Law firms that put links on their web sites face the
same challenges that law schools do: (1) to be more
than a "me-too" site and to provide something that
reflects their own expertise; (2) to police the links
regularly -- at a minimum once a month -- to see they
still work; (3) to get the financing and expertise
needed to compete with the best.
If the firm or school can't provide real originality
and still wants to be a player, then it should
probably limit itself to being what I think is called
a meta-site: to provide links to the best and
brightest of other sites.
In the course of research over the past few years I
have seen most, or anyway lots, of these; and I have
listed them incidentally to the posting of primary
materials that I collected (but am not including in
the book, a compilation of some 46 European
nationality laws) in the course of a legal
documentation project. See
http://www.bigfoot.com/~nationality
and click on
Sources de renseignements supplémentaires ( sites sur
Internet )
after scrolling to the bottom of the page.
I spent a couple of weeks selecting sites to be
included in SOSIG
http://www.sosig.ac.uk/roads/subject-listing/World-cat/law.html
so I have some experience of wading through the chaff
out there.
It is much harder to get useful credit (in terms of
professional advancement, or clients) from a web site
than from published works. And as for web sites (as
with computer games) user expectations in terms of
sophistication as well as content are constantly
rising. Consider the following humanities web sites,
and think of the millions of dollars being spent on
them:
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/blake
You have to provide something cutting-edge or
essential in the way of content, and even then it's
hard to compete with professional web design and teams
of academic research librarians and scholars.
I set up my site because I had the material (in fact I
visited most of the countries involved in the course
of collecting material and sources for the book) and
it wasn't available anywhere else. But it is likely to
be of interest to a very limited number of other
researchers. And even with only 46 countries and a
page less than a year old, three of the jurisdictions
are already about to change their nationality laws
(Ireland, Belgium, San Marino).
Unless it's a subject your lawyers are well up on, how
can you be sure the information on your site is
correct and up to date (indeed, that is one of the
purposes of the book, to show how one finds the law --
on CD-ROM, on the Web, in official gazette indexes,
etc. -- and ascertains that it's still current). There
haven't been any lawsuits yet, but is your firm
opening itself up to one if it offers wrong
"non-advice"? Of course if you only provide links to
others' sites you probably can disclaim
responsibility; but your firm's reputation can still
suffer from the mistakes of others that you cannot
control.
Andy Grossman
LLB, Docteur en droit
University College London, SLAIS
--- Dawn Urquhart <durquhart@airdberlis.com> wrote:
> Hi, I would be interested in hearing from anyone
> that has any opinion or experience with whether
> there is any value to a law firm in providing links
> to external resources from their web site.
>
> We have a lawyer that is convinced that our Firm web
> site should offer extensive links to all sorts of
> external sites. I am not convinced that offering
> this type of service really provides any benefit to
> the Firm in terms of PR, marketing or financial gain
> (ie. new clients).
>
> Looking forward to hearing from anyone.
>
> Thanks, Dawn.
>
> Dawn Urquhart
> Librarian
> Aird & Berlis
> BCE Place, Suite 1800
> 181 Bay Street, P.O. Box 754
> Toronto, ON M5J 2T9
> Phone: 416-865-7756
> Fax: 416-863-1515
> Email: durquhart@airdberlis.com
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