The Gazette 1977

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER

GAZETTE

justification for introducing legal information systems." 14 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". 13 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. 16 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

Valuation for compensation is our business

Osborne King & Megran 1

Dublin 760251 Cork 21371 Galway 65261

125