The Gazette 1977

GAZETTE

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER

Prospects for Computerized Legal Information Retrieval in The Republic of Ireland By Hugh M. Fitzpatrick B.C.L., Solicitor

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 123

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