2000

A Page on the Web, published in the Solicitors Journal, April 2000

There is a plethora of ‘umbrella’ websites aiming to service the general public seeking legal advice. Typically the commercial sites include a directory of solicitors and some basic information on legal rights. Solicitors pay to be listed in the hope that they will attract new clients. However, there is a wide variation in approach, in the comprehensiveness and detail of the databases and the quality of the advice provided.

There is not much in these sites which is not now provided by public service sites. The recently launched Just Ask! site of the Community Legal Service provides a quality-assured service with detailed information about the 15,000 firms and organisations listed (see picture), including email and web links. Though its Advice Search feature provides useful links to organisations meeting its Quality Mark standard, advice is not provided on its pages. In general the NACAB Adviceguide site will be a good complementary starting point for immediate help.

Below are listed some of these ‘umbrella’ advice sites (there must be many more in development) with a brief description of the databases and advice on offer and, where available, a quote taken from the site itself.

Adviceguide
From the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, this site gives basic but clear advice and information on a wide range of personal rights.

Just Ask!
This is the website of the Community Legal Service. It includes a directory of over 15,000 solicitors, advice agencies and information providers searchable by specialism. Advice Search enables you to search across 300+ selected websites (meeting certain quality criteria) for information and advice on legal issues from Actions against the Police to Welfare Benefits.

Law on the Web
Includes a directory of ‘web-friendly’ legal specialists – both solicitors and barristers – searchable by region, specialism or name. Also includes reasonably detailed advice pages.
‘A free legal information website for individuals devised, built and maintained by a solicitor formerly in private practice in the UK.’

Law2u
Includes a database of lawyers searchable by specialism etc, plus databases of services for lawyers. There are no information pages.
‘The Law2u internet database provides extensive search criteria to facilitate the selection of a suitable firm of solicitors meeting your specific requirements. … assisting the general public and companies as well as connecting members of the legal profession.’

Law4Today
Includes a directory of lawyers browsable by specialism and town, with web and email links. There are detailed information pages covering standard legal situations. Other ‘zones’ include a Professional zone for lawyers; a Business zone covering legal issues relating to Business, a Students zone, a Buy (shopping) zone and Punch.
‘Law4today.com is a partnership of journalists, lawyers and publishers whose aim is to fill the increasing gap between understanding and applying your legal rights and the ability to access and pay for legal services.’

LawFree
This is a service from Lawyers Online (the URL takes you to their home page). Users fill in a form with their legal problem and the service provides free initial legal advice by return.

LawPage
Contains a database of solicitors searchable by name, address or specialism; also a database of ‘civic amenities’ addresses, including CABs, coroners, courts, police stations and prisons. There are no information pages, though there is a good set of links.
‘An easy to use service aimed at helping potential clients find your firm.’

LawRights
Provides reasonably detailed information on legal problems in a question and answer format. Provides a ‘document centre’ which enables a number of documents to be completed by the user online.
‘LawRights was formed to provide free, concise and independent legal information to both individuals and companies … since expanded to offer … the first complete online personalised document service in this jurisdiction.’

Legalhelp
[Offline at time of review]

LegalWeb2000
Currently in a pre-release version, this site includes a database of solicitors searchable by name and address. There are no information pages. There are ads for law booksellers and forms suppliers and the promise of a recruitment for (student jobseekers) to post their CVs.
‘Legalweb 2000.com is a legal website which provides daily legal news and information as well as a extremely powerful database and directory of all UK solicitors which can be accessed by the general public searching for a legal practice.’

local-legal
Includes a database of solicitors searchable by name, location or specialism. There is cursory information on some standard legal problems.
‘Local-legal.co.uk is aimed at assisting the general public to find a solicitor specialising in a particular area of law, and in a location convenient to his or her needs.’

