The Gazette 1977

GAZETTE

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER

justification for introducing legal information systems."

But one commentator has had misgivings about

retrieval systems. The Slayton Report stated in its

conclusion: "These systems (i.e. computerized law

retrieval systems) have not been developed with full

regard for their implications, and preliminary

investigation, such as we have undertaken in this study,

suggests that at the very least their contribution to the

legal profession is slight, and that quite possibly their

effects are decidedly unfavourable. Even the legal

information problem they were originally constructed to

solve may not really exist and if it does exist, the cure

may be worse than the disease".

Having sketched the beginnings and developments of

computerized legal information retrieval and possible

justifications for such a system it would seem that there

are three options 4>pen to the legal profession in the

Republic of Ireland (each of which will be examined in

turn):—

1. Retain the traditional "book system" as the sole

method of legal research (and make such improvements

as are considered necessary to that system) and reject a

computer-based system, or

2. Retain the "book system" for the time being and

learn from the experience of developments in computer-

based systems in the United Kingdom and elsewhere thus

ensuring a slow and careful progress towards a

computerized system, or

3. Develop a practical computer-based system or (if one

is launched) become involved in the development of a

national computer-based legal information system.

(1.) One of the aims of the "book system" — the

manual method of looking up the law — should be to

provide an Irish lawyer with sufficient up-to-date source

material on Irish Law to enable him to engage in efficient

legal research on Irish legal problems. The lawyer in the

Republic of Ireland today has traditional tools to assist

him in his legal research. The most important is, of

course, the law library. When the user requires material

he will refer to catalogues organised alphabetically or

systematically to find that material. The law librarian

must be able to cope with the accumulation of volumes.

Also the catalogues and indexes of a library must be

sufficient to satisfy the needs of the lawyer in finding the

material requested by him. This, it need hardly be said, is

not an easy task for the librarian. Already, therefore, a

problem in the "book system" presents itself — the

administration of the library system. But that, of course,

is not essentially the concern of the lawyer.

A second problem in the "book system" in the Irish

context in particular is that of sufficiency of sources.

Does the Irish lawyer have sufficient material available

for his use on Irish law? Until recently Irish lawyers and

law students had to rely in general on books that in many

cases were 50 years out of date or if there was no Irish

book to rely on at all they has to read with discretion a

recent English text book. However in 1969 the

Incorporated Law Society of Ireland established a

Committee to promote the publication of textbooks and

commentaries on Irish Law. Over the past few years law

books have been published on various aspects of Irish

law by the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland and the

Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for Ireland.

Therefore, although the market in the Republic of Ireland

is small, some legal textbooks on Irish law are available

now to assist lawyers and law students in legal research.

However, it is unfortunate that there are only three law

journals (and not any specialist law journals) for the

whole of the legal profession in the Republic of Ireland.

Also, it is a pity that the Irish Lawyer does not have a

series of regular case law reports (similar say to the All

England Reports or Weekly Law Reports) at his disposal.

It is interesting to refer to a study of the information

needs of lawyers in private practice undertaken in

Canada between June 1971 and April 1972.

The

research was based on lawyers' opinion. A questionnaire

was issued to 1100 Canadian lawyers and there were 200

follow-up interviews. The researchers acknowledged that

"there are various sorts of lawyers with various sorts of

needs and any computer service developed will be based

on a number of competing considerations and a large

number of choices. There is no one right system; different

systems are, however, likely to be more or less successful.

Indeed the whole point of testing lawyers' opinion is to

find out which service would be most appreciated (and

thus likely to be successful) by lawyers; the design of any

service must be influenced by the interaction between

technical capabilities, commercial feasibility, and

consumer demands." It is interesting that the report

concluded that the improvement of the "book system" of

legal research should have priority over the development

of techniques for computer assisted legal research.

However, it should be pointed out that since the time of

the Report computerized systems have been introduced in

Canada.

If it could be proved that in the Republic of Ireland

legal research is a small part of lawyers' work and that

the public would not benefit greatly by computer assisted

legal research the priority would then be to improve the

"book system" of legal research. This could be done in

the Republic of Ireland perhaps by re-organising the law

report system to ensure that a series of case law reports

appears at regular (and specific) intervals; publishing

more text books and up-to-date practical manuals for use

by the practical lawyer; reducing possible time lag in

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