My attention has been drawn to an interesting project started by Tulsa, Oklahoma, attorney Brad Smith. Brad has set up a legal wiki reference source project - LegalWikiPro.com. Those of you familiar with wikis, such as wikipedia.org, will get a sense of what this is about. The idea is to generate, through user-generated and -edited content, a comprehensive legal reference source and practical guide. This one is just at the beginning, but appears to have a good structure in place and a solid start in several jurisdictional and substantive areas.
I suppose one big question is whether the community of legal professionals, seemingly often simultaneously overworked and over-adept at using up time (or perhaps I’m only talking about myself), will find the time to do the work to generate and edit the content. A hunch tells me that they will.
The next question will be what level of utility a legal wiki can attain. Certainly as one facet of a reference guide regime it will have great utility, at the very least pointing the direction for more in-depth research. The inherent unreliability of wikis, however, may prevent such a project from transcending beyond, into an authoritative persuasive authority in its own right. Perhaps I should end that last sentence with a question mark. Am I mistaken to start with the premise of inherent unreliability in discussing a wiki? A quick search of a combined federal/state decision database for “wikipedia.org” reveals 266 cases where Wikipedia is cited as a source for a proposition. That’s a fairly inconclusive number, I would think, from such a large search database, but it is indicative that the wiki format has gained at least an initial toe-hold as a source of authoritative reference. (See this article for a nutshell account of how wikipedia is attempting to deal with the problems caused by unreliable or biased user-editors.)
What do you think? This is another example of the new media and information paradigms affecting how we can do what we do, but there are lots of interesting questions as we make our way through this world, and I’m curious about the questions and answers any of you might have.
4 Comments
Tad:
Thanks for the comments. I agree that the Wiki paradigm can be suspect at times. However, when you think of it, lawyers have always relied on “suspect” sources. Anytime you pick up the West Digest, you are relying on a West editor to understand the case he read and properly categorize it within the Digest. How many times have you found head notes that did not match up with the holding of the case (I’ve seen bunches). How many times have you finally found a case through hunt-and-peck word searches on Westlaw only to find that the West editor completely missed your issue in the headnotes, or indexed it somewhere that was, uh, unhelpful? We have similar experiences with ALR, or law reviews, or CJS, or etc.
So, you’re right, the Wiki format is nothing more than another tool that lawyers can use to try and understand an area or to find that one case that may lead them to another case that might win their case for them. It’s very much a “take it for what it’s worth” system (that, unlike West’s system…is free), and LegalWikiPro is not meant to be cited as authority in and of itself.
One thing I like about the Wiki format is that it’s cooperative and social. Iron can sharpen iron. Edits can challenge or expand a point, or present two sides to competing readings of a case. The available space on the Wiki stretches as far as the eye can see (there’s no need to worry about how big the “book” gets), so there’s plenty of room, on even the smallest of topic, to present the defense and plaintiff’s (or prosecution) view point. Edits can be discussed (on the “discussion” tab) on each article. Users can talk directly to each other through their respective “talk” tabs.
I agree that it takes time to contribute to a Wiki. One way I’ve gotten around that problem is to combine my research work with my Wiki work. If I’m researching an issue, as long as I’m collecting cases on a certain topic I might as well create a little outline and put it on the Wiki. If readers look at most of the articles on LegalWikiPro, they’ll see a lot of content, but it is quite often simply the “killer” paragraphs from published cases, cut and pasted into an outline form. The work comes in the outlining process and in creating helpful headings. This makes “writing” for the Wiki easy, and the extensive case quotations give you direct access to the Court’s thoughts (and the cases the Court cited).
Combining my ongoing legal research projects with my Wiki development gives me a way to store my research for the next time that issue comes up, and the outlining process also forces me to think my way through and analyze the issue I’m working on. I create my own “briefbank” on a topic, and contribute to the Wiki at the same time. Nifty.
Anyway, I’m just enough of a geek to enjoy this kind of thing. :)
More thoughts?
