November 2004

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Advice Services Alliance

19 November 2004 in Law sites

The Advice Services Alliance is the umbrella body for independent advice services in the UK. Members are national networks of not-for-profit organisations providing advice and help on the law, access to services and related issues, including adviceuk, Age Concern England, Citizens Advice, Citizens Advice Northern Ireland, DIAL UK, Law Centres Federation, Scottish Association of Law Centres, Shelter, Shelter Cymru, Shelter Scotland and Youth Access.

It currently operates three sites:

  • The ASA site – with information on members, policy and briefings.
  • Advicenow – an independent, not-for-profit website providing accurate, up-to-date information on rights and legal issues. The service brings together the best information on the law and rights from over 200 UK websites. Every link has been hand picked and summarised by a team of experienced advisers.
  • ADRnow – which provides key information about the main types of ADR provision, including commercial, community and family mediation, public and private ombudsman schemes, and arbitration; an outline of the ADR options available for different types of problem; information on legal and civil procedures affecting decisions about dispute resolution; and a directory of ADR providers and links to key national websites.

Public sector information – exploiting the intellectual capital

3 November 2004 in Public Sector Information

At a meeting on 1 November to celebrate 5 years of free law via BAILII, Richard Susskind outlined current developments regarding re-use of Public Sector Information (PSI). He chairs the Advisory Panel on PSI whose job is to advise the Government so that this asset is protected and exploited and its value is maximised. Central to its deliberations is the 2003 European Directive on the re-use of PSI which will be implemented in the UK on 1 July 2005. This creates a new, harmonised regime, aiming to remove obstacles that stand in the way. The Panel “strongly supports the aspirations underlying the PSI Directive, and believes that it provides a basis for developing more ambitious ways of exploiting the intellectual capital of the public sector.” He is confident that provision of PSI will move from being reactive to the requests of citizens to being proactive to their needs. Information on PSI and the Panel, including their 2004 report are on HMSO.

HMSO PSI pages

Advisory Panel on PSI

Europa pages on PSI

Legal information management weblogs

3 November 2004 in Information management, Law blogs

Three weblogs focussing on legal information management have been added to our blog links (bottom right) and are well worth bookmarking. Better still add their RSS feeds to your feedreader. [What's RSS?]

  • Excited Utterances by Joy London, trainer at Allen & Overy, USA – on law firm knowledge management
  • Feedmelegal by a lawyer in private practice – on the use by lawyers of weblogs, webfeeds and related technology
  • Information Overlord by Scott Vine, Information Officer in the Communications, Media & Technology Group of Clifford Chance – on information management and librarianship with a communications media and technology law slant.