A Page on the Web, published in the Solicitors Journal, March 2000

The week that saw the stock market flotation of a ridiculously overvalued ‘dot com’ also saw the launch of a minimally funded ‘dot org’ whose value to the UK lawyer is likely to be immense. BAILII, the British and Irish Legal Information Institute Pilot Service at www.bailii.org, is the first web site to provide free access to case law and legislation from numerous British and Irish courts and legislatures, with a single search engine and uniform data formats. The site currently includes 14 databases from 5 jurisdictions (UK, England & Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland), comprising over 400 megabytes of legal materials, and will be expanded significantly over the coming months.

BAILII has been developed by the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) at www.austlii.edu.au, in cooperation with steering committees in Britain and in Ireland. AustLII is a free access Australasian site which is operated jointly by the Law Faculties of the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW). BAILII demonstrates the use of AustLII’s software with British and Irish data and AustLII’s commitment to free access to the law.

Following a ‘Free the Law’ meeting in November 1999, sponsored jointly by the Society for Computers & Law (SCL), the Information Technology and the Courts Committee (ITAC), the British and Irish Legal Education and Technology Association (BILETA), the British & Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) and the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS), the SCL convened a UK Steering Group comprising Lord Saville, Lord Justice Brooke, Richard Susskind, Carol Tullo (Controller, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office and Queen’s Printer), Amanda Finlay (Lord Chancellor’s Department) and Laurence West-Knights, barrister. The UK Steering Group has succeeded in obtaining funding commitments from sponsors, and in obtaining permissions for the use of UK data in a free access service. Details of the Steering Group’s work are on Laurie West-Knights’ UKILELI pages at www.LawOnLine.cc/ukileli.htm. ‘UKILELI’ is the working title of the UK Steering Group’s project.

During January and February 2000 AustLII developed the BAILII Pilot Service, at its own initiative and at its own expense but with support and encouragement from Britain and Ireland. BAILII is not an official site of either the British or Irish parties working toward free access to law, but is seen as a good model that they may choose to adopt.

BAILII already includes 14 databases from 5 jurisdictions, which may be searched singly or jointly:

• United Kingdom House of Lords Decisions
• United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal Decisions
• United Kingdom Social Security and Child Support Commissioners’ Decisions
• Court of Appeal of England and Wales Decisions
• High Court of England and Wales Decisions
• Scottish Court of Sessions Decisions
• Scottish High Court Decisions
• Scottish Sheriff Court Decisions
• Northern Ireland Court of Appeal Decisions
• Northern Ireland High Court Decisions
• Northern Ireland Legislation
• Irish Supreme Court Decisions
• Irish High Court Decisions
• Irish Legislation

Databases which will be added during April include:

• UK Legislation
• UK Statutory Instruments
• Scottish Legislation
• Scottish Statutory Instruments
• Irish Statutory Instruments

Little can be said about the service which is not readily apparent from a visit to the site. It is simple in presentation and effective in delivering ‘what it says on the tin’. As Professor Graham Greenleaf of AustLII commented at the November 1999 meeting:

— one of the techniques we have had for trying to avoid mistakes is not to be over-complicated and not to use the most advanced whiz-bang technology that is out there. We have stuck to plain HTML pages, no frames, no fancy graphics, no difficulties in download times and the like, no PDF, just plain old HTML, so as to maximise retrieval speeds and maximise the range of users with all sorts of different browsers and equipment quality out there that can use the system.

As a simple test of the system and a follow up to last month’s Page, I searched for the phrase ‘family proceedings rules’. Given that UK statutory instruments are not yet loaded, I expected few (if any) results. In the event only one instance was found – a reference in the 1999 House of Lords decision Piglowska v Piglowski. However, a better test of the efficacy of the system was a search for ‘family proceedings’ which found 9 documents across the UK and Irish databases. By April 2000 when recent UK legislation has been loaded results will be impressive.

A Page on the Web, published in the Solicitors Journal, February 2000

July last year we looked at how to find things on the web – ie using search engines. This included some detail on how to refine searches using Boolean operators and other advanced techniques. Now librarians, information professionals and a minority of other readers may be comfortable with this, but research shows that the vast majority of web users simply type a few words into a search box and see what happens. It seems sensible therefore to concentrate on two key factors determining the relevance of your search results: choosing the ‘right’ search engine and choosing search terms carefully.

