
(such as law firms, law journals, or the U.S.
Government. As befits its name, it has an enormous
collection of links to other legal websites.

WashLawWeb" (www.washlaw.edu)
 is maintained by the Washburn University School of Law
Library. WashLaw's goal is "to provide users with links to all
known law-related materials on the Internet."(13) Information
on the home page is arranged alphabetically, by subject, and by
geographic location. WashLaw also hosts a large number of
law-related Listserv discussion groups. Discussion groups are
intended to provide scholarly forums for the exchange of ideas,
opinions, and information relevant to law professionals. When
you join a discussion group, you receive e-mail from others
who have already joined. Other highlights of WashLaw include
connections to more than 50 legal directories(14) and, access to
foreign, international and United Nation's materials.(15) You
can even subscribe free to a list of new law-related websites
that will be e-mailed to you.

Yahoo!" (http://dir.yahoo.com/law/)
 "Yahoo!" is one of the Web's favorite portals and a
major directory. Its law section is simple and easy to
use. It starts with a search engine and then a vast array
of subject categories including many unusual ones
like: Booksellers, Attorneys, Self-help, and Indigenous
Peoples. It also contains an annotated list of helpful
legal links. This directory section is not as large as
many other comprehensive sites but it serves as an
excellent starting-point for legal research.

Two Favorite Websites: "Jurist" and
Cybertimes (New York Times)
 A. "Jurist"
 Both of the websites in this section are ones that I have found
particularly useful and well suited for legal research and study. If I
had to pick just one out of all the websites available worldwide, it
would be "Jurist" (www.jurist.law.pitt.edu). "Jurist" rightly describes
itself as the "Internet's legal education portal," a "university-based
academic gateway to authoritative legal information, instruction,
and scholarship online."(16) It is hosted by the University of
Pittsburgh School of Law under the guidance of Professor Bernard
Hibbitts, and edited by a team of law professors from law schools
across the United States and around the world. It is especially
designed for individuals learning, teaching, or researching law --that
is, legal scholars, law students, law librarians, lawyers and judges,
journalists, and interested citizens. It is advertisement-free, non-
commercial, and provided to the public at no charge.
 "Jurist" is updated many times daily and is chock full of information.

Cyber Times at The New York Times
Website.
 The New York Times has long been a mainstay of the world press.
Now, you can register and access the electronic version of The Times
at(www.nytimes.com). Registration is free, fast and easily done on
the site's homepage. Having registered, you can now read the online
version of this authoritative newspaper including a first-rate section
devoted to high technology--that is appropriately called "Cyber
Times", (www.nytimes.com/pages-technology/index.html). On
Mondays, Cyber Times is devoted to E-commerce and the New
Economy; on Wednesdays, Education; on Thursdays, "State of the
Art"; and best of all, on Fridays, to Cyber Law. The Cyber Law
Journal reports on the legal issues raised by the Internet, including
copyrights and trademarks, privacy, freedom of expression, and
restrictions on pornography and other content. Each electronic
issue contains about twenty articles.

BAILII ( www.bailii.org )
 British and Irish Legal Information Institute
Access to Freely Available British and Irish Public Legal
Information.
Where you can find British and Irish case law &
legislation, European Union case law, Law Commission
reports, and other law-related British and Irish material.

SSRN ( www.ssrn.com )
 Social Science Research Network

The "Searching the Net" section, for example,
gives you links to 33 different search engines
including "Yahoo!" and "Google."
 Some links listed on "Navigator" there that are
particularly helpful in legal study and research include
the following:
 "Oyez, Oyez, Oyez" (oyez.at.nwu.edu), a multimedia
site with digital tapes of U.S. Supreme Court oral
arguments and case digests.
 "Thomas" (thomas.loc.gov), a site (named for President
Thomas Jefferson) operated by the U.S. government,
this is a one-stop site for federal legislation and
information.

