Tag: australia
I love AustLII (yes, that is the nerdiest sentence you’ll read this year). It is an invaluable depository of free Australian legal material which has saved many a time-poor law student from being forced to navigate some of the busier databases out there. But I didn’t always love it. In fact, I pretty much steered well clear of it’s text-heavy interface for the same reason that many lawyers and researchers still do – too many pages (and paaages…) of irrelevant results. The good news is that it really only takes one very simple step to start using AustLII effectively.
Sick of piles of results when searching AustLII? There's a better way!
The reason you get sooooo many results on AustLII – all v any
Anyone who uses Google or any of the major Australian legal databases will be familiar with the idea of adding search terms to limit results. The more search terms, the more focussed and less numerous the results. Multiple search terms means you want to look for results with “all of these words” right? Well, usually…
Apart from the fact that AustLII is a full text database (unlike Casebase, FirstPoint and LawCite), the reason this is the case is because most search engines assume that you would like to put the boolean operator “and” between your results. So, it would not be too silly to search for expert evidence and expect to turn up results that contain both expert and evidence somewhere in the document. Indeed, that’s how most search engines tend to work, it would seem. Most, but not all – the Powers That Be at AustLII decided that AustLII should be different. Maybe one of the PTB was a middle child.
The main search box on the front page of AustLII assumes you want to search for “any of these words“. So, if you put expert evidence into the search box, AustLII is going to give you any document that has the word expert or the word evidence in it somewhere. If you tried to “limit” your results by adding a further search term, say checklist, then your results would include any document that mentioned the term expert, or the term evidence, or the term checklist. It soon becomes easy to see why seemingly specific searches across AustLII return so many results that don’t appear to be on topic.
The second reason for the vast number of results is that AustLII has a a whole lot of info to search across – cases, legislation, articles and more. The search box on AustLII’s front page assumes that you want to search across them all. Ew. Any mention of expert, evidence or checklist across any Act, Regulation, judgment, article – that’s a whole lot of reading to do.
How to fix it in one easy step
It’s probably easy to see (now) how to get around the first of AustLII’s default settings discussed above – you can use the boolean operator and in between your search terms. For example, expert and evidence and checklist should limit your results compared to the original example.
As an easy workaround for both of the issues identified, use the Advanced Search as a rule – it’s a link just under the main search box and contains a wealth of untold, uh, options. Which are almost as good as riches when you’re searching for a case that you need yesterday. Here you can limit your results to cases (or articles etc) or go further to cases within a particular jurisdiction and/or court or tribunal. Used in conjunction with AustLII’s boolean operators (listed below), you should be able to find your case first time, every time.
AustLII search connectors
From the AustLII user guide
| Operator |
Meaning |
Example |
| and |
page contains both terms |
negligen* and defam* |
| or |
page contains either of two terms |
weapon or gun or firearm or pistol |
| not |
page contains 1st term but not 2nd |
trust not family |
| near |
1st term is within 50 words of 2nd |
disclos* near offence |
| w/n or /n/ |
1st term is within n words of 2nd |
court w/5 jurisdiction |
| pre/n |
1st term must precede 2nd term by less thann words |
contempt pre/3 court |
| ( ) |
Always use parentheses if search includes two types of connectors |
contempt near (radio or television) |
| n * |
Use * for truncation |
‘negligen*’ finds negligent, negligence, negligently etc |
| |
Regular plurals, and singulars, are searched automatically |
‘firearm’ = ‘firearms’ and vice-versa |
A few words of caution about using AustLII for legislation
You might note that this article is about finding cases on AustLII. I know many people use AustLII for legislation, but I don’t generally recommend it for this use. I’m not bagging out AustLII just for the hell of it – for a free resource it is world class and I use its case law and secondary materials constantly. I am hesitant because I am aware of a at least one instance where lawyers have relied upon out-of-date legislation on AustLII for an advice that was circulated externally; needless to say it didn’t reflect well on the people involved.