Choosing a search engine

Most search engines will return results for pages that contain any of your search terms, ranking results by weighting some or all of the following:

• the number of search terms matched
• the frequency of occurrence of the terms
• the part of the page in which the terms are found (ie title, body text, keywords etc)
• the proximity of the terms
• the order in which you entered the terms

Though these search engines will return millions of hits, the most relevant sites will generally be contained on the first half-dozen pages. Even so, there will be a number of results on those first pages which (for one reason or another) are not relevant and many relevant results which are buried much deeper down the list and likely never to be seen. Also the ranking applied may at best seem haphazard.

Google

Google, a relatively new search engine, uses an entirely different approach and in my view stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Google returns results for pages that contain all your search terms, ranking pages according to their popularity (according to how many other pages link to them) and according to the proximity of your search terms. Google also exerpts the text that matches your query.

Google’s page ranking method deserves further explanation. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. Google assesses a page’s importance by the votes it receives and also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves important weigh more heavily and help to make other pages important.

Google’s page ranking system is therefore a general indicator of importance and does not depend on a specific query. Rather, it is a characteristic of a page itself based on data from the web that Google analyzes. It precludes human interference – so no one can ‘purchase’ a higher rank or commercially alter results.

Choosing your search terms

It is of course very difficult to generalise about the use of search terms, but it is worth bearing in mind always that a web search engine has indexed the whole of the web and you should therefore be aiming as much to screen out or demote the irrelevant or low value sites as to find the relevant.

A few pointers therefore for selecting terms for ‘legal’ searches:

• Use terms that lawyers rather than laymen would use, eg conveyance rather than purchase and sale. This will screen out for example many ‘law for the layman’ sites.
• As an extension of the above, use titles to Acts, SIs etc which are bound to be referred to. This will screen out or demote for example low value information pages on law firm ‘brochure’ sites.
• If you are researching local law, include UK or England or Scotland as appropriate as a search word. This will demote sites concerned with overseas jurisdictions, including of course US sites, but also Australian and Commonwealth sites whose terminology is more similar.

A worked example

I am looking for information on the new rules relating to ancillary relief in matrimonial proceedings – both the new rules themselves and related commentary.

I decide to use the search words Family Proceedings Rules 1991 as I know this is the title of the governing instrument which will have been amended. By using these words, I will also screen out low value sites.

Typing these words in to the AltaVista search engine produces 7,425,420 results (ie where one or more of these words occur). The top half-dozen pages do appear to include many relevant sites, but these are spoilt by a large number of irrelevant or low value results and the ranking of the results seems haphazard.

To get a better result in AltaVista I specify that all words must occur – by typing +Family +Proceedings +Rules +1991. This of course produces far fewer hits (1,886) and the first few pages are mostly relevant sites though the listing is still flawed. I then try the phrase “Family Proceedings Rules 1991″. This produces 31 results, but by being so precise I may well have excluded some relevant sites. So finally I try an advanced search using the NEAR operator between each word. This produces surprisingly few hits (41). All are highly relevant though in apparently random order.

Now using Google I type in the words Family Proceedings Rules 1991. This produces 28,900 hits. On the first few pages all hits are highly relevant and their ranking seems very reasonable. The first non-relevant site is at position 28 and this because Florida appears to have Family Law Rules of Procedure dated (or numbered?) 1991.

Conclusion: I have achieved a far better result with my first try with Google than I have with several, more complex, searches using AltaVista. Try it!

A Page on the Web, published in the Solicitors Journal, January 2000

Around 800 law firms in England and Wales now have websites and with probably about the same number planning to go online in the next year or so, website design is an increasingly important consideration in the marketing and delivery of your firm’s services.

It should not need pointing out that the web is a completely different medium from print (and other media) and thus demands adherence to a new set of design rules, many of which it has to be said are still being figured out.

