This document discusses the Openlaws project, which was co-funded by the European Union to study legal publishing systems and developments toward open access to law across Europe. It summarizes the project partners and methodology, which included producing case studies of the EU, UK, Netherlands, and Austria examining how each country provides free access to cases, legislation, and other legal information. It also analyzes requirements for stakeholders, identifies challenges around legal publishing, court systems, copyright, government data, human rights, and austerity economics, and concludes that solutions must address these six challenges with an interdisciplinary and international approach.

1. Openlaws.eu co-funded by the European Union
openlaws
country case study comparison
Professor Chris Marsden
Openlaws final conference
8 March 2016

2. co-funded by the European Union
Partners
• University of Amsterdam
• Salzburg University of Applied Sciences
• University of Sussex
• London School of Economics
• Alpenite srl
• BY WASS GmbH
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3. co-funded by the European Union
Mapping Open Law
Mapping of stakeholders,
• processes in legal information
production and consumption
• levels of regulatory instruments
• flows of content, rights, value.
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4. co-funded by the European Union
Production of country case studies
Examining legal publishing systems,
• social use of legal publishing
– audience and authorship models
• developments towards open access
– at micro-legal and macro-societal levels
Case studies:
institutions' free access to law,
– cases, legislation, regulatory instruments
– academic-expert analysis
– EU, UK, Netherlands, Austria
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5. co-funded by the European Union
Analysis of social, legal and market
requirements
Specifying main stakeholders/working practices
• consumption, creation, exploitation of legal data.
Mapping stakeholders’ strategies and operations
• key use cases: re-use/consumption of legal data
Maps data flows from legal/social/ market rules
• identifies potential flows of value in same context.
• E.g. transformation from private to public
• link between open and closed business models.
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6. co-funded by the European Union
Country case studies
• Case studies: EU, UK, Austria, Netherlands
• Review of existing information systems
– legal databases already in use
– produce a specification of requirements of the system
• Informed by key informant interviews
– form a working assumption,
– supported by literature review, insights of workshops.
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7. co-funded by the European Union
Soft Systems Methodology (SSM)
framework
• identify key components of the problem
• provide key specifications for system build
• combination of
– desk research,
– in-depth interviews,
– focus groups

8. co-funded by the European Union
Publication of draft case studies & final
comparative report
• dissemination and feedback
mechanisms
• both on-line
– (e.g. via open access websites, promotion
via social media and comment promotion)
• offline (via workshops and conferences)
• to create a close expert panel
– constructive critique for iterations of reports
• final version published conclusion of
project.

9. co-funded by the European Union
CAMPO
Adaptation of socio-legal framework
• Context
– Environment of community/organisation/market
• Actors
– Publishers, official document providers, users
• Methodology
– Including both open and closed access
• Practices
– Including user experience, litigation/regulation
• Outcomes
– Including market, regulatory reform

10. co-funded by the European Union
CAMPO Description Added value
Context Initial part of the case study outlines the overall
context in which the community
emerges/operates - type of legal informatics
technology Systematic catalogue of
cases/actors/issues
Actors What type of community is observed (primary
groups, market actors, user groups etc.)
Methods Investigation method: Details of procedures to
map the case study and the techniques used to
perform analysis (research design details +
actual methods)
Catalogue of
methodological
approaches to
investigate different
communities
Practices Dynamics of interaction: Illustration of dynamics
observed in each case study
Detailed insights on
interplay
Outcomes Summary of integration at EC level Conclusions, limits of
analysis for member
states

11. co-funded by the European Union
Comparative political economy
analysis
• Stakeholders,
• legal content, and
• services
• Environment in which open access models
flourish?
– institutions,
– policies and
– legal community
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12. co-funded by the European Union
Six cross-cutting challenges
• Legal publishing profession
– Socio-economics & path dependence
• Court system
– Judicial independence & digitisation
• Copyright
• Government data
• Human rights
• Austerity economics
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13. co-funded by the European Union
Challenge to legal publishing profession
• Not the first profession to be digitised
– Medical publishing similar structure
– Two giant multinational publishers resulting
• Professions wary of disintermediation
– Doctors and lawyers self-regulatory
• Prices for academic/professional comment
– Information given to publishers freely,
repackaged and resold with interest
– Amazing business model for publishers!
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14. co-funded by the European Union
Challenge to court system
• IT for courts: judgments word processed
– Paperless court rooms mean IT on tablets
• Court systems looking to reduce
costs/delays
– ODR/intermediation/adjudication
– Use of video/audio/digital forensic evidence
– Open access to law extension of reforms?
– Note UK court system e-judiciary €800m plan
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15. co-funded by the European Union
Challenge to copyright
• Judges’ copyrights – independent judiciary
– Bill of Rights 1689
• Government copyright on ‘own’ legislation
• Statute of Monopolies 1603!
• Martin Luther 1517 ‘Ninety-five theses’
– Note the previous printing revolution
• Copyleft movement very strong in Europe
– Prosumers innovating in areas where
governments and markets are not?
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16. co-funded by the European Union16

17. co-funded by the European Union
Challenge to government data
• Open Data revolution since mid-2000s
– Open Knowledge Foundation and Open Data
Institute very active in this area
• Open access to legislation on OKFN
scoreboard
– Netherlands and UK high scorers
– Austria RIS:app highly successful
• Next step: case law
– Example set by EU law EurLEX
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18. co-funded by the European Union
Challenge to basic human rights
• Article 6, European Convention on HR
• “Ignorance of the law is no excuse”
• Provision of legal education to general
public substituted by legal profession
– Proxy for public?
• Equality of arms aided by digital law?
– Continued need for experts to help plaintiffs
– Even if wills, property, basic contract can be
automated
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19. co-funded by the European Union
Challenge to austerity: economics
• Costs of public IT provision under-
estimated
• In this case, crowd-sourcing effective
• Very significant achievements by LIIs
• Openlaws builds on this success
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20. co-funded by the European Union
Conclusion: solutions must meet 6
challenges
• Interdisciplinary approach
– Challenge is legal, technical, social, economic
• International approach
– Lawyers’ work increasing across jurisdictions
• Interdependent approach
– Solution is not step change but across 6
areas
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21. co-funded by the European Union
Licensing & copyright regulatory EU
• Short term: promote release of legislation,
case law as open data
• Mid term:
– Harmonize copyright & database rights in
official documents across EU
– Strengthen PSI Directive to oblige public
access to caselaw, legislative record
• Study data protection issues linked LOD
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22. co-funded by the European Union
Contact
www.openlaws.eu
twitter.com/openlaws
facebook.com/openlaws.eu
name
Institution
e-mail