Presentation by Ivan Mokanov, Lexum at the Open Legislative Data seminar in Bucharest, 26.02.2013

1. Access to Legislation in Canada
Ivan Mokanov, Lexum
February 2013

2. “Laws are like
sausages — it is
best not to see
them being
made.”
John Godfrey
Saxe

3. CANLII.ORG

4. CanLII.org
The largest online provider of legal documents
in Canada (among commercial and free)
Free for all users, not even a registration
required
Publishes laws, regulations, court and
administrative tribunal decisions
Demo

5. CanLII.org – some more stats
14 legislative databases (13 regional
jurisdictions + federal)
7,000 current statutes
20,000 current regulations

6. CanLII.org – some more stats
200 courts and administrative tribunals
120,000 new decisions per year

7. CanLII.org – some more stats
30,000 visits per day
20 M pages downloaded per month
API now available for third party developers

8. WHY IS FREE ACCESS TO LAW GOOD

9. The principle
Ignorantia legis neminem excusat

10. The social deal
The citizens’ obligation to comply with the law
has as a counterpart the right to know the law

11. Transparency
The society has mandated the State to legislate
and citizens are entitled to scrutinize the
process and the result

12. Economy
Access to law strengthens legal security for
entrepreneurs and investors
It conveys a message of transparency and
predictability of the legal framework
Knowing the rules of the game

13. Responsibility
The State has the responsibility to make the laws
accessible
The state has always assumed this responsibility in
different ways

14. Oyez Oyez!

15. 2013?
With the advent of the Internet and the
technologies making information publishing a
much cheaper endeavor, the expectations with
regards the State’s actions in the field of
accessibility became much higher
Not simply access, but effective access

16. HOW TO MAKE IT HAPPEN

17. Who?
Free access to
law is not a one-
man show, but
rather a
collaborative
effort

18. Who?
The State cannot do all the work
The State needs to be an enabler (in the best case)
or should at least not stay in the way (in the worst
case)
Creating the conditions for the civil society and the
market to make it happen

19. 3 ingredients for a successful access to
law project
Data
Expertise
Money

20. Data
Providing the data is clearly the State’s role not only from
a principle point of view, but also from a practical one
The state is best-positioned being the source: making
information accessible by the source is most cost-
effective
Publishing can be attached to drafting systems which are
already in place
The State is the heaviest user of its own data and has a
direct interest in the development of a free access
environment

21. Data
As far as access to data is concerned, non-
technical considerations include:
Copyright over primary legal documents
Policy restrictions over distribution imposed by
the data source

22. Data
Technical considerations refer mostly to:
Formats (from least friendly to friendliest):
PDF, Word, HTML, XML, APIs
Once the data is managed in a structured way, the
cost of delivering it in a structured open format is
marginal

23. Content
Effective access
Enacted legislation vs. consolidated legislation
Enacted legislation is unintelligible without
consolidation. Ex:
“Subsection 23(2) of the Act is amended by adding
immediately after paragraph (b.3) the following:
(b.4) section 17.3;”

24. Nobody will get hurt from open data
It will foster innovation on the legal information
market - entrepreneurs
It will support civil society initiatives - NGOs
It will allow commercial publishing houses to focus
on user-facing features, instead of spending money
to work with poorly formatted data upstream
Access for citizens will be secured
Access for professionals will be improved

25. Getting data at CanLII.org
CanLII gathers legislative data in the form of
unofficially consolidated copies of laws made
available by all jurisdictions
38,000 laws are downloaded each week
1,500 contain changes in their text
75 of them represent real legislative changes

26. Money
After the project start, the next step is looking for
sustainability models
CanLII’s model – all Canadian lawyers pay to make
CanLII possible
Value creation and funding go hand in hand
In the beginning projects must deliver less with high
quality

27. Sustainability chain
Incentive for
innovation
FAL project
has the
Reinvestment
capacity to
takes place
provide the
service
FAL produces
positive context is
outputs and favourable
outcomes

28. Thank you!