Philippine Legal Research

Introduction to electronic legal research tools and resources

Ritche Regala
Lawyer-Programmer

tzitech.webs.com

Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

The Pre-Computer Age Printed Legal Resources

Philippine Reports SCRA SCAD Law Books

How it was done before..

By lawyers & legal researches By law students & reviewees

2009 Tz!Technologies.

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Cont.. Pre-computer age

How it was done by lawyers & legal researchers

Given: Facts & Issues

Read reference from law books Read full-text of citations from SCRA/SCAD/Phil Reports

How it was done before by law students

Given: SCRA/SCAD/Phil Reports Citation

Get access to the volumes Photocopy pages Digest cases

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Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

Cont.. Pre-computer age

Limitations
Expensive volumes Limited access to the volumes in the library No fast way of searching among the text of decisions & statutes except by reading each document Research is usually limited to decisions cited in law books & quick index Typographical errors in copying text of decisions & statutes Need to wait a year for the next volume before new decisions become available

2009 Tz!Technologies.

Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

Legal Database Software: Breaking new grounds

Folio Views 4.3:
PhilJuris Lex Libris

Advantages
Full-text search: Search within the text of decisions & statutes Field search: very fast search of the entire corpus of documents using citations Limited cross-references between documents Fewer errors in copying text

Limitations
Complete version is expensive for students & new lawyers New updates takes a year before they become available Table of contents is not customizable Cannot search by SCRA/SCAD number Lacks search functions
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Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

Cont..Legal Database Software

Folio Views: Limitations
Laws & Jurisprudence are in separate volumes No facility for users to link laws, jurisprudence, rules & comments User cannot add document to the table of contents Very sensitive software:
A slight modification of the system will need reinstallation of the software Constant need for intervention from the software author

Software expires and becomes unusable if the user does not purchase content updates Cannot search for synonyms, other word forms & misspellings of words
2009 Tz!Technologies.

Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

The Challenge

Develop an affordable legal research tool with all the advantages of existing similar softwares with a dynamic Table of Contents where users can link laws, jurisprudence, rules & their own comments and with a very fast search engine that can retrieve documents containing the specified words, their different forms, synonyms and misspelled variants from volumes whose contents are constantly updated
2009 Tz!Technologies.

Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

Cont.. The Challenge

To develop an affordable legal research tool with a facility for searching and retrieving specific documents from legal resource websites And a bookmark feature for web documents that can be integrated with the local Table of Contents Finally, a software that can be continually enhanced by the contributions of the user community

2009 Tz!Technologies.

Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

Cont.. The Challenge

A tool that is responsive to the needs of lawyers, law students & legal researchers A tool that will constantly evolve and develop to respond to the needs of its users A tool that will establish the new standard for electronic legal research in the Philippines

2009 Tz!Technologies.

Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

e-Library: Supreme Courts exclusive

1st Edition: powered by Folio Views 2nd Edition: powered by dtSearch

Desktop Search Online Search

Advantages of dtSearch over Folio Views

Synonym Search, Word-Stemming, Fuzzy Search

Limitations
Single hit-in-context per document, No Field Search, No Table of Contents No facility to links laws, decisions, rules & comments
2009 Tz!Technologies.

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Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

Internet Research: Free access to legal resources

Websites with legal contents

Supreme Court: sc.judiciary.gov.ph Lawphil: lawphil.net ChanRobles: chanrobles.com Senate: senate.gov.ph

Online Search engines

Google Yahoo

Legal Blogs
Magazine of Normative and Developmental Law: mndlaw.net

Wikilaw
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Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

Google: Maximizing the most popular search engine

Why Google over other search engines:

Because a Google search returns the most relevant results (no proof on this claim)

How to maximize a Google search

Focused search: Limit your search to websites containing the specific legal resources to be retrieved
Example: site:sc.judiciary.com writ of amparo

Boolean search: Specify multiple criteria to make the search more specific
Example: writ of amparo and (granted or denied)

Synonym search: To retrieve words with similar or related meaning

Example:
2009 Tz!Technologies.

~decision
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Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

Google Cheat Sheet

OPERATOR EXAMPLE stranger self-defense estafa OR swindling res judicata" parricide convicted +consulta ~auto loan define:jurisdiction proof * doubt I'm Feeling Lucky FINDS PAGES CONTAINING... the words stranger and self-defense either the word estafa or the word swindling the exact phrase res judicata the word virus but NOT the word computer Only the word consulta, and not the plural or any tenses or synonyms loan info for both the word auto and its synonyms: truck, car, etc. definitions of the word jurisdiction from around the Web the words proof and doubt separated by one or more words Takes you directly to first web page returned for your query.
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Cont.. Google Cheat Sheet

ADVANCED OPERATORS site: inurl: allinurl: filetype: title: intitle: MEANING Search only one website WHAT TO TYPE INTO SEARCH BOX (& DESCRIPTION OF RESULTS) benchbook site:sc.judiciary.gov.ph (Search supreme court web site for benchbook info.)

2009 Tz!Technologies.

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Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

Cont.. Google

Limitations
No real proximity search Cannot search specific portion of websites with legal resource No Table of Contents Cannot limit search to specified type of legal documents (e.g. statutes only) No means to sort results by date or number of hits Limited hits in context for each document in the search result Cannot search by GR number or party No effective date filter No hit navigation within a retrieved document No means to annotate & add cross-references to documents
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Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

The Plan
Develop a software combining the best features of Folio Views and dtSearch with additional necessary features not found in either software Choices:
Component Folio Integrator Major Disadvantage Labor-intensive (content) Solution Capital CSPs/Virtualization Capital

dtSearch Engine No rights management Develop search engine Will take a long time

Decision: Use dtSearch Engine in a custom application

2009 Tz!Technologies.

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Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

haiNa: Electronic research at the bleeding edge..

Features
The numerous search options of dtSearch

2009 Tz!Technologies.

Very fast search engine Field search: search by GR number, Party, Statute number, Date Date range: Within, Before, After or On specified dates Wildcards: *, ?, = Boolean search: AND, OR, NOT Bilateral and Directed Proximity search: w/, pre/ Synonym search Word Stemming Fuzzy search Natural language search Variable Term weighing Phonic search Regular expression
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Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

Cont.. haiNa..
Custom Features
MDI interface Multiple highlighted hits-in-context Dynamic and user-customizable Table of Contents (TOC)
Facility to combine laws, rules, jurisprudence, local files & folders, programs, webpages, web search results and user comments in a single TOC User can create custom TOCs TOCs can be merged ADVANTAGES
Very effective tool for collaborative legal research Comprehensive organization tool for legal materials

Multi-tabbed internet browser

Focused internet search on specific portions of websites containing the appropriate legal resource Bilateral and directed proximity internet search
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Legal Knowledge at a buttons click

haiNa in action..

Run haiNa.exe for a test drive of the software at the bleeding edge of Philippine electronic legal research

2009 Tz!Technologies.

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