Free Access to Law Movement

Today I learnt that something exists called the Free Access to Law Movement. The movement is an affiliation of 33 legal information institutes (LIIs) around the world, including LII (Cornell), BAIILII, AustLII, CanLII, etc. It was established at the 2002 'Law via Internet' Conference in Montreal, where the Declaration on Free Access to Law was adopted. Members believe that public legal information is "digital common property and should be accessible to all on a non-profit basis and free of charge".* With this in mind they agree to "promote and support"* free access to public legal information, mainly via the Internet, and to co-operate with each another to achieve their aims.

Two notable collaborative projects are:
WorldLII - a free search facility covering 1166 law databases from 123 juridictions
LawCite - a free global case citator

I use the BAILII and WorldLII databases on a daily basis, but I had never given much thought to the origins of these services until I read Graham Greenleaf's chapter in the IALL International Handbook of Legal Information Management entitled "Free Access to Legal Information, LIIs and the Free Access to Law Movement" (Ashgate, Farnham, 2011).

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754674771

* Declaration on Free Access to Law: http://www.worldlii.org/worldlii/declaration/