Category: Law

Warning: may include Scots law material. Somewhere.

Ah, FindLaw UK, a shiny new website, for general public access to law, and solicitors. Sounds like a good thing, and in principle, it is.

But I have to go back to a traditional moan: Scots law differs in many areas from English/Welsh law. The Findlaw UK website almost exclusively refers to E/W law, but doesn’t actually state this. There are a few references to where there are differences, but these can be deep in the articles e.g the core section on divorce procedure refers entirely to E/W law, with only a related article alongside outlining that there are different procedures in different jurisdictions.

The Personal Injury section refers you to the website of Community Legal Advice, which offers “free, confidential and independent legal advice for resident of England and Wales”.

Buying and Selling Property is purely about E/W law, I can’t find even a hint of the Scottish differences. Bankruptcy? Alcohol and Crime? Dispute Resolution Law? Criminal Law? Litigation? All English/Welsh, with links to national agencies for those topics.

Only the Law and Government section discusses in any depth the jurisdictional issues, including a Devolution section, so they do know that there are differences. But there’s no link from this core information to the subject guidance sections. The few references to Scots law are also often lifted from DirectGov, who refer to the Scottish Government as the Scottish Executive, but FindLaw UK’s own material refer to it as the Scottish Government: using the two terms is confusing for those who don’t know the difference between the old and new terms for the body.

Of course, a lot of these areas of law I don’t regularly work in, so can’t be sure how accurate the site is in those, but the ones I do know about seem to generally have no signing or flagging of the jurisdiction of the content, which, if you’re aiming a site at the general public, is not a great plan.

So FindLaw UK, if you’re going to market yourself as being able to provide “legal information, access to quality solicitors and a community to help you make the best legal decisions”, then please, remember to actually do that. Nobody can make their best legal decision if the information they’re basing it on relates to the law of another country.

The Supreme-ish Court. Again

Looks like the UK Supreme Court’s having a wee holiday from posting judgments (or as they call them, Decided Cases) on its website.

The last case listed is [2010] UKSC 10, from the beginning of March. BAILLI however has the text of all judgments up to [2010] UKSC 32, this July.
What’s going on? Why are cases not being posted to the UKSC website? I can’t find if there’s an announcement about the cases being posted to BAILLI instead, as the news section only goes back to mid-June 2010, and the archive section only lists information from 2009. What’s happened to the news that happened between 2009 and June 2010?
But hey, at least they managed to publish their annual report and accounts yesterday. Wonder how much of it went into web design…? From the annual report:
“Our website
The Court is a modern institution on an international stage. Our website http://www.supremecourt.gov.uk continues to be a success with a wide audience and contains a considerable amount of information for people interested in the Court, its Justices and judgments. This material includes: current cases coming before the court with brief details of the points of law to be considered: full judgments handed down and their press summaries. The website also has information about how to appeal, the history of the building and the art within it; corporate information about the administration of the court, and biographical details of the Justices and officials.”
Uh-huh. Sure.

Free SLLG member event in Edinburgh

Thanks to the lovely @technollama, I’m pretending to be professional, and organising an event for the Scottish Law Librarians Group. The Mighty Llama himself will be presenting on this topic:
Digital Copyright: The Next Generation
During the first decade of the century copyright law has been one of the most important legal issues when it comes to the Internet. Recent developments may give copyright law a different face for the next decade. From the passing of the Digital Economy Act, to the rise of user-generated content and open licensing schemes such as open source and Creative Commons, the future of copyright is shaping up to present an interesting juxtaposition between two very different ideas about content management.
Date: Thursday 1st July 2010
Venue: Edinburgh Training and Conference Venue, 16 St. Mary Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1SU
Time: 5.30pm
Members should have received their email invite by now, but if not, and you’re a member, email me on the address in the contact details on the right and I’ll add you to the attendees list.

Supreme courting…or winching*…or…something.

Iain Nisbet of the Govan Law Centre (and excellent, and entertaining Absolvitor blog) has referred to a (somewhat snarky) blog post I did back in October about the UK Supreme Court website in the Journal of the Law Society of Scotland (JLSS – not to be confused with a terrible manufactured boy band)

While it’s great to see from Iain’s review that things on the site have improved (and I’m blushing at the thought of having any sort of influence other than what craft class to run in the evenings), it did remind me to double check an issue with the cases that was still outstanding in November 2009, when I looked at the site again.

Case [2009] UKSC 1 E, R (on the application of) v Governing Body of JFS & Anor (Rev 3) doesn’t actually exist on the Supreme Court site. You can find it via BAILLI, which shows the 3 cases the court decided in October. Searching for “[2009] UKSC 1” on the Decided Cases area doesn’t bring it up, nor does using the name. The only way to find it is a general search for the exact phrase / citation (which is fine if you know it), which brings up a link to the PDF version of the case. Methinks it’s perhaps time to put that in the…erm…Decided Cases section? It is kinda important, what with it being the first ever judgement from the new court….

*For the non-Scots:

winching Noun. Courting, dating. [Scottish use]

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