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| Conferences |
2006 - Southern Currents conference papers are available from the programme section of the joint website. Symposium 2002 LIANZA - Winds of Change 1998 - Challenges to Tradition : Law and Knowledge for the New Millennium 1993 Conference Notes
NB: All documents are in pdf format (unless marked .ppt - MS Powerpoint). Day 1 Martin Stewart-Weeks Willem Van Zanten Day 2 Ernie Newman Day 3 Margaret Greville 11-13 SEPTEMBER 2002 TE PAPA WELLINGTON Visible Justice explored issues on access to the law and to government for librarians, the legal profession and all New Zealand citizens at the beginning of the twenty first century. Papers from the 2002 Conference are summarised below. Follow the links to download a PDF version of the paper or zipped PowerPoint files. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader (free to download here) to view PDFs; you will need WinZip and Microsoft PowerPoint to view PowerPoint presentations (also available as PDF files).
OPENING SPEECH FACING THE CHALLENGES: THE NEW PARADIGM IN LEGAL PUBLISHING Clients are demanding that legal services be delivered over the internet, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Globalization requires teams of lawyers working together virtually around the globe to solve legal problems. The technology for re-using internal legal knowledge and combining it with external information resources is improving. Emerging providers of legal services are bypassing law firms and commercial legal publishers to integrate legal content into the workflow and business of customers. E-GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES IN NEW ZEALAND The eGovernment programme began formally in July 2000. The focus to date has been largely on building foundations for eGovernment, with the expectation that the public sector will build on these foundations. This presentation will provide insights into where the eGovernment programme in New Zealand is going and where it might take the public sector in the next two years and beyond. INSTITUTIONAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION: BREAKING NEW GROUND This presentation seeks to examine the macro and specific trends that are impacting to change the current business environment. Within this context we will examine the terminology of an entre- and intre-preneurship, with particular emphasis on the growth of women entrepreneurers. A key aspect of this presentation will be a discussion around the implications for both individuals and organisations that wish to respond to the challenges of a new business environment and the need for increased innovation and entrepreneurship.
IGNORANCE OF THE LAW IS NO EXCUSE: THE REALITY OF CITIZEN'S ACCESS TO LEGAL INFORMATION Anarchy has an appeal, particularly when compared with some of the more arcane pieces of law that have been passed by governments over the years. In theory, they should protect citizens against exploitation, both criminal and civil. Too frequently they obscure. Further, they tend to be reactive - a wrong against society or a group in society, surfaces and the eventual response is a legal sanction against the perpetrators and protection for the victims. Usually the law is too late. LEGAL XML - A PRACTICAL PERSPECTIVE The mission of Legal XML, is to develop standards for electronic legal documents. To date, a recommended Legal XML standard for court filing has been issued, which has been implemented by some US courts and others are considering the application of the standard to their jurisdictions. Other standards that are in progress within Legal XML will also be considered, such as standards for transcripts, contracts, legislation and judgments. LEGAL WELL BEING: THE FUTURE OF LEGAL INFORMATION ACCESS The legal world is on the brink of a fundamental transformation that is being precipitated by existing and emerging information technologies. It will be claimed that legal practice and the administration of justice will be profoundly changed over the next two decades or so, largely in ways that will be of benefit to citizens. At the outset, I will suggest some techniques for thinking about the future - how to look ahead in a practical and not science-fictional way. I will argue that we are currently in a transitional phase between a print-based industrial society and an IT-based information society. Once we have moved fully into the era of the IT-based information society, many of our central economic and social institutions will have changed substantially. There is no reason whatsoever to suppose that the law and legal institutions will be immune from the shifts that are affecting all other aspects of society. I will discuss the main ways in which legal practice is likely to alter in the future; and, most controversially, the move towards the systematisation and commoditisation of routine legal work. I will introduce my ideas about the huge untapped "latent legal market" - unmet legal need that conventional legal service cannot handle but which IT-enabled service will satisfy. In relation to the courts and judges, I will ask: is court a service or a place? I will conclude that, in the future, there will be a place for ODR (online dispute resolution) and conventional judges. More generally, I will propose that in all aspects of legal life, we will need a balance of "clicks and mortals" (the title, incidentally, of my next book), a blend of conventional human-based service complemented by IT-based service. ACCESS TO CUSTOMARY LAW: NEW ZEALAND ISSUES Judge Caren Wickliffe will review definitions of customary law and identify different sources of Maori customary law. Following on from that she will demonstrate ways of working with Maori customary law by reference to the work of the Waitangi Tribunal