Office of Public Sector Information

Posted by: Francis Irving

Public Sector Information Holder: HM Court Service

Information Asset: Case law

The problem

Case law is a vital part of British law, which it is necessary to have access to in order to understand and obey the law.

Some case law is published via the independent charity BAILII. However, it is essentially proprietary information.

BAILII prevent it from being accessible to the general public via standard search engines, and prevent reuse in imaginative new projects.

My ideal solution

Publication of all case law by all courts on either the court, or the court service, website.

Failing that, simply publishing the same raw feed of decisions which is sent to BAILII would be excellent.

What I would do

Initially, simply enjoy all the new people finding decisions with search engines.

Others will create simple email alerting and RSS projects, to help people keep abreast of new cases.

Later, feed all the data into projects such as the Free Legal Web.