Nevertheless, there is quite a lot of informal co-operation. The distances between major cities mitigate against any one location becoming a centre for training. Computerised Legal Research and Writing At UNSW, all students are required to complete two Legal Research and Writing courses, one in first year and one in a final year, equivalent between them to one full subject. The Teaching Lab has 25 networked 386s running windows, plus a teacher's PC with colour projection. The proliferation of databases is due principally to the existence of 10 Australian jurisdictions, and increasing competition between suppliers.
All resources are free to students.
The Lab is usually full during session. A smaller Research Lab with about 10 machines is being completed adjoining the Teaching Lab, to cater for student demand when the large Lab is in use for teaching. Shirley Gregor and others at the University of Southern Queensland have also made extensive use of their own CAI applications to teach business law students, and some of these applications are being marketed. The 'Queensland CAI' systems tend to favour a traditional 'quasi-Socratic' style of multiple choice answers and explanations of student 'wrong turns'. Alan Tyree at Sydney has taken a rather different approach, recruiting numerous members of his law schools to participate in the development of CRES tutorials, a low-cost method of developing computerised law tutorials on a large scale.