 "National Law Journal" (www.ljx.com) by the same
publishers of the popular print journal, with legal
news and policy discussions.
 "Cyberspace Law Institute" (www.cli.org) a think tank
without walls that has many good policy papers on
cyberlaw topics.
 "Harvard Journal of Law and
Technology" (jolt.law.harvard.edu) a cutting-edge
legal periodical.
 "Lawyers.com" (www.lawyers.com) a free, online
consumer version of the Martindale-Hubbell Law
Dictionary. Tells you how and where to find lawyers,
includes message boards.

Search Engines and Directories
 "All-inOne Search Page" (www.allonesearch.com) is not
so much a single search engine as a site with over 500 of
the Internet's best search engines, databases, and
directories
 "AltaVista" (altavista.digital.com)
 "Excite" (www.excite.com)
 "HotBot" (www.hotbot.com)
 "Lycos" (www.lycos.com)

 Metacrawler" (www.metacrawler.com) uses many
different search engines.
 "Northern Light" (www.nlsearch.com)
 "WebCrawler" (www.webcrawler.com)
 "Yahoo!" (www.yahoo.com) Although "Yahoo!" is listed
generically here as a "search engine", it is more
accurately described as a "directory." A "directory"
differs from a search engine in that it is manually
created. Live human being submit their websites to
Yahoo for listing, and if Yahoo accepts them, they are
assigned to an appropriate category or categories by an
editor (who is alive as an editor can be).

 Here are some "legal specific" search engines:
 "CataLaw" (www.catalaw.com) a catalog of catalogs of
worldwide law on the Internet
 "Derecho" (http://derecho.org) a Spanish-language
law search engine
 "FindLaw
LawCrawler" (http://lawcrawler.lp.findlaw.com)
 "LawGuru" (www.lawguru.com/search/lawsearch.html
)

 "Meta-Index for U.S. Legal
Research" (http://gsulaw.gsu.edu/metaindex)
 "Law
Search" (www.2mediate.com/search/lawsearc.html) a
legal search engine sponsored by the Florida
Mediation Group.
 "TheLawEngine!" (www.thelawengine.com) also
designed as a comprehensive law site
 "Zimmerman's Research Guide" (www.llrx.com) an
online encyclopedia for legal research.

Technolexindia
 TechnolexIndia ( www.technolexindia.com)
is the content aggregator dedicated to law
exclusively to the IP Law and Cyberlaw. It
is committed to the cause of creating and
promoting mass awareness about the need
to have detailed national & international
legal framework of cyberspace and IPR.

 http://technolexindia.blogspot.com
 http://Iplexindia.blogspot.com
 http://conferencelex.blogspot.com

 Search engines have different strengths and weaknesses,
and even the more efficient ones never search the entire
Web. Indeed, it has been estimated that all search engines
index only roughly 47% of all sites on the World Wide Web,
with the largest single search engine only indexing about
16% of the WWW's content. A reasonably prudent
researcher should, therefore, use several search engines for
the same query. Because the competition among search
engines is fierce, each is constantly adding new features.
"Check back on search sites to see what is new," advises one
authority, to see "if the new features will help you on your
search.To keep tabs on search engines, and for useful tips
on how to conduct a search, look at
"Searchenginewatch"(www.searchenginewatch.com).

Subscription-based databases
GREAT FOR:
 Locating full-text articles, law reviews, some treatises
 Locating retrospective and current articles and cases
 Florida case law not in West Law/Lexis-Nexis
43

Secondary Sources
 Treatises
 Law reviews and articles
 Encyclopedias and dictionaries
44

Locating treatises
 Aleph, online catalog
 NetLibrary
 WorldCat
 Index Master
All are subscription databases.
45

Locating law reviews
 LexisNexis Academic
 Index to Legal Periodicals (ILP), 1980-
 ILP Retrospective, -1980
 LegalTrac
 Hein Online
 JSTOR; Project Muse
 E-journals page
All of these are subscription databases
46

Locating law reviews
 Emory’s list of legal journals
 Findlaw’s list
 Google Scholar
 Law Library of Congress
 University Law Review Project
All of these are free Internet sites
47

Encyclopedias and Dictionaries
 Pathfinders/Research Guides
 LLRX (Law Library Resource Exchange)
 LexNotes.com Pathfinders
 Online encyclopedias
 Zimmerman’s Online Encyclopedia
 Cornell LII’s Wex
 Online dictionaries
 Law.com dictionary
 ‘Lectric Law Lexicon
48