and the Maori Land Court. Paul Meredith of Te Matahauariki Institute will discuss their project of compiling a reference work, named Te Matapunenga, which will bring together and present in accessible form the historical uses and meanings of selected terms and concepts of Maori customary law. VIRTUAL LEGAL COLLECTIONS - BREAKING LOCAL AND NATIONAL BOUNDARIES This presentation concentrates on work undertaken in the UK on creating virtual research collections, focusing on the national context and the higher education sector where much of the innovation has taken place. Some specific examples of UK initiatives designed to transform the storage and transmission of information will be discussed. Collaborative programmes associated with these initiatives are used as examples and involve work on metadata and resource discovery, digitisation and digital archiving. Reference is made in particular to legal information projects and resources. FEAST OR FAMINE: LEGAL PRACTITIONERS' ACCESS TO INFORMATION Strategic partnerships: your vision's pathway to reality - Mary-Rose Russell Providing access to Pacific Law: a work in progress - Peter Murgatroyd PLease view further details and download the conference brochure from this site. For further information contact
LIANZA - Winds of change: libraries in the 21st Century - November 2002 The Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa has just held its annual conference - in Wellington this year. It was a very good conference with a number of very interesting themes. Right from the start we were stimulated and enlightened. The first keynote speaker was Professor Whatarangi Winiata of Te Waananga-o Raukawa and Victoria University of Wellington. He spoke about Maori repositories of information and the Maori knowledge continuum. I thought his remarks were just as useful regarding the New Zealand legal knowledge continuum and law libraries. Of great interest was a five-way test he presented for eligibility to be the recipient of restricted knowledge. These abilities are also hugely important for law libraries. They are: Items i-iii are part of the role of the library and increasingly the computer, but items iv and v are tasks that need human intervention and in a library’s case, a skilled and experienced librarian. Certainly we battle with item v every time we look at a judgment with some manner of suppression order! A pair of wonderful phrases that come out of the conference were Professor Derek Law’s phrase “the satisfied inept” and one from Chris Batt quoting Manuel Castells “informed bewilderment”! Part of the librarian’s role in this new century is to discourage both of these from happening. Among the ways suggested for accomplishing this were training, subject portals and indeed “boutique libraries” or mini subject libraries within the overall library. The grouping of resources, both electronic and physical, by subject is used by many libraries. The computers at the WDLS Library display a start screen containing New Zealand resources by subject. All of these subject groupings together produce what one presenter called memorably “the one start shop”. The other development in this area is almost the opposite of grouping the resources by subject. It is “meshing things together”, which includes the ability that some libraries are starting to offer their users to be able to search across all databases at once. So what about the libraries and librarians? Some libraries will become steadily more virtual. However there is still a need for the library to exist as a place – a place for training, a neutral and indeed anonymous place to do research, and for the interchange of knowledge, a welcoming place with trained helpful staff waiting to help. Knowledge was also the subject of a fascinating talk by Larry Prusak of the IBM Institute for Knowledge Management. He presented a number of interesting thoughts, including the idea that knowledge is contextual, sticky, local and tacit. Contextual in that we all have to agree on what a piece of knowledge is (ie the sun revolves around the earth) which does not need to be true, that knowledge tends to stay in one place and is reluctant to move around – you need to be there to find out ( the reason for all those meetings!) and finally that it is often not explicit but tacit – we know more than we can say or tell. And indeed that we transfer knowledge by doing – working with those with knowledge and observing. Now that information is becoming freely available, it is knowledge that becomes important. “What do you do that brings value to your organisation that cannot be done by a computer?” He thinks that things that cannot be digitised, such as wit, judgment, persuasion, entertainment, design and humour are the things that have a future. He recommended reading Aristotle on Rhetoric – something that should appeal to at least litigation lawyers. Tied in with all of this are the observations that people are an organisation’s greatest resource and that we need to develop people and not machines. This also links in with another of the underlying themes of the conference – that of lifelong learning and the library’s role in supporting and facilitating this. The final idea from the conference that I want to talk about is the development of what were called 24/7 reference services. Research and help by email 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! Some of the universities are looking at this, arranging for a university in another time zone to be able to provide help by email and sometimes using chatroom-type services to answer help requests for users when the library staff are at home. A really interesting idea that is not yet a reality for WDLS users. Overall the ideas presented at this conference were thoughtful, innovative and highly applicable to law libraries.
