Clive? Freedman Trustee at Bailii has quite rightly pulled us up on the fact that we haven’t published BAILII’s official statements on their current funding issues.
Here are the links and full text published on their website
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Why is BAILII appealing for funds?
http://www.bailii.org/bailii/appeal.html
BAILII’s operating costs have been running at approximately ?160,000 per annum, excluding replacement of computer hardware and other items which are not incurred annually. This figure will be reduced following an offer by The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies to reduce the quarterly overhead charge which it makes to BAILII for use of office space at the Institute and other services.
BAILII’s future is uncertain because of the lack of secure funding to meet these costs. A major funder has decided not to continue funding BAILII, and there is uncertainty about the continuing provision of funding by other major funders. If BAILII is to survive, it is essential that BAILII should obtain new sources of funding before its funds run out. We need much more support, partly to replace major sponsors who have indicated that they are not able, or may not be able, to continue funding, and partly to make up for the fact that in any event BAILII’s expenditure has been exceeding its income from sponsorship in recent years.
This appeal is mainly directed towards sets of Chambers and solicitors’ firms. Legal associations, academic institutions and publishers are also invited to contribute. We are confident we can reach our target provided that all those who use BAILII and who want to go on using BAILII respond to this urgent call for help.
For more detailed information regarding BAILII’s appeal, click here, or contact us at: [email protected].
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And also
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BAILII’S APPEAL FOR FUNDING
http://www.bailii.org/bailii/appealdetails.html
What is BAILII
BAILII was founded in 2000 as a non-profit making charitable trust, with the aim of making access to primary legal materials free to everyone. It has built and is operating a subscription-free interactive database of full text primary legal materials available on the internet. By utilising low-cost methods BAILII provides a growing amount of primary and secondary legal material which can be browsed by the user and/or located by using the BAILII search engine. The service is a major tool for legal research. The continued availability and development of the service is of major importance to the practice and teaching of law.
A helpful guide to BAILII is provided by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies: ials.sas.ac.uk/library/eservice/docs/BAILII_IALS_quick_guide.pdf
How is BAILII funded?
The major regular contributors to BAILII’s funding in recent years have been the following:
?? The Bar Council and the four Inns of Court??? ?30,000 per year
?? The Law Society Charity??? ?30,000 per year
?? The Society for Computers and Law??? ?20,000 per year
?? Her Majesty’s Courts Service??? approx ?35,000 per year
The following barristers’ Chambers have provided or agreed to provide over ?1,000 in the period 2008-2011:
?? 2 Garden Court??? ?2,500 per year, for 4 years beginning 2010
?? Landmark Chambers??? ?2,000 in 2011
?? Essex Court Chambers??? ?2,000 in 2011
?? 8 New Square??? ?1,219 in 2010
?? Fountain Court??? ?1,000 in 2010
?? Falcon Chambers??? ?1,000 in 2010
?? Matrix Chambers??? ?1,000 in 2009
The following firms of solicitors or international law firms have provided or agreed to provide over ?1,000 in the period 2008-2011:
?? Allen & Overy??? ?2,000 per year, for 3 years beginning 2010
?? Clifford Chance??? ?2,000 in 2010, and ?2,000 per year for 3 years beginning 2011
?? Herbert Smith??? ?2,000 in 2011
?? Bristows??? ?1,000 in 2011
?? Bird and Bird??? ?1,000 in 2011
?? WilmerHale??? ?1,000 in 2011
The following publishers have provided or agreed to provide substantial sponsorship since 2008:
?? Practical Law Company Ltd??? in excess of ?35,000 since 2008, primarily for the purpose of assisting BAILII with the purchase of new hardware; PLC have also offered to provide ?30,000 per year for 3 years commencing 2011
?? FL Memo??? ?4,000 in 2010
?? CrimeLine Training Ltd??? ?2,500 in 2011, and annually thereafter
Others who have provided or agreed to provide over ?1,000 in the period 2008-2011:
?? Chancery Bar Association??? ?2,000 in 2010
?? British and Irish Association of Law Librarians?? (BIALL)???
?5,000 per year, for 3 years beginning 2010
?? Faculty of Advocates??? ?1,000 in 2010
?? Law Society of Ireland??? Approx ?12,000 in 2008-2010
?? Adjudication Society??? ?1,500 in 2010
?? Society of Construction Law??? ?6,000 in 2008 to 2010
?? Institute of Advanced Legal Studies??? ?1,000 in 2011, and annually thereafter
?? Delia Venables??? ?1,000 in 2008
?? COMBAR??? ?1,000 in 2009
?? BILETA??? ?2,000 in 2008
?? Northern Ireland Bar Association??? ?1,219 in 2010
?? Criminal Law Solicitors Association??? ?1,000 in 2011
?? Law Society of Scotland??? ?2,000 in 2011
?? The Technology and Construction Solicitors??? Association??? ??2,500 in 2011
The names of substantial sponsors are listed on BAILII’s web site: www.bailii.org/support/sponsors.html
Why is BAILII appealing for funds?