Whether or not you are directly involved in the construction of your firm’s website, contributing your views as a web user will be important in developing a presence which does not just attract but retains users and hence delivers real business benefits. Typically most attention is addressed at the former: large marketing and advertising budgets are employed to design striking sites and generate interest in them, only for the sites to fail to retain users through poor usability.

The web is essentially a user-driven experience and thus the usability of your site is of prime importance. Web users are impatient: they want immediate gratification – to get something done quickly in the way they are used to. They are not prepared to spend time learning new methods, nor will they tolerate delays, distractions or impediments to their progress. If a site does not provide a high level of immediate satisfaction, they leave, often never to return and – worse still – usually fall into the arms of your competitors.

This article looks at some common examples of bad design practice. Avoid these and you’ll be more than half-way to a successful website.

For a development of these design arguments, see Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox column at www.useit.com/alertbox/ and his recently published Designing Web Usability (New Riders, 1999).

Poor response times

Ideally users want sub-second response times. This is rarely achievable for the average user with a 56K modem, except for very short text pages or those already cached by the user. Research has shown that users are prepared to tolerate a delay of up to 10 seconds while a page loads; any more and they backtrack or leave the site. Most commonly poor response times result from pages requesting many or large graphics (which may be hundreds of times the size of a corresponding text file).

Breaking the Back button

The Back button is the lifeline of the web user. It is the second most used navigation feature (after clicking on hypertext links). It gives users the security of knowing they can always retrace their steps or escape when the need arises. Interfering with the utility of the Back button angers users, imparting a hostile message by taking over their machine. The two most common instances are:

• Opening a new browser window – Usually employed on the theory that it will keep the user on the site. Users often don’t realise a new window has opened, are confused that the Back button is greyed out and resent the intrusion: all bad for you.
• An immediate redirect to another page – On loading a page the user is immediately bounced forward to another; thus backtracking through the redirecting page is impossible (except for those deft with the mouse and with split-second reactions). To escape the user must select a previous page from the History list.

Using frames

Using frames is not the disaster it once was when browsers could not support them properly. Even now that browsers handle frames more elegantly, frames should be employed sparingly since they militate against the fundamental simplicity of the page as the fundamental unit of information and navigation.

Using animations and scrolling or blinking text

Why on earth would you want to distract the user’s attention and irritate them? There are subtler, better ways to attract attention.

Using bleeding-edge technology

Web designers are keen to implement the latest technology, but this is usually inappropriate since a significant proportion of users may not be able to take advantage of it and are unlikely to download the latest plug-in or patch necessary for them to do so. New technology also misbehaves: a single Javascript error message is sufficient to drive a user away from your site.

Using advertising

Advertising or anything that looks like advertising is a big turn-off, except where a user is engaged on a shopping expedition. Though advertising is now ubiquitous on the web, click-through rates for adverts are extremely low and plans to carry advertising should be examined very critically.

Poor readability

Reading text on screen is difficult enough with current low resolution screens and relatively small screen sizes. Don’t make this worse by choosing inappropriate colour schemes or background images or animations. Use black text on a plain light-coloured background.

Poor ‘scanability’

Users’ attention spans are short and screen real estate is small. They scan text rather than reading it. Consequently text written for the web should be short and succinct, broken into easily digestible chunks and highlighted with optimal use of headings, bullet points, etc. It is a mistake to republish on the web text designed to be read in print without a thorough review, rewrite and reorganisation.

Meaningless titles and headlines

Titles (which appear in the bar at the top of a browser window) and headlines often appear out of context, for example when listed on a search engine results page or when a page is loaded directly from an external link. Titles and headlines should therefore be short, straightforward, standalone descriptions. On a web of a billion pages consider the futility of entitling a page ‘Home Page’ or ‘Welcome’.

Non-standard link colours

Users are familiar with the convention that unvisited links are blue underlined and visited links are purple or red. They use this information to see which parts of a site they have visited and which remain to be explored. Mess with the standard link colours and they lose their way.