#HackingthelawOpenLaws.eu

Prof. Chris Marsden#ODIFridays20 March 2015

Law is difficult and boring – we have better things to do

But law matters – to all of us

We can open access to law

Openlaws.eu DG Just project UK, Netherlands and Austria top 3 EU: OKFN legislation rankings open access to law in Europe legislation, case law and commentary

Not just legislation.gov.uk social network for lawyers, students and

interested citizens.

What can opening access to law achieve? better and wider legal knowledge, which means a “better informed

citizenry”1. on the legal community, 2. in combination with open data

entrepreneurs.

1. Citizens understand their rights How to secure those rights, and costs of access to

justice. Helps identify better the manner in which the law

is applied in courts, feedback loop can help us understand how to

draft and enforce laws more effectively better litigation, more mediation, better consumer contracts, lower contract costs, better spread of liabilities, better protection for those whose rights are abused.

2. Open access to law alongside other open databases. If we find out that people are not using the law effectively

to enforce their rights and seek justice, that can help us identify parts of our

social and economic environment where we might have put rights and

responsibilities in the wrong place.

Example: if no-one is found effectively liable for computer security breaches due to defective products

we might explore the insurance and criminal law implications for cybercrime also computers owners & software authors

Designing new protocols, practices, laws? Might result in more trusted online

environment That’s one small example.

Openlaws release our first code today: March 20 at a hackathon in Salzburg

We have completed our UK, EU and Netherlands case studies

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Expanding open innovation to lawIntroducing mass-customization to lawProposing a comprehensive European “Big Open Legal Data” (BOLD) Vision 2020

for incremental implementation, built on top of existing EU and national systems and

content (e.g. EUR-Lex, e-Justice System, e-Codex).

Chris Marsden (Sussex)

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Developing BOLD ICT PlatformPromote open data, open access publications, and open standards

Chris Marsden (Sussex)

Chris Marsden (Sussex)

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Developing big online legal dataFree Access to Law movement (FALM)

online case law via BAILII in the UK Legal Information Institutes (AustLII, Cornell etc.)

#GoodLaw online statutes expanded rapidly, crowdsourcing ideas for #goodlaw

Online legal education and research BILETA since 1985 Electronic Law Journals project at Warwick

EJLT – now Script-ed + IJoC at USC many US law journals

Journal of Open Access to Law (JOAL) est. 2014! publishing books via Creative Commons: Marsden 2010

Chris Marsden (Sussex)

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Ministry of Justice ready for (r)evolution?#Goodlaw

radical crowd-sourced legislative approachOpen Data

Very fashionable amongst G7 countries etc. Implementation more patchy than general

UK: BAILII, ICLR, Supreme Court reforms; But we really need a pan-European

approach

Chris Marsden (Sussex)

17Why not build a smartphone app for lawyers? Already done using

open case law, statute, articles

Where? Austria RIS:App Why not here? Why not

everywhere?

Chris Marsden (Sussex)

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Team – note Andres Guadamuz CC licence expert

Institution Name

UVAmsterdam Prof. Radboud G.F. WinkelsProf. Mireille van Eechoud LAPSI2.0

Sussex Prof. Chris MarsdenDr Andres Guadamuz CC4.0

London School of Economics

Dr. Paolo DiniDr. Shenja van der Graaf BXLDr. Antonella Passani ROMA

ALPENITE - developers

Giulio MarconGianluigi Alberici

SUAS Prof. Thomas HeistracherDI (FH) Thomas Lampoltshammer

BYWASS Dr. Clemens Wass, MBL, MBA

c.marsden@sussex.ac.uk @openlaws@ChrisTMarsden openlaws.eu