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GAZETTE
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER
Prospects for Computerized
Legal Information Retrieval
in The Republic of Ireland
By Hugh M. Fitzpatrick B.C.L.,
Solicitor
Over thirty years ago the creation of automatic retrieval
systems to assist legal research was suggested. In 1946
Lewis O. Kelso gave a warning: "Today the lawyer works
substantially as he worked before the industrial
revolution. Only automated legal research will save him
from playing one of the most confused, ill-paid and
unsatisfactory professions in the world of tomorrow".
1
There has been much development in the area of
computerized legal information retrieval — "storing large
quantities of information [in a computer] and retrieving
with speed and accuracy the materials relevant to
particular problems"
2
— in North America and Europe
over the past twenty years. However, the use of
computers in the field of information retrieval has
attracted little interest among academic and practising
lawyers alike in the Republic of Ireland.
The beginning of "full-text" retrieval systems (which
according to Bing and Harvold are predominant in
computer-based legal information retrieval today) where
the retrievable documents are identical with the original
documents was described recently by Bing and Harvold
in the following terms:
"The University of Pittsburgh started developing a
Data Processing and Computing Center in 1955. In the
course of four years, systems for information retrieval
had become in integral part of the Center . . .
"At approximately the same time, Professors John F.
Horty and William B. Kehl started a project in the
Graduate School of Public Health, designed to study and
improve the health statutes of Pennsylvania . . . In 1956
the Health Law Center under the direction of Horty
undertook the writing of a manual on the subject of
hospital law. They looked at material from several states,
and found that there was little uniformity in indexing from
state to state. Therefore, special indexes had to be
developed. Problems increased as the project moved into
wider areas of "health law", and the project looked to the
Computing Center of the University for a solution. . . .
"A special assignment proved to be a kind of turning
point. A state legislator in Pennsylvania had a bill passed
to change the expression "retarded child" to "exceptional
child". In order to implement the bill, all instances where
the expression occurred, had to be located.
"The Health Law Center started out to solve this
problem in the traditional way; they paid a group of
students to read through the statutes and make a note of
all occurrences of the relevant expressions. It turned out
that the inaccuracy was too high to be acceptable —
another group of students were hired to re-read the
material. Still there were errors.
"A more radical method was then adopted. The entire
material was registered on punch cards and verified by
double-punch. When a machine-readable copy of the
material was established, it became a trivial task for the
computer to read through the material and retrieve all
occurrences where the word "retarded" preceded the
word "child" or variations of "child". . .
"The result was not only a satisfactory solution to the
original assignment; as a by-product, die Health Law
Center got the full text of the statutes in machine-readable
form."
3
Although the early projects of Horty were mainly
restricted to statutory material, according to Bing and
Harvold the results of the Pittsburgh Project had a
stimulating effect not only on lawyers in the United
States, but also overseas. Experiments with case law
retrieval were undertaken by Mr. Colin Tapper of
Magdalen College, Oxford, in the 1960's.
4
Tapper has
asked: "It is natural to expect the computer to help solve
the problems of case law; how can it do so?"
3
In his view:
"No automated retrieval system is of any use to a
common lawyer unless it can give access to case-law.
Every lawyer knows how voluminous case-law has
become, how fast it increases and how slowly it becomes
inoperative. Not is it easy to find. Statutes and statutory
instruments are also difficult to find (and even more
difficult to read when found), but at least they explicitly
up-date each other by repeal and amendment."
3
At first
sight, therefore, it would seem that the difficulties in
establishing and maintaining a computer based retrieval
system which includes case-law in its data-base are
greater than those which exist in creating one with Statute
as its data-base.
According to Bing and Harvold the development in
Europe has lagged 5 to 7 years behind that in the United
States, but the European activity has been considerable.
6
The initiative came from the Council of Europe. A
Committee known as the "Committee of experts on the
harmonization of the means of programming legal data
into computers" was set up and held its first meeting in
September 1969. The Committee recommended certain
harmonization measures in the field of legal data
processing, which were adopted as resolution (73) 23 by
the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. A
new committee — the "Committee on legal data
processing in Europe" — held its first meeting in October
1974.
The Legal Service of the Commission of the European
Communities has been diligent also. It created a
computer-based legal information system for Community
law, which is known as CELEX and has been in
operation since 1971. The system was developed for the
use of the Commission only. But now it is shared between
the Parliament, Council, Commission, Court of Justice
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