Case Law
 Court Web sites
 Florida Supreme Court
 Portal Web sites
 Florida State Courts
 Findlaw.com
 National Law Journal
 Subscription databases
 Lexis-Nexis Academic
 Hein Online
49

Case law – Portal sites
 Findlaw: Cases and Codes
 LexisOne.com
 Cornell LII
 American Law Sources Online (ALSO)
 National Law Journal
 Federal Court Locator
 Florida State Courts
Text of Opinions
50

Case law – US Supreme Court
Opinions
FREE
 Supreme Court 1991 to present
 Findlaw 1893 to present
 Lexisone.com 1790 to present
SUBSCRIPTION DATABASES
 Hein Online 1754 to present
 BNA U.S. Law Week, 1997 to present
 LexisNexis Academic
51

Case law – US Supreme Court
 Oral Arguments
 Supreme Court site (transcript)
 Oyez Project (audio)
 Records and Briefs
 Findlaw 1999 to present
52

Case law – Federal courts
 PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic
Records) www.pacer.psc.uscourts.gov
 Electronic public access to service that allows
users to obtain:
 Case information
 Docket information
 Documents
 From Federal Courts
 Courts of Appeal
 District & Bankruptcy courts
53

 Searching PACER
 U.S. Party/Case Index
 PACER District Look-Up
 Subscription database:
 agencies or individuals must register
 Very inexpensive
 $.08/page (applies to number of pages that results in
any search), OR
 $.60/minute charge
 $2.40 maximum per document
54

 Other sites for federal cases:
 www.uscourts.gov free Internet
 LexisNexis Academic subscription
55

Case law – Florida
 Free, Internet
 Florida Law Online portal site
 ALSO: Florida (portal site)
 Florida Supreme Court 1999+
 Fla. SC Records and Briefs Apr 1998+
 FSU Briefs and opinions Nov 1989+
 WFSU Oral Arguments Online 1997+
 Opinions from other Florida courts
 Subscription
 Florida Law Weekly 1995+
 LexisNexis Academic – State search
56

Court Rules
 LLRX’s Court Rules
 U.S. Supreme Court, Cornell LII
 Federal Judiciary
57

Constitutions
 U.S. Constitution (GPO Access)
 U.S. Constitution (Library of Congress)
 Florida Constitution
58

Statutes - Federal
 Portal sites
 Law Library of Congress
 Federal
 GPOAccess, Cornell LII, US House of
Representatives site, Thomas
59

Statutes - States
 Florida
 Online Sunshine constitution, statutes
 Department of State public laws
 Digest of General Laws only electronic
 Law Library of Congress portal site
 Other States
 Findlaw, Cornell LII, Law Library of Congress
 Municipal Codes -- municode.com
60

How the Internet helps in legal research & teaching-
Always keeps you in touch with students- A model
for teaching IP Law
 Google Group- ipr.kls
 Ibibo Message Group-Technolex
 Free Blogger Blog- IPLex
 See syllabus of different universities in India and the
world
 Syllabus uploaded on group- IPLex
 Research on Manupatra, WestLaw and Lexis Nexis
 Relevant cases and articles uploaded on group ipr.kls
before every lecture-

 PPT slides are uploaded on internet authorstream.com
and shared on the group
 Sharing of question and answer on the group-ipr.kls
 Recent developments written on blog IPLex and linked
to the group
 Feed back on class test, examinations, and
presentation shared on the group-ipr.kls
 Students are asked to follow good blogs,
For eg. Michael Geist Blog, Ipkat, IPLex, SpicyIP,
IPCanvas, WIPO website.

Conclusion.
 The advent of the Internet has begun to transform
commerce and academia alike. Legal research on the
Internet presents a low-cost, efficient supplement to
traditional means of scholarship, and in Asia, as in
other developing areas, is particularly useful since
there are no great libraries. It is hoped that this
presentation will give the participating law teachers
some ideas on the possibilities of integrating this new
technology into their legal research and teaching.

Application of internet computer in legal research

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