1. Free Access to Asian law via the Asian Legal Information Institute (AsianLII) Graham Greenleaf UNSW Faculty of Law Co-Director, AustLII & AsianLII graham@austlii.edu.au December 2006

2. Free Access to Law - a history of increasing coordination 1994 Legal Information Institute (Cornell) - the ‘LII’ name 1995 AustLII - first comprehensive national system: 217 DBsAustLII 1999-01: AustLII software used to start BAILII, CanLII, PacLII and HKLIIPacLIIHKLII 2001: World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) launchedWorldLII Free Access to Law Movement formed - DeclarationDeclaration 2002-04: Droit Francophone, SAFLII, CyLaw, JuriBurkina, NZLII join; others expand coverage - now 675 databases 2005: CommonLII (‘droit Anglophone’) covers 52 countries 2006: Asian Legal Information Institute launched (December) Primarily English and French languages so far … SINO search engine being developed to handle Asian languages

3. Free access to laws of Asian countries Much is available but … –Scattered over dozens of sites –Numerous formats and search facilities Asian Legal Information Institute (AsianLII)AsianLII –Funding support from AusAID, ARC, A-Gs –Supported by LawAsia and APEC SELI –Includes databases from HKLII and PacLII – 101 databases from 19/27 countries –Over 150K full text decisions; 15K legislation items –Australian launch 8 December 2006

4. AsianLII - purposes Provide free and public access to key legal documents from all Asian countries –Laws, cases, treaties, scholarship Support the rule of law through transparency Assist development of local technical capacity to provide free access to law –AustLII’s ‘incubate and migrate’ approach works –Provision of AustLII search engine and other tools Facilitate comparative Asian legal research Time for an AsianLII demonstration …AsianLII demonstration

5. Assistance needed from supporting organisations Assist AsianLII to obtain permissions to republish national cases, legislation etc Discuss building a national or regional LII that will become part of AsianLII Assist in building subject-specific Libraries on AsianLII Assist maintaining a country’s Catalog of links Let us republish your law school or association Journal in AsianLII’s Law Journals collectionLaw Journals