Jersey Legal Information Board Newsletter: Autumn/Winter 2010
Introduction
Since the publication of the Summer newsletter we have made several changes to www.jerseylaw.je and over the coming weeks and months will be improving, increasing and upgrading our service for registered users. Here, briefly, are a few words on the main developments. If you would like more information or wish to express a concern, please contact us in JLIB, we will be very happy to discuss the programme with you, and maybe persuade you to join our user group!
Value added services for Registered Users
Free Access to Law Movement
The Jersey Legal Information Board (JLIB) has joined the Free Access to Law movement (FALM) (see the WorldLII website http://www.worldlii.org/worldlii/declaration/montreal_en.html for more details) which has certain consequences for the JLIB website and its users:
Jersey Law Reports and Unreported Judgments
As part of the worldwide movement for free access to legal information, JLIB is about to redress the balance between the Jersey Law Reports (JLR) at present in the open section of the website but which have a publishing cost associated with them, and the Unreported Judgments (UJ), currently in the restricted area. In order to participate fully in FALM and be consistent in the value added section of the website, we will be reversing access to the JLRs and UJs.
In January 2011 the JLRs will be placed in the restricted area of the website for registered users only. At the same time the majority of UJs will be transferred to the unrestricted area. The search facility for both is being standardised so that keywords match, and from January new UJs will have head notes so that users will see more quickly if it is the judgment they need. Some UJs will remain available only to registered users, namely all those pre-1997 and all Children’s Law cases. In 2011 Jersey’s laws and unreported judgments will be made available to a wider audience via www.worldlii.org and www.bailii.org. JLRs and Jersey Judgments will be cited on these websites and will be available on a pay per view basis for unregistered users.
Jersey Judgments
The Jersey Judgments series (JJ), which predates the Jersey Law Reports, is gradually being published on www.jerseylaw.je and we will shortly be loading 1975. Users will be notified of updates via the ‘What’s New’ page and the Daily Update for subscribers.
Legal Library
The initial project to get the most widely used publications onto the website is complete and at present we have more than 60 volumes online. Over the next 12 months we will monitor usage of the books and welcome feedback on this service, especially if there are other useful volumes that you think have been omitted so far.
Annotated Laws
The Annotations project is progressing well and has been singled out for praise by members of the profession as a feature that adds value by saving search time. For anyone who hasn’t yet made use of the Annotated Laws, reported cases are annotated against the individual articles of Laws with hyperlinks to the Jersey Law Reports and Jersey Judgments. This also includes a hyperlink direct to the specific reference within the judgment as a whole. Recent additions to the Annotated Laws are Chapters
5. Commerce and Employment, 18. Land and Housing, 20. Medical and Health, 22 Planning & Environment, 24. Public Finance, 25 Roads & Traffic,
Previously Annotated Laws are revised currently to the end of March 2010. If anyone thinks they have a case for annotating a law that doesn’t appear in the list, please let us know and we will review our programme.
Home Page Redesign
Having introduced one or two new features to the What’s New page in the last year, it was beginning to look cluttered and left us very little room for further development. We have also had requests from users asking for the What’s New items to be left on the page for longer than 14 days, so we, together with TCB who look after our site, designed a new Home page which makes more efficient use of the space and achieves a more modern look and feel. We welcome feedback when it goes live.
Changes to the security model
The new security model was implemented in August and we have reregistered all our regular users successfully. Larger companies will be pleased to know that there is now a ‘silent authentication’ option if users access Jersey Legal Information Board by logging on through their own company portal. If your company has a need for silent authentication please contact jlibwebmaster@gov.je .
Developing Citizens pages
We have a Focus Group looking at how best to provide legal advice and guidance for citizens and community and hope to reach some conclusions in the early months of 2011. The group has a varied membership including representatives of local legal firms, Citizens Advice Bureau, Reference section, Jersey Library and JLIB. We will be happy to hear from anyone else who has a view on how best to help the public get the most out of legal information.
Social Networking
We are acknowledging the increasing relevance of social networking in business, and adding to the way we communicate by adding Twitter and Linkedin links to the website. Twitter will provide up-to-date information and news about what is happening on www.jerseylaw.je and Linkedin will provide a forum for discussion in the future.
Advertise your events on www.jerseylaw.je
Creating a new, cleaner design for the Home page has enabled us to insert a section on events currently taking place in the legal community. If you have a course, conference or other event that you think would benefit from being more widely advertised - we have over 5,000 visits per week on our site - please contact jlibwebmaster@gov.je
User Group
We would like to hear from any users who would be prepared to be part of a user group for the website which will meet with JLIB and TCB at 6 weekly intervals to influence development, share ideas, information and concerns of fellow users. Please contact s.dufeu@gov.je if you would like to be in the user group.
On behalf of the Board and staff of the Jersey Legal Information Board may I take this opportunity to wish all users of www.jerseylaw.je Seasons Greetings and a very Happy New Year. We look forward to providing another year of the highest standard of service to the legal profession and the community.
I would be grateful if you would pass this letter on to your partners and/or fee earners as we would be delighted to receive any feedback from them on any aspect of the website. Please send any comments to s.dufeu@gov.je.
Yours sincerely
Sue du Feu
Programme Director
Jersey Legal Information Board