AustLII itself makes users aware that there is a lag between legislation being introduced and the legislation being uploaded to AustLII’s database. More importantly, how often existing legislation is updated to reflect amendments is anyone’s guess. The point to remember is that AustLII takes material from external sources (courts, parliament, etc) and process that material to appear in its own database. While this is usually fine for static information such as cases and articles, dynamic information such as ever-changing legislation should be sourced from the most authoritative place available.
In case you’re interested (and I won’t be offended if you’re not, I do realise this is quite a geeky thing to get hung up on!), I use Lawlex (which will send you out to the correct government site for each of the Australian jurisdictions) so that I don’t have to remember ComLaw for Commonwealth legislation, PCO for NSW legislation, etc.
In short:
- Use the Advanced Search in AustLII to avoid searching for any of your results across all cases, legislation, articles etc
- Use the authoritative source for legislation, not AustLII.
Do you have any other tips or tricks when it comes to using AustLII? Please share! Leave a comment, find me on twitter [@laurenaustinLRR] or share a link on delicious [legalresearchrescue].
March 1, 2009
I’m so excited and honoured that LRR has rated a mention on Sean Hocking’s Practice Source blog!
LRR’s 5 minutes of fame on Practice Source / House of Butter.
Legal Research Rescue and Linda Moore’s new blog KM Librarian were both featured as useful Australian (yay!) legal research/knowledge management blogs.
Another great Australian legal research/KM blog I follow is Jo Hicks’ Bibliophile – it’s great to see so much support and information for Australian lawyers, law librarians and legal researchers out there.
Thanks again Sean!
Don’t forget to follow Sean Hocking, Linda Moore, Jo Hicks and/or me on Twitter!
February 10, 2009
Just a quickie this week – have been swamped preparing and presenting training presentations on using Google for legal and business research…
Have you often spent hours flipping through text books and thought “I wish you could hit Control+F in real life!”…Well now you can kinda do that! Oh, you’ve never thought that? Right, it’s just me then. What a nerd. Ok, carry on.
I’ve started putting together a library on Google Books which includes texts on legal research (I’ll probably expand this to Australian legal texts). The beauty of Google Books is that even if the full text of the book isn’t available online, you can still search across the full text of the books. So you can find out whether a book contains your search terms, without having to read the book cover to cover, before you borrow or buy it.
Find it here: Legal Research Rescue – Library on Google Books. (I love the RSS feed feature – I’m off to find some Google Books library feeds to subscribe to!)
Some books are available in full text, some are limited view (only a part of the book is available), some are snippet view (so you’ll just see your search term in context) and some are bibliographical information only. If you can’t access the full text online, use Google Books in conjunction with your uni or organisation’s library catalogue, or the Libraries Australia catalogue, to find out where to get a hard copy from.
Let me know what you think and how you use Google Books – I’d love to hear!
Do you have any other ideas for using Google Books in the legal profession? Please share! Leave a comment, find me on twitter [@laurenaustinLRR] or share a link on delicious [legalresearchrescue].
January 28, 2009
Just a quickie this week – have been swamped preparing and presenting training presentations on using Google for legal and business research…
Have you often spent hours flipping through text books and thought “I wish you could hit Control+F in real life!”…Well now you can kinda do that! Oh, you’ve never thought that? Right, it’s just me then. What a nerd. Ok, carry on.
I’ve started putting together a library on Google Books which includes texts on legal research (I’ll probably expand this to Australian legal texts). The beauty of Google Books is that even if the full text of the book isn’t available online, you can still search across the full text of the books. So you can find out whether a book contains your search terms, without having to read the book cover to cover, before you borrow or buy it.
Find it here: Legal Research Rescue – Library on Google Books. (I love the RSS feed feature – I’m off to find some Google Books library feeds to subscribe to!)
Some books are available in full text, some are limited view (only a part of the book is available), some are snippet view (so you’ll just see your search term in context) and some are bibliographical information only. If you can’t access the full text online, use Google Books in conjunction with your uni or organisation’s library catalogue, or the Libraries Australia catalogue, to find out where to get a hard copy from.
Let me know what you think and how you use Google Books – I’d love to hear!
