Revamped online legal portal to help lawyers cut research time (5 Jul 2007)

By May Wong, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 05 July 2007

SINGAPORE : Lawyers now have a better way to search for materials to help them prepare their cases.

They can now turn to a revamped online legal portal - LawNet 2 - that has more comprehensive data.

This may also help cut costs for clients in the future.

The revamped website was launched by the Chief Justice on Thursday.

Saving previous searches done for particular cases and browsing content of cases according to subject matter - these are some of the new features offered under LawNet 2.

Lawyers can save time on research and also refer to cases from other countries such as the UK.

"Although we strive to develop our very own body of case law, we cannot dispense with the main body of common law materials, especially those reported in the official series of the English reports. We cannot be nationalistic in our laws when there is a much richer corpus of common law materials that we can tap on from other common law jurisdictions," said Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong.

Lawyer Lim Seng Siew said: "It translates to better quality service to my clients. (I can) search across databases and there's also an email alert feature, where I don't have to actively go into LawNet to look at what are the recent developments, but LawNet will push this information to me.

"That means I'm better informed, and if I'm better informed I'd be able to provide my clients better quality legal advice."

Another new feature on the website allows lawyers to use a comment box to give their thoughts about the cases and comment on the decisions made.

Currently, a one-man law firm pays $60 a month for the subscription. But in three months, he'll have to pay $63.

That's paying just a little more for a lot more services provided by the improved website.

Over 80 percent of the 3,500 practising lawyers use LawNet 2 now.

The aim is to get more smaller law firms to subscribe to the service.

To watch the news clip from Channelnewsasia, visit YouTube - Launch of LawNet2 Portal.