Tyrannical legal
publishers

Problem ...

Legal
publishers
hold the
market to
ransom.

Legal reference works

are

too

expensive!

This means ...

the law is

inaccessible

to most people.

(It also doesn’t help that these
same legal reference works
sometimes confuse lawyers too)

So what?

People like
this guy fall
through the
cracks.

Open access to the law
is a right

“Everyone is equal before the law and has the
right to equal protection and benefit of the
law.”
“Everyone has the right of access to any
information held by the state.”
“Everyone has the right to have any dispute
that can be resolved by the application of law
decided in a fair public hearing before a court
or, where appropriate, another independent
and impartial tribunal or forum.”

Charging exorbitant fees for primary
legal materials denies access to the law
to the vast majority of the population

Primary legal resources should be made
freely available and the tools to build
upon those materials

Declaration on Free
Access to Law
Public legal information from all countries and
international institutions is part of the common heritage
of humanity. Maximising access to this information
promotes justice and the rule of law;
Public legal information is digital common property and
should be accessible to all on a non-profit basis and free
of charge;
Independent non-profit organisations have the right to
publish public legal information and the government
bodies that create or control that information should
provide access to it so that it can be published.

Then again, legal reference works
don’t exactly grow on trees ...

Everyone

is an expert

in something ...

... including the law

So why not ...

Harness the wisdom of the crowd

How?

Does it work?

2,187,032 articles in
English (22/01/2008)

Accuracy comparable to
Britannica

Entirely community
driven

Why not do the same
thing for SA law?

Open Law Project

Professional community
involvement

Academic community
involvement

Collaborations
Federated approach to legal materials;
Smart partnerships;
Free access;
Open licensing ...

The end result ...

Open access to the law

for everyone

(not just the smart,
wealthy lawyers)

A solution:

The Open Law Project

openlaw.wikia.com

Paul Jacobson

paul.myplaxo.com
paul@openlawproject.org
083 444 8260
Photos of the Constitutional Court licensed under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 2.5 ZA license