Handling legal information

Abstract

In the digital age it is difficult to provide a definition of just what we mean by ‘legal information’. Usually, we are referring to the general form of the media — legislation, case report, legal document or textbook. But, in fact, to the working lawyer — as we see later — there are a number of sources of information which are vital in order to run a successful practice or run a successful case. This is very much a ‘high level’ view of information. There is a lower level view which is just as important — one which relates to the ways in which computer-held information can be manipulated. In this chapter, we will look at some of these various computer-based techniques which offer advantages to the lawyer, and in later chapters we will put these techniques into a fuller legal context. First, we look at digital text, since this is becoming the primary format for most legal information.