Free The Law

As the law continues to progress at a breakneck pace during the digital age, Harvard’s free the law project has taken the first step in freeing access to legal information, at least in the United States.

Harvard librarians are feeding over 40 million pages of legal texts through a high-speed scanner, in order to create a free and searchable database available to the public at large. The stated goal of Harvard is to improve access to justice since, basically since man invented writing, only a select few controlled access to the legal texts that represented the law.

The two main constraints to the right to an effective remedy are (1) access to information and (2) the costs of obtaining an effective remedy (legal fees, court fees, arbitrator costs, etc.). While Harvard is freeing legal information in the United States, Invest4Justice’s goal is to free the law with respect to costs, since everyone should have the right to justice. Knowledge is important, but in addition to knowing that one’s legal rights have been violated, it is important to have a remedy available when this occurs.

There can be little doubt that the legal profession and legal systems will change dramatically over the coming decades and this