Challenges to Tradition : Law and Knowledge for the New Millennium (10-13 February, 1998, Auckland) Papers from the 1998 Conference are described and linked. Click on the titles to access the full text. Information explosion: power, knowledge, law and libraries This paper explores the impact of the information explosion on the legal system and the legal profession. While the information explosion is obviously a technological phenomenon, it is even more a social and political phenomenon, especially since it coincides with profound changes wrought by globalization and by the advent of neo-conservative government policies. In this paper, Prof. Arthurs deals with the ways in which the explosion of legal knowledge has helped to redefine the profession's monopoly, caused a redistribution of power and a crisis of governance within the profession, affected the lives of ordinary citizens, altered the fundamental nature of legal knowledge, as well as its production and dissemination, and for all of these reasons transformed the world of law librarianship. Librarians in the 21st Century: Gatekeepers or Blacksmiths As we move towards the next century major changes are occurring within our legal systems. The previously dominant role of the book is diminishing as the cultural shift from print to digital forms of information takes place. Most lawyers take for granted the central role of legal information in its traditional paper form. The challenges ahead for them are many. As is the unknown future of the law librarian who must cope with the chaos of legal information in cyberspace. Online information - the University of Auckand LEARN initiative. The University of Auckland Library has been using web technology since February 1996 to deliver electronic information resources via the LEARN network to the University community of over 30,000 staff and students. An electronic information resources strategy was developed in 1995 which focused on delivering information in an integrated format to the identified client groups. The strategy focused not only on technical solutions but also issues of resource selection, logical groupings of resources for various subject areas, staff development requirements and the associated client service instructional services activities so as to ensure the appropriate return on the substantial investment. No paper available. Companies Office information: from hardcopy to full electronic image The Companies Office has undergone revolutionary change. Originally a full paper-based records system, the New Zealand Companies Office is rapidly evolving towards an electronic register, complete with on-line inquiry and registration. Less than 18 months ago, electronic search access to company records was launched via the Internet. Today, the first stage of electronic registration has begun, and the Companies Office site is now part of a wider Ministry of Commerce Web page allowing electronic access to the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand, the Motor Vehicles Securities register and the National Insolvency Database. How Canada rewrote the law In an age where judgments need to be searched, accessed, cited and communicated in electronic form, documents designed for paper output alone are deficient. With the broad goal of improving access to law, the Canadian Judicial Council undertook several years ago to develop a standard electronic format for judgments. While one of its mandates is to encourage greater consistency among courts in various provinces, the Council has no authority to impose any standards. In the strongly traditional environment of the independent Canadian court system, the goal of changing the way courts prepare their judgments seemed very ambitious at the time. Nevertheless, as of today, virtually every court within the Council's mandate (there are 25 courts involved in ten provinces and two territories) has either adopted the Standard or is working on implementation. In this presentation, Dr. Felsky will discuss how the Council went about the task of developing the Standard and then implementing it across the country. The "Winebox" and electronic wizardry Sir Ronald Davidson's Commission of Inquiry into Certain Matters Related to Taxation, colloquially known as The "Winebox" was New Zealand's most technologically advanced commission of inquiry to date. The mammoth of 218 sitting days and approximately 80 witnesses, resulted in 13,000 pages of real time transcripts and 100,000 pages of documents. In its latter days transcripts were posted to the internet and the closing submissions were made available on CD ROM. This session outlines how some of the counsel involved in the inquiry used information technology to process and understand the vast amount of evidence. Information evolution: primary statutory materials - from hot metal to electronic distribution GP Legislation Services holds the sole contract to print all of New Zealand's primary statutory materials. They are responsible for ensuring timely delivery of both the hard copy and electronic versions of statutes, regulations, SOPs, Hansard etc. Ms Gould will discuss the development of the electronic information process within the company and outline the variety of access options users have to access this material. The future law librarian The emerging values of the Information Age are in sharp contrast to the values that sustained us prior to the end of the Industrial Age. Now, speed and individualism dominate our social institutions including the way we construct