A small link for a mouse but a giant leap forward for users of both ICLR Online and BAILII; Launched on 1 October 2012, the start of the new legal term, a new feature of ICLR’s online case law database now enables subscribers to link directly from the Neutral Citations listed in case reports and index cards to any transcript of the judgment available on www.bailii.org. This will massively increase the content available to users to include not just the 78,000 cases reported by ICLR since its inception in 1865 but also the vast number of other cases indexed by ICLR, or referred to in other reports, for which a neutral citation is available.

For users of BAILII’s free database of unreported judgment transcripts and other primary materials, there will now be the facility to link instantly from any transcript, which has been the subject of a report by ICLR, to the report itself. Anyone who does not already subscribe to ICLR can still obtain the case report by purchasing a downloadable PDF, or taking out a subscription to the relevant series. Here’s how it looks:final+screenshots+blend+for+the+bailli+PR.jpg

 

The new links will provide benefits to users of both services, who will be able to move seamlessly from one database to the other whatever their point of entry. The fact that both organisations are charities, established for the purposes of supporting the study of law and the administration of justice, makes the new arrangement doubly appropriate at a time when reliable access to free or modestly priced legal information has never been more critical. It is also apt that BAILII stands for the British and Irish Legal Information Institute, in a week which sees representatives of both nations’ legal professions, among a throng of delegates from around the world, gathering in Dublin for the annual conference of the International Bar Association (IBA).