Krever, Rick --- "Research on the Net" [1997] LawIJV 39; (1997) 71(2) The Law Institute Journal 24
TECHNOLOGY- Research on the Net
Jason Romney, Law on the Line, 1996, Australian Government Publishing Service t/a Law Press and Neil Warren, A Guide to Tax on the Internet, 1996, LBC Information Services tia Australian Tax Practice. ideo recorders, fax machines, mobile phones - time and again surveys show Australians are at the forefront of acquiring and using new technology.
The glaring exception to the rule must be lawyers and on-line information services. For well over a decade the American Bar Association has refused to recognise law schools as accredited institutions unless they provide comprehensive training in electronic information retrieval, and computer-based legal resources have become the norm for lawyers in North America and Europe.
There are several reasons why Australia remains in the backwater of on-line legal research. Early providers were overpriced, had inadequate databases and unfriendly software, and provided inadequate access to law schools for training purposes. Most of these criticisms continue to apply to current providers. Until the North American example is followed and law schools are provided with free or next-to-free access for training purposes, lawyers will never enter practice with the proclivity to turn first to an on-line service for research needs.
While commercial on-line services may be faring poorly, their free counterparts on the Web are flourishing. Within hours of the High Court handing down a key judgment on the general anti-avoidance provision in the Income Tax Assessment Act last December, I received comments on the judgment from a range of col-leagues and practitioners in Australia and by the next morning had received react-ions from a colleague in the US and another in Canada. All these persons had accessed the case via the free site for federal court cases on the Web.
If the number of information sites available on the Web for lawyers is any indication of usage, Australian lawyers have taken to the Web with a passion. These two books, Law on the Line by Jason Romney and A Guide to Tax on the Internet by Neil Warren, are guides to using the Web for lawyers who are not yet part of the law on the Web revolution. Notwithstanding the more parochial title of Warren's book, only a small part of the book is tax-specific and it is a handy guide for any lawyer. Both books provide readers with general overviews of how the Web works and how to get on it. Romney's book starts a few steps before Warren's: it commences with a discussion of hand-held pocket organisers and moves into buying a computer, while Warren assumes you have a computer and want to know how to access the Internet with it. In fact, almost half of Romney's book deals with issues before you get on the Net (what sort of computer to buy, etc.). While it was published in 1996, it is obvious that most of the text was written in 1995 and, unfortunately, this means much of the technical information is out of date. I found Warren's non-technical explanations easier to follow for a lay reader and his diagrams and graphics (including many reproductions of Website homepages) helped to make the text easier to work through.
Warren's book has two advantages over Romney's. First, Warren describes more practical applications of the Web for lawyers: how to hang your shingle on the Web, how to use new groups, and so on. Secondly, Warren provides a better over-view to searching for information on the Web. Both texts list a number of Websites (although Warren has more; his book comes with a disk containing 1200 book-marks to Websites) but with new sites relevant to lawyers appearing daily, no book can hope to be up to date with addresses. The guidance in Warren's book on searching the Web should make it possible for a user to find new sites relevant to current research needs.
A most important feature of Romney's book is the inclusion of some "lawyer jokes" Websites. He quotes the compiler of one site (http.//rever.nmsu.edu/-ras/lawyer.htm) as observing that he's not sure why he bothers: "Nobody ever laughs at lawyer jokes. The lawyers don't think they're funny, and nobody else thinks they're jokes". If you can't find the High Court case you're looking for, you should at least be able to get a chuckle on the Web.
RICK KREVER
Rick Krever is from the School of Law, Deakin University.