Do you have any other ideas for using Google Books in the legal profession? Please share! Leave a comment, find me on twitter [@laurenaustinLRR] or share a link on delicious [legalresearchrescue].
January 28, 2009
It’s one of those afternoons – you’ve sent one of those dreaded “capacity emails” – not because you actually want to work, but because the blank timesheet staring back at you is making you start to hyperventilate. The only task you’ve received in return is one where you need to provide copies of legislation for a hearing tomorrow. Easy right? You’re sure the SA has only given this to you because she felt sorry for your desperate-billable-unit-plea and wants her secretary to pick up her dry cleaning instead anyway. Surely you didn’t go to law school to hit Control-P from an AustLII page…
Before you get in a huff about your lack of “quality work”, be warned that the reliance on out-of-date legislation, even if only out-of-date by a day, has been known to cause lost cases, failed negotiations and embarrassment for the lawyers involved. Hit Control+P from AustLII at your peril: you might not need need to worry about billable units for much longer. Goodbye grad offer.
Go straight to the source for Australian legislation
In practice, working with current legislation is essential. Clients don’t have questions about legislative provisions that have remained unchanged for years and can be safely reprinted in each edition of your textbook without amendment. They tend to work in areas of constant policy development and legal challenges – the stuff of legislative amendments. Before you rush this task so you can tag along to some schmoozy client lunch meeting, remember that the ability to find what the law is at any given time – with confidence - is what you’re here for. This article will help you get it right and get it done in time for the lunch.
A note about “current” Acts
The idea of a “current” compilation (or reprint – they’re the same thing for our purposes) of an Act can be misleading and is the reason I refer instead to “most recent” compilations in this article . The “current” compilation is only ever the most recent compilation of an Act that the government has produced. Each compilation is just that – a compilation of all the amendments made to a particular Act up to and including the date of the compilation. These are only produced periodically. This is extremely important to note because it means that a “current” compilation is not necessarily the current state of the legislation as at the particular moment in time during which you are viewing the legislation.
Lost? Try this example: You’ve located the Act you’re interested in. The most recent compilation is dated last month. However, legislation which amends the Act has come into force earlier this week. In this situation (which happens often!), the truly current state of the legislation is the most recent compilation + the amendments that have since come into force. So even though the “current” compilation doesn’t show these most recent amendments, those amendments do in fact reflect the true state of the law as at “today”.
Before you ask – no, there is nowhere on the internet (or in print) where you can you find what a piece of leg says as at this minute/date. Surprising, huh? Perhaps not once you consider the sheer amount of legislation passed each day, and each and every amendment to other legislation that new legislation could contain. Maybe one day they’ll write the macro… until then, the closest you can get is to locate the most recent compilation and then to check that no amendments have been made since that compilation.
Go straight to the source – use Government sites for locating legislation
Before we look at actually retrieving the Acts, it’s important to note that Government sites are the most official online source for legislation. It is from these Government sites that you will find the authoritative PDF versions of the Acts (if they exist) that Counsel and the judiciary often insist upon. No matter what you’ve been taught in law school, it is, without doubt, best practice to get the information straight from the legislature’s mouth.
AustLII, for example, is a database that draws its information from the Government sites and collates it into its own database. Now, I’m not an AustLII hater by any stretch (its case law resources are world class), but I offer this piece of advice from experience – AustLII’s legislative databases are not kept as up to date as they should be. The truth is, amendments will be noted and/or incorporated into legislation on Government sites before they will be on AustLII. The delay might only lag by a matter of days (it has run into weeks or months in some instances) but it is not worth the risk. AustLII’s one-stop-shop for all Australian jurisdictions can be tempting, particularly compared to the alternative of remembering which Government sites to use for each jurisdiction. However, there is a way around that problem – Lawlex(with which I have no affiliation).
Lawlexis as a portal which links out to the most authoritative Government site for any given piece of legislation, without the user having to remember which website should be used for each jurisdiction. The ability to search and link to legislation is a free service. There are other paid services within the Lawlex platform, but in this instance I am focussing on free resources to assist in finding Commonwealth legislation (to go through each jurisdiction would make this already long article unbearable).