BAILII’s operating costs have been running at approximately ?160,000 per annum, excluding replacement of computer hardware and other items which are not incurred annually. This figure will be reduced following an offer by The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies to reduce the quarterly overhead charge which it makes to BAILII for use of office space at the Institute and other services.
BAILII’s future is uncertain because of the lack of secure funding to meet these costs. The Society for Computers & Law is not currently in a position to provide funding to BAILII, but has stated that it remains supportive of BAILII and will review the situation if circumstances change. The Law Society Charity has provided funding to BAILII for 2011, but has indicated that it may be unable to continue to provide funding to BAILII thereafter; BAILII hopes that the Law Society may be able to continue to provide funding to BAILII in some other manner. The contract with Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service under which BAILII receives payments from Government sources continues until March 2012; BAILII hopes that it will be renewed but there is no guarantee that this will happen.
If BAILII is to survive, it is essential that BAILII should obtain new sources of funding before its funds run out. We need much more support, particularly if major sponsors are not able to continue funding. But in any event BAILII’s expenditure has been exceeding its income from sponsorship in recent years and this needs to be remedied as a matter of urgency.
This appeal is mainly directed towards sets of Chambers and solicitors’ firms. Legal associations, academic institutions and publishers are also invited to contribute. We are confident we can reach our target provided that all those who use BAILII and who want to go on using BAILII respond to this urgent call for help.
Who uses BAILII?
???? legal professionals such as barristers and solicitors.
???? judges
???? law students and academics
???? neighbourhood law centres, pro bono units, and citizens’ advice bureaux
???? the general public
???? lawyers, students and academics in other jurisdictions, and in particular those in developing countries who do not have access to commercial databases.
BAILII is among the top 160,000 web sites in the world (www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bailii.org) and the top 10,000 in the United Kingdom. We have approximately 40,000 unique visitors each week, viewing approximately 800,000 pages each week. Over 2,000 web sites display hypertext links to BAILII.
Do solicitors use BAILII?
BAILII is used by solicitors within the large firms, but perhaps not as extensively as commercial databases. For example, an average of 183 pages per week were accessed by one City firm (excluding accesses from home computers) during a 13 week period in 2010. It is known that other solicitors’ firms make substantially greater use of BAILII than this.
BAILII is of enormous benefit to small firms which cannot afford access to commercial databases.
Here are some comments by solicitors:
???? John Wright, Bird & Bird: “For my part I use BAILII as my first port of call for accessing recent cases. Decisions are reported very quickly, the search engine is reliable and accurate and it is a most valuable part of my knowledge management.”
???? Nicholas Gould, Fenwick Elliott: “I find the service exceptionally useful, easy to follow and a fantastic source of up to date case law.”
???? Library Manager of a large City firm: “BAILII is certainly very popular with the Library and with our litigation lawyers.”
???? Head of Internal Online Resources at a large City firm: “We use Bailii on a daily basis and it is an enormously useful tool for legal research.”
???? Barjinder Sahota of Sahota Solicitors: “Your site is a lifesaver for small firms like mine as other legal sources are so expensive unless you spend days in a library away from the desk.” (Sahota Solicitors make regular donations to BAILII.)
Do barristers use BAILII?
BAILII is used extensively by barristers. It is very easy to access from within Chambers, from home, from Court, or when travelling, as it requires no user-name and password. Barristers often know which case they are looking for, and can find it very quickly on BAILII.
As an example, in October 2010 users in one set of Chambers looked at 1,923 html pages on BAILII (approximately 435 per week). This includes the Home page, Search form pages, and judgments. For the period 17 January to 25 November 2011 the figure was 22,325 pages, or approximately 500 per week.
Does BAILII have any advantages over commercial databases?
1.??? Judgments are often available more quickly on BAILII, usually within hours of the judgment being received by BAILII by email from the judge or court.
2. The screen display is easy to read.
3.??? Footnotes are often displayed better in HTML versions on BAILII, with internal hypertext links. Tables of contents are often converted to HTML with internal hypertext links.
4.??? BAILII can be accessed at any time from any computer, with no user-name or password required. It can also be accessed from many mobile devices.
5.??? Because BAILII requires no user-name or password, web pages, articles, submissions, lecture notes and other documents can be hypertext linked directly to judgments on BAILII. Hypertext links can be made directly to individual paragraphs. Recent comments on the value of BAILII to bloggers were as follows:
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“I’d like to endorse the proposition that we are all hugely in debt to BAILII, which provides a service of unparalleled excellence to many of us on the blogosphere and our readers. Thanks, BAILII – and keep up the good work.”
“Agreed. BAILII is superb.” (See www.legalweek.com/legal-week/analysis/1799966/ideas-law-geek-inherit)
Examples of direct access to BAILII:
the database of cases relating to construction adjudication on the Adjudication Society website: www.adjudication.org/cases-england-wales-scotland
www.out-law.com, from Pinsent Masons LLP: eg www.out-law.com/page-3180
the Lexology website, which provides free access to articles on legal subjects: eg www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=2d7fd7cb-b1a6-4c0f-abb8-437b78e1b821.
6.??? RTF versions of judgments as supplied by the courts are available on BAILII.
Does BAILII have any disadvantages over commercial databases?
1.??? BAILII does not have as many judgments as commercial databases such as Lexis? or Westlaw?. It has a number of the most important judgments before 1996-2000, but most of its cases are from the period since then. BAILII has no funds with which to acquire access to judgments for which copyright is claimed.
2.??? BAILII’s functionality is in some ways less sophisticated than the functionality available from commercial databases.
What is available on BAILII?
As of March 2011, the following were available on BAILII (for up-to-date data, see www.bailii.org/bailii/summary-cases.html):
???? Decisions of the House of Lords and the Supreme Court since 1997
???? Most decisions of the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal since 1997, and many decisions of the Criminal Division since that date
???? Over 12,000 decisions of the Queen’s Bench Division (including the Administrative Court and the Commercial Court) and the Chancery Division since 1999
???? Decisions of tribunals, including over 13,000 employment cases, and over 3,000 tax cases
???? Decisions of the courts of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland
???? Over 2,500 of the most important decisions on the law of contract, tort, tax, trusts, property, employment, and other core academic law subjects; these include 527 House of Lords decisions and 538 Court of Appeal decisions
???? 7,831 decisions of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, since 1809
???? 13,258 decisions of the European Court of Justice, since 1954
???? 14,880 decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, since 1960
???? Statutes and statutory instruments
???? Reports and consultation or working papers published by the Law Commission for England and Wales, the Scottish Law Commission, the NI Office of Law Reform, the NI Law Reform Advisory Committee, and the Irish Law Reform Commission
???? Several legal textbooks and two legal journals.
BAILII’s database includes over 290,000 searchable documents, in a 33 gigabyte database.
What older judgments are available on BAILII?
The Openlaw Project was made possible by a grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England. Over 2,500 of the most important decisions on the law of contract, tort, tax, trusts, property, employment, and other core academic law subjects were scanned and added to BAILII’s database. Academics were consulted in order to produce the lists of cases.
BAILII has recently scanned and converted over 6,900 historic Privy Council judgments. Many of these are unreported, and Commonwealth countries are anxious to have access to them – especially former colonies in Africa. BAILII helped to save this archive from destruction when the former home of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Downing Street was closed last year.
As a result of a collaborative effort with the legal publisher Justis, the English Reports 1220-1873 are available at CommonLII.
What else is available on BAILII?
BAILII has created databases with the cooperation of the Law Commission, the Scottish Law Commission, the NI Office of Law Reform, the NI Law Reform Advisory Committee, and the Irish Law Reform Commission. All the reports, working papers and consultation papers ever published by the Law Commission, for instance, are now accessible on the site free of charge.
Several legal textbooks and two journals are now available on BAILII.
Are similar databases available in other jurisdictions?
BAILII is part of an international community of Legal Information Institutes (LIIs). Similar web sites exist for Australia, Canada, South Africa and many other jurisdictions. BAILII actively participates in achieving the common goals of this community: to promote and support free access to public legal information throughout the world (principally via the Internet); to cooperate with one another in order to achieve these goals, and, in particular, to assist organisations in developing countries to achieve them, since we recognise the reciprocal advantages that everyone obtains from access to each other’s law; and to help each other and to support, within our means, other organisations that share these goals.
LawCite is a subscription-free automatically generated international legal case and journal article citator. It can be used to locate judgments (mainly from common law jurisdictions), and to see how these have been subsequently dealt with and commented upon or to see where journal articles have been cited. Over 3.5 million cases, law reform documents and articles have been indexed. LawCite is being built as part of a three year project that is funded by the Australian Research Council in co-operation with a number of Australian courts and other commercial and non-commercial organisations. It is being developed at AustLII in collaboration with other members of the Free Access to Law Movement – in particular BAILII, AustLII (the Australasian Legal Information Institute), CanLII (the Canadian Legal Information Institute), PacLII (the Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute), HKLII (the Hong Kong Legal Information Institute), SafLII (South Africa materials), NZLII (New Zealand) and CYLAW (Cyprus), and a single site which tries to include all the materials offered from those above, WorldLII.
There is also a website for British Commonwealth countries at CommonLII.
How is BAILII staffed?
BAILII is staffed by two full-time and one part-time members of staff:
Joe Ury – Executive Director
Roger Burton West – System Adminstrator/Developer
Viky Martzoukou – part-time Project Officer.
How to donate:
Information on how to make donations is available here. Those who are willing to make substantial donations are asked to contact BAILII by email.
Further information:
Contacts: For more information, contact [email protected]
or: Joe Ury, Executive Director: [email protected] Clive Freedman, Trustee: [email protected]
