As internet users teeter on the edge of another new era, will the legal fraternity, technology-wise, step up to the plate in 2007? The new era is being described as that of mass collaboration and peer production.

The idea is simple. As internet users, we are becoming much more than passive recipients of the content published on websites. We are now able to contribute and participate directly. We can share our video clips with the online world (www.youtube.com); supply our own entries and changes to widely used online encyclopaedias (www.wikipedia.com); write software that is absorbed into systems that are used around the world (http://httpd.apache.org); and socialise and network electronically with kindred spirits (www.myspace.com and www.linkedin.com). Users are becoming providers. Recipients are now participants. We are finding radically new ways to communicate, to produce information and to interact with one another. And once again, lawyers are faced with the task of assessing what a bamboozling array of innovations may mean for the law. The Luddites will say it is all irrelevant. The nerds will claim it is transformational. The nerds are right.

Blogging is becoming an increasingly popular medium in the legal world for the opinionated, the idiosyncratic and many others, to edify or simply sound off in a very public manner (www.venables.co.uk/blogs.htm). Some legal blogs attract very little interest. Others roll along with a modest following. Still others are widely digested and genuinely influential — for example, the judicial and academic double-act at www.becker-posner-blog.com. While many are unimaginative, a few are punchy and even bold — for instance, the jazzy IP and IT blog at http://impact.freethcartwright.com. Another possibility is that a blog is taken out of the legal blogosphere altogether and becomes a conventional legal publication. So it has been with “Excited Utterances”, a splendid blog about knowledge management for lawyers. This blog has been mutated into a bi-monthly, subscription-based, electronic newsletter (www.practicesource.com).

At last, the official and authoritative online database of revised UK primary legislation is now available. It is called the Statute Law Database (SLD) and can be found at www.statutelaw.gov.uk. It was developed and is now maintained by the Statutory Publications Office, part of the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA). Longstanding advocates of free access to the law will be pleased that this system is available at no charge to users. The database holds more than 30,000 items of legislation, including UK Public General Acts, UK Local Acts, Acts of the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly, Statutory Instruments (including Welsh and Scottish), Statutory Rules of Northern Ireland and General Synod Measures. It contains primary legislation that was in force at February 1, 1991, and primary and secondary legislation that has been produced since then. Impressively, users can view amended legislation as it has changed over time; and can also see how legislation will be affected by legislation not yet in force. The SLD is a powerful illustration of the way in which public sector information can be reused. Conceived (before the web was invented) as a tool for government lawyers, the DCA recognises that this resource will also be invaluable for lawyers in private practice, academics, businesses and citizens.

The author lectures and consults internationally. He is IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice and Honorary Professor at Gresham College. Contact:susskind.com

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