Locating the most recent compilation of an Act
This part’s easy – simply enter the Act name into the Lawlex search screen, locate the Act you are after and click. A tip for new players – don’t bother with the “full text” search – I’ve found it to be a bit hit and miss. Leave it on the “Title” search. For the purposes of this article, we’re simply looking at locating legislation. I’ll write about conducting legislative research in another article. Once you’re on Lawlex’s page for the Act you’re after, click on the title of the act – it is a link to the most recent compilation of that act direct from the official government site.
Checking whether an Act has been amended since the last consolidation
If you have a subscription to Lawlex “Premium Research” you will have access to a table on Lawlex’s page for the Act which details all amendments made since last consolidation. simply click on “Check for amendments since last consolidation” and you’ve covered your bases! If you don’t have a subscription, you will be able to see the link to the table below the red ”Premium Research” bar, but you won’t be able to access it. However, as this is not a tutorial on how to use Lawlex, I’m going to outline the freely available government resources to use for finding the same information.
Most lawyers are aware of the “notes” section at the end of each Act which specifies amendments made to the act up to and including the date of the consolidation. What the notes section will not include is a list of amendments made to the act since that consolidation. For Commonwealth legislation, you will need to locate the Act on Comlaw. Once you are on Comlaw’s page for that act, and assuming there have been amendments made to the act since it was last reprints, there will be a section titled “Unincorporated Amendments”.
Comlaw
In the example above, there were two acts which had amended the Bankruptcy Act 1966 (Cth) since it’s last consolidation (at the time of writing). This means that there are at least 2 amendments (possibly more) that are not contained in the most recent reprint. To view the amending Acts, simply click on one of the Act titles (eg Family Law Amendment (De Facto Financial Matters and Other Measures) Act). To see a list of all amendments, including those that have not yet been incorporated into a reprint, click on the “Principal + Amts 1973+” tab.
Comlaw
You will need to view each of the amending acts and search (Control+F on a PC, Apple+F for Macs) for the relevant amendment/s. Yes, it’s clunky. If you don’t like it, subscribe to Lawlex and let them compile the table for you.
In short:
- “Current” compilations of Acts are only current to the date of the consolidation – to ensure you’re working with up-to-date legislation, you must check for amendments made since the last consolidation.
- Use Lawlex, or at least the Government sites themselves, to locate legislation. AustLII’s legislation databases are not always up to date.
Do you have any other tips or tricks when it comes to locating Australian legislation? Please share! Leave a comment, find me on twitter [@laurenaustinLRR] or share a link on delicious [legalresearchrescue].
January 12, 2009
It’s one of those afternoons – you’ve sent one of those dreaded “capacity emails” – not because you actually want to work, but because the blank timesheet staring back at you is making you start to hyperventilate. The only task you’ve received in return is one where you need to provide copies of legislation for a hearing tomorrow. Easy right? You’re sure the SA has only given this to you because she felt sorry for your desperate-billable-unit-plea and wants her secretary to pick up her dry cleaning instead anyway. Surely you didn’t go to law school to hit Control-P from an AustLII page…
Before you get in a huff about your lack of “quality work”, be warned that the reliance on out-of-date legislation, even if only out-of-date by a day, has been known to cause lost cases, failed negotiations and embarrassment for the lawyers involved. Hit Control+P from AustLII at your peril: you might not need need to worry about billable units for much longer. Goodbye grad offer.
Go straight to the source for Australian legislation
In practice, working with current legislation is essential. Clients don’t have questions about legislative provisions that have remained unchanged for years and can be safely reprinted in each edition of your textbook without amendment. They tend to work in areas of constant policy development and legal challenges – the stuff of legislative amendments. Before you rush this task so you can tag along to some schmoozy client lunch meeting, remember that the ability to find what the law is at any given time – with confidence - is what you’re here for. This article will help you get it right and get it done in time for the lunch.
(more…)
January 12, 2009
