Shocking report via legal futures that reflects everything else going on in the UK at the moment.
As the report alludes, BAILII actually knew what they were doing and it was always going to be a disaster pulling them out of the equation
That said the report makes it blindingly obvious that under resourced courts neither have the staff nor the skill base to create a simple funnel to ensure that content is uploaded to the TNA Portal.
It’s publishing 101 stuff but god forbid it be recognized that librarians and publishers knew how to do this
The National Archives (TNA), which took over as the immediate online publisher of senior court judgments last year, failed to publish judgments in over a quarter of cases in its first three months of operation, a report has found.
Paul Magrath, head of product development and online content at the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales (ICLR), said it was “alarming” that so many listed cases “just disappear”.
Under the new system introduced in April, courts are required to send cases to TNA by using the TNA portal, rather than sending them by email to a range of publishers, such as BAILII (the British and Irish Legal Information Institute), the ICLR and commercial legal publishers.
Researchers from ICLR logged all of the cases listed for judgment in the daily cause list for May to July 2022 and checked TNA to see how many went on to be published, and how quickly.
In May, 69% of cases (121) were published, all but three of them on the day of delivery from the courts. However, 51 were not published at all.
The following month, the proportion of judgments published fell to 57%, while the number of late publications shot up to 30. The rate recovered slightly in July, to 60%, but 39 were published late.
Researchers said the main reason why TNA had struggled to meet its target of publishing all handed down judgments on the day of delivery was because they were “not all being sent” by the courts, which have to use the TNA portal.
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A quarter of listed cases not published by National Archives
