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The Changing Legal Information Environment: Report of the 9th Bileta Conference, University of Warwick 11th, 12th April 1994

Dick Jones Liverpool John Moores University

The 9th BILETA conference saw the organisation move back to its home base at Warwick University with the conference theme The Changing Legal Information Environment. The programme offered what was to be the most varied of BILETA conferences to date, and a programme that was to mirror many of the developments that had occupied legal academics in the field of information technology during the previous twelve months. So what were those developments and what did the conference offer with regard to insight into the issues being raised?

Courseware

Courseware (second generation legal computer assisted learning programs) developed by the Law Courseware Consortium is now beginning to appear after an 18 month gestation. The Consortium aims to provide a comprehensive coverage through electronic workbooks of the core LL.B subjects. The 'Editor' provides a consistent interface for the user with facilities for the user to save information to a notebook. It provides links to resource materials and allows several forms of screen interactions. Colin Scott (LSE) and Robin Widdison (Durham), members of the team developing the contract workbook reviewed for the conference how the contract team, made up of a varied group with different experiences of computers and CAL, went about its task of building 'Second Generation Courseware'. This team was first away from the starting post and so had the unenviable task of having to deal with the early versions of the courseware editor and to tread new ground in the integration of workbooks, resource books and notebooks, the three elements of the courseware. The team has laid solid foundations for later teams who have worked through the issues of content, interaction, information content, evaluation and implementation isolated by the contract team. The contract team has also shown that it may be an advantage in having differing approaches within the team, team members firing ideas and issues off each other, in the end producing a set of high quality materials.

Other countries too are producing similar courseware, Ian Wilson (Queensland) reviewed the management issues to be faced in developing courseware on any sizeable scale. The Crimson Parrot is a project to develop legal skills through multimedia workbooks. The project is designed to be part of a range of techniques to be used to enable teaching legal skills. Management involves recognising that the courseware should have a place central in the teaching and learning context. Management should reflect this by involving the whole faculty in its development, evaluation and implementation. A much more pragmatic approach had been adopted by Donna Buckingham (Otago) who had isolated a particular need and developed a useful interactive program to introduce statutory analysis and statutory interpretation through the use of Hypercard on the Mac. The impetus for the project was the learning needs of 550 students, many with learning difficulties. The simple yet refreshing program provided useful dialogues for all levels of students attempting to grasp the intricacies and inconsistencies of judicial argument. William Boyd (Arizona) an experienced CAL author, brought together the development, evaluation and implementation process within the context of his Chicken Ranch Stew hypertext based CAL program on Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. William has words of warning as to obsession with presentation over content, but is also looking to have courseware available through networks on the international stage. This first session over, the conference then had to wait until its final session before returning to courseware. Dick Jones (Liverpool John Moores) discussed how CAL could be linked with electronic communication to provide a virtual learning environment for law students. The final conference paper however invoked the most discussion. Yvonne Nobis (Bournemouth) posed questions going to the heart of courseware development, that is, its effectiveness. She is running a two year program to evaluate computer based learning materials. Discussion naturally centred on the problems of how it is possible to isolate all other factors that may affect a student's learning when attempting to see how effective courseware is. Some conference delegates had been through this problem before, we await with interest the results of the evaluation.

Legal databases

CD ROM technology allows for usefully sized databases to be run in house, both supplementing and replacing the often expensive on-line systems. Norman Nunn-Price (Context) has now taken over the POLIS database, a much under-used national resource, so that it will now be available on-line and on CD. CD ROM provides a useful addition to the database resource of any organisation, the mix of on-line and CD is particularly attractive. Scott Taylor (New Mexico) showed that CD could capture a significant share of the market with a properly focused database, in this case the state law of New Mexico. Practitioners are attracted to the ability to use CD ROM databases without incurring on-line charges. Derek Sturdy (Legal Information Resources) took the conference back to basics of information indexing and retrieval, issues that database providers and database users would do well not to forget.

Networks

Networks have opened up and academics are running free on world wide networks finding information, communicating with colleagues and participating in electronic conferences. Gophers, MOSAIC, VERONICA and World Wide Web are finding their way into the vocabulary. Adam Gilinsky (Strathclyde) provided an insight into the World Wide Web of information displaying how the MOSAIC interface can help with the searching. Trotter Hardy (William and Mary) showed how electronic communication could be used both for academic conferences and for managing students on courses. The conferences second keynote, John Pritchard (Legalease) introduced his LINK project, a means to get practitioners onto a network and provide a virtual shopping mall for subscribers. His system is going out to 50,000 users. Hypertext has provided the technology for the new network interfaces such as MOSAIC. Andrew Terrett (British Columbia) urged that those developing hypertext applications should be aware how Critical Theory has clear theoretical applications to hypertext, hypertext maybe providing a much truer means of capturing knowledge than the linear texts of today. Hypertext has also provided the base for Multimedia. Multimedia programs can now incorporate text, pictures, sound, graphics, video and animation. In the wider academic community wholesale reviews are taking place about professional legal education and universities are having to grapple with the ever tightening resource constraints within the quality context. Courseware and possibly multimedia courseware may provide some solutions to increasingly high student-staff ratios. The conference's first keynote, Professor Stephen Hepple (University of East Anglia) showed how, with the simple use of graphics and sound, the learning experience can be significantly enhanced. Beware however not to dress up old or ineffectual programs with clever multimedia interfaces. Courseware authors please note!

BILETA and the CTI Law Technology Centre is continuing to share knowledge and experience through the academic community by organising, workshops, roadshows and electronic conferences. BILETA is representing universities in discussions with the database providers and is drawing up minimum standards for Information Technology on LL.B courses. With the CTI-Law Centre it is beginning the difficult process of evaluating and implementing the courseware being developed under the Law Courseware Consortium. 1994 looks like being another busy year, Strathclyde in 1995 will provide an opportunity to savour the fruit of these initiatives. For the author, the conference showed how close the links between courseware, hypermedia, multimedia, networks and information retrieval have become. Several papers pulled out the links and showed a similarity of purpose. Will 1995 be the year when, for the academic community, the developments will merge; is the legal academic community on the verge of discovering it own version of 'Groupware'?