Internet Legal Publishing Transforming the Face of the Legal System By Kumar Percy Kumar Percy is the Head of Reserve and Media Services for the University of Texas Tarlton Law Library. He is a member of the State Bar of California with a law degree from Tulane Law School and a MLIS from San Jose State University.
Introduction Finding the law is the bread and butter of every lawyer in America.
Gillian Hadfield of the University of Toronto recently explained in the New York Times that society places a market value on lawyers based upon how much more that they know about the law than the average consumer. People are beginning to rethink that value, as they are able to locate more legal information online for a less cost than ever before. This article discusses the way that Internet legal publishing is transforming the legal system. Governmental Internet Publishers Computer technology has enabled courts, legislatures, and agencies to publish their own materials directly and without charging for access on the Internet. For example, statutes are now regularly available online for free as soon as they are passed.