Aside from wanting to conquer the world before he is thirty-something, the Attorney-General, Michael Lavarch, has something else in common with Napoleon.
He wants to simplify the law and have it available to all in a pocket-book.
Well, it may have to be a notebook computer, but the principle is the same.
Last week, the Access to Justice report called for greater access to legislation, simpler legislation and cheaper legislation. Much of that is in hand at the Commonwealth level.
Earlier this month tenders were sought for a program to make the laws of the Commonwealth available cheaply to the public on computer. The project will be done in stages. The first stage is to make the Attorney-General’s Department’s present electronic law database, called SCALE, available at all AGPS bookshops by July 1. And it will be free. At least to browse. It you want print-outs you will pay.
SCALE (scales of justice, geddit) is already available to public subscribers with computers and modems through Info-One (02 9595127). It contains all Federal, ACT and several states’ statutes and case law. But it is expensive and hellishly hard to use. It is, however, marginally more convenient and cheaper than buying all the paper versions or dashing into a library. And it is easier to keyword search a huge database than use paper indexes. The main trouble is you cannot point and click. Instead you type in “”q” and “”sq” and “”srl” and if you are one character out it responds with ERROR – macro does not exist. In other words, it requires key-by-key precision that only computer nerds can work.
Stage 2 will end all this. The tender requires Mac and Windows point-and-click software. By the beginning of 1995 the new Mac and Windows format will be available on the computers at AGPS bookshops. People will be able to browse free and get print-outs or laws put on floppy disc for a small fee. Later next year, subscribers will be able to access the law from Mac and Windows-based computers from home, business or schools on a sliding scale of fees, which should be cheaper than paper versions. The text will be formatted just like the present printed version.
A straight-text version will be available for the sight-impaired who can download into their own computers and text-reading software.
Stage 2 will be a great breakthrough for lawyers. The software will enable snapshotting: that is, you will be able to get a version of the, say, Broadcasting Act as at July 6, 1994. Lawyers have to deal with the law as at the date of the incident being litigated. The new system will also provide consolidated updates. No more pasting up dozens of amendments, wondering if you have missed any.
Business will benefit, too. Under the Lavarch plan all regulations (delegated legislation) will go on to the database’s Legislative Instruments Register from January 1, next year (subject to parliamentary approval). The radical thing is that the regulations will not be enforceable law unless they are electronically available on the register.
For too long businesses have had to check with lawyers or the AGPS to find up-to-date regulations on the vast host of matters that governments regulate these now. Under the register it will be available electronically.
As the database is being prepared it should reveal the unnecessary, the duplicated and convoluted.
Later, the laws will be available on CD-ROM with, say, six monthly updates, once again at a lower cost than paper. Perhaps as little as an audio CD plus software cost.
The benefits are obvious:
Cheaper and more environmentally friendly than paper.
Updated instantaneously. If it is not there it is not law.
AGPS does not have to carry huge stocks of paper versions which can go out of date or require people to stick in amendments.
Keyword searching across many Acts of Parliament _ for example “”bankruptcy” might appear in six or seven laws other than the Bankruptcy Act, or “environment” might appear in dozens of laws.
It is accessible to anyone with computer and modem from virtually anywhere and for those without at AGPS bookshops throughout Australia. No more “”We’ll have to order it from Canberra.”
As to costs, Attorney-General’s recognises a community-service obligation and has separately budgeted for all the consolidation of statutes and placing it in electronic form. The only user-pays element will be for printouts, disks, CDs and remote connection time.
Later stages will include case law, state and territory statute and case law, legal journals and various private departmental documents.
For a long time, SCALE sat still. It remained hard to use, while Info-One made searching state legislation easier.
But now the Commonwealth is moving ahead.
This is just wishful thinking in a field where petty jealousy will always be put before common-sense, but would it be possible for all states, territories and the Commonwealth to co-operation to have one united database of all statute and case law in Australia.
Education, commercial efficiency and access-to-justice motives would suggest so.
Further, Attorney-General’s should think seriously of selling, at cost, electronic access to its library service when it goes on line.
If these things were done, library costs of the profession would fall and might be passed on to consumers, which was one of the main motives of the Access to Justice report.