Brad, you’ve just about got me sold with the analogy to West’s headnotes. Indeed, I often find that the West (and Lexis, now that they’ve broken down and given in to market demand) headnotes are often thoroughly unhelpful. And, as you point out, are just as unhelpful in what they fail to note as they are in what they mis-note. Clearly, other “authoritative” treatises are just as likely to get something not-quite-right, and all of these sources must be used only as an entry-point to the source material, which itself is only a tool to be used in the process of developing positions and arguments on the application of law to a particular set of facts.
I also should have put in my original post that LegalWikiPro, itself, disclaims any attempt to be a be-all-end-all of legal answers, but just another tool in the lawyer’s toolbelt. My comments were more to use LegalWikiPro as a springboard into a more general discussion of the role of wikis in the legal process.
Your discussion here has had me thinking, and the more I think about it, and at risk of taking it too far, a legal-based wiki is actually potentially a tremendous resource. In essence, new technologies are returning the profession back to its ancient roots in developing and discussing the law. What is a wiki discussion of the law, with edits and discussions by the practitioners and scholars (we should hope for the sake of the profession that all of us practitioners maintain some bit of the scholar about us), but a modern-day Talmudic approach to the law? This is an approach that on occasion has been maintained in civil law systems, where treatises by civilian scholars are just as persuasive as the jurisprudence constante effect of prior decisions, and maintain a repetitive give-and-take with the legislative source of law. But the thinking-in-the-margins, the questioning, the answering, the collegial interchange is somewhat removed, even for us civilians. Now here’s a new technology application that can revive that.
Perhaps that was what I was thinking when I subtitled this post “the new collegial paradigm[.]”
I’m still interested to hear others’ thoughts. In the meantime, however, I hope to add some entries and discussion to the wiki project in the future.
Tad:
Thanks for your reply.
As to the “discussion” issue: I know not of this “civil law system” of which you speak, I’m just an old common law guy :) - however, I like your “Talmudic approach” comment. I picture some scenes from Yentl where she’s arguing and learning with the other “boys.” I also think there is some of that in the old Socratic method of case study in law school. Argue, tweak, challenge, rinse, repeat…except in the Wiki there is no professor up front to act as an authority figure.
In any event, yes, I believe that the discussion aspect of a legalwiki could be very helpful. Just check out some of the more active discussion pages (click on the “discussion” tab on a popular article) at Wikipedia. Or, go to the “community portal” at Wikipedia. It’s a bee-hive of discussions and specialty groups.
Although my initial (flawed) dump of information onto LegalWikiPro centers around legal research related topics, I would dream of some of the following:
- Forms for contracts, wills, trusts, etc.
- Information pages giving practical contact and “how to” information for various jurisdictions [how to file a garnishment or lien in XYZ county, etc.]
- Pattern jury instructions.
- Summaries of various administrative law issues, and links to administrative rules and decisions.
- Free lawyer-to-lawyer advertising of specialties for referrals. Classified pages, by jurisdiction.
- Free legal service provider classified pages by jurisdiction [court reporters, copy centers, conference/deposition centers].
- The Wiki software allows each user to create their own user page. Lawyers could use their user page to create their own small web page explaining more about their specialty areas, experience, etc. On Wikipedia, these user pages can be edited by any user; on LegalWikiPro, I have them configured so that only the named user (and an administrator) can control the content on that page.
That is a bit of my vision for LegalWikiPro. And I’m not very creative! I could use more ideas.
Blogs provide some of this function. However (just like this post will eventually scroll down to oblivion), blog posts on topics or recent cases can become invisible or hard to retrieve after awhile. However, in a Wiki, they can be added into a topic outline and stay there (or be edited as new cases come along) forever.
Blah, blah blah.
Brad
Tad:
Just another quick comment. I just got a new iPhone. I can read a page from LegalWikiPro pretty nicely on my iPhone. Look into the future: LegalWikiPro has grown into something useful; you’re at the courthouse about to argue a motion; you have a thought about some case law or theory you want to bring up; pull out your iPhone, and there it is on LegalWikiPro with quotes from the case, and links to the online version of the case. Helpful?
BS