Sydney company Eurofield Information Services has decided that it’s time to be jolly nice to Aus law students and academics
They’ve just sent out a press release saying that their?? FREE (their caps not ours)? LawGenius download helps cash-strapped law and business students swap Notes and excel!
Here’s the press release in full..
An online download initiative called LawGenius is set to change the way students and academics use and teach the Law, by providing them with statutes that can cost them hundreds of dollars in hard copy format, as a free download.
Not only could these free downloads ? available from www.lawgenius.net ? render many law books obsolete, the creators also hope they will inspire collaborative learning by providing students and academics an unprecedented ability to search the statutes, and Collaborate in Context? with LawGenius Notes annotations.
The creator of LawGenius, Alfred Papallo says the powerful award winning eComPress technology developed by Eurofield Information Solutions and incorporated into LawGenius, allows the creation and seamless electronic transfer of LawGenius Notes in context.
?LawGenius Notes can be text the user keys in, files, pictures, email and web addresses, and the Notes only know where they are attached and do not affect the content in any way. Students using LawGenius can swap ideas and any other relevant information as Notes attached to key legislative passages via e-mail with classmates and lecturers ? who can easily incorporate those Notes into their own copy in the same context. Plus, when they download a new release of their LawGenius publications, the Notes automatically transcribe in context to the new publication.?
Alfred hopes that LawGenius will prove an invaluable resource for assignments and exam revision ? particularly if students can interact with their lecturers and professors using LawGenius Notes.
?It also offers exciting opportunities for far-flung fellow academics to collaborate on papers ? swapping and incorporating annotations and commentaries on key passages of legislation regardless of where they?re based, and without ever compromising the content.?
Breaking open a closed market
Alfred Papallo says because there are only a few law publishers, hard copies of statutes such as Corporations Law, Income Tax Law and Family Law can cost anywhere from $50 to $300, even with student discounts.
?Free online references libraries of statutes ? such as Austlii and ComLaw are excellent web based services ? but they cannot be downloaded with their indexed search, much less allow users to Collaborate in Context? the way LawGenius can.
Establishing a new standard for law research
Eurofield Information Solutions is offering to license LawGenius free to all students and academics with an .edu.au email address. The company also plans to release a commercially licensed version for legal and accounting professionals with ten regular updates per annum. Professional LawGenius publications will also have an automatic inbuilt mechanism to check that the copy being used is the latest release.
?We hope that LawGenius ? and the eComPress technology that powers it ? will become the new industry standard for publishing legal statutes throughout academia and education, and among legal and accounting professionals.
?Professional lawyers and accountants used to have permanent printed libraries in their practices that they could annotate and access at their own convenience. They can now recover those same benefits with a powerful portable electronic library?.
?We believe legal and accounting professionals need to regain their independence. LawGenius will enable them to compile a comprehensive library that is accessible 24/7 off-line or on their LAN server ? with their annotations from all sources available in one place. Librarians can also assist them by compiling information relevant to a particular client or matter, and sending it to the practitioner for inclusion in context in their copy. ?
Federal and New South Wales legislation are now available for students and academics
LawGenius currently offers eight federal legislative kits (Corporations Law, Income Tax Law, Fair Work Law, Competition and Consumer Law, Communications and Media Law, Criminal Law, Family Law and Migration Law); and seven kits covering NSW law (NSW Consumer Affairs Law, NSW Conveyancing Law, NSW Court Law, NSW Criminal Law, NSW Local Government Law, NSW Motor Traffic Law, NSW Occupational Health and Safety Law).
A NSW Duty & Taxation Law kit will be available soon, along with similar suites of publications for other jurisdictions.??