work. The value sets of the emerging "open collar" workforce - reliant on technology and globally oriented - necessarily change the way we approach work. Simple enterprise competition is also changing as giant corporations develop unique ecosystems. For the legal sector, change is manifested in the cry for more global concepts of law and justice, concern at the increasing cost of law; and the consequences of individual technological access towards increased self-empowerment. The role of the law librarian is changing in consequence. In this address, Clive Graham asserts that the traditional role of the law librarian is under threat and proposes a methodology and model to shift the law librarian from the mind-traps of the Industrial Age into survival mode for the Information Age. AustLII- Changing the nature of public access to law The Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) provides free access to over 3 GB of Australian primary and secondary legal materials via the internet, and receives over 1.6 million hits per month (June 1997). AustLII's success is partly due to its technical strengths: over 13 million automatically inserted hypertext links; its own search engine with Boolean/proximity searching and relevance ranking; High Court decisions available within hours of their being handed down; and research projects on legal inferencing, 'targeted web spiders' and other innovations. However, access to public legal information is at least '50% politics' - as New Zealand law librarians will be aware - and AustLII has concentrated much of its efforts into convincing governments, courts and tribunals that free access to the legal information they control is good public policy, to the extent that this may have now become an irreversible feature of the Australian scene. Other important policy questions, such as court-designated citation systems, are still being resolved. Electronic issues forum: copyright and the internet Librarians are often concerned with the copyright implications of downloading and distributing material from the Internet and may also be involved with establishing and maintaining on-line databases of one form or another. The paper discusses the limitations of the "prescribed library" regime for permitted copying, when it comes to dealing with on-line databases. It looks at the some of the difficulties in determining whether an on-line service is a "cable programme service" for the purpose of the Copyright Act. The move towards sui generis protection of databases at the international level is discussed and the paper looks briefly at the treatment of databases under New Zealand law. Issues such as tracking copyright infringement in an electronic environment, and the use of "framing", are discussed. Finally, the paper looks at the use of meta tags to facilitate inclusion of Web sites in search engine results, and some of the pitfalls that may be present. Electronic information and the New Zealand judiciary With the increasing use of electronic information, both legal and non-legal, in New Zealand's court rooms the impact of this technology on the way in which members of the judiciary undertake their judicial duties is becoming more obvious. Judge Harvey will provide an overview of his experiences and make some observations as to likely future developments. The egg is broken. Who will make the omelette? Our carefully controlled world of information has been invaded. End users of all sizes, shapes and kinds, including those in our own firms and institutions, are busy conquering our world. But, remember, its not really a battle or a war, but an opportunity for us to establish ourselves as the natural leaders of a growing revolution. Ms Lenzini will start us thinking about how to position ourselves in the new information age. The future of legal electronic publishing Electronic publishing by one name or another is one of the most dynamic areas of growth in the world today. Evan Predavec will be taking a look at the future of this area. Specific topics will include new methods of accessing and using information and a look at the future of the publishing industry itself in light of these changes. Level playing fields: the new reality of desk-top information access Lawlink is a network of individual New Zealand legal firms. Tony helps co-ordinate the diverse information needs of over 250 lawyers. The Lawlink Group sees information technology as an opportunity to counter the moves of large city based practices, non-traditional competitors and other mid-size firms simply by better providing the kind of service clients want. He provides some thoughts on the role of the traditional law information professional in the new reality of desktop information access and if they have a future what it might be. Electronic New Zealand case law: the options The growth of electronic media in New Zealand has seen many developments in the provision of case law to the desktop. As an independent consultant Ms Treadwell takes this opportunity to review the sources of New Zealand case law currently available. An "electronic library": the Simpson Grierson experience Ms Wainwright will discuss the development of an "Electronic Library" within Simpson Grierson, from vision and implementation, to ongoing issues including training internal clients. Liability: Who's next?......Librarians? A panel discussion Panel members:
An article describing the conference from the Australian Law Librarians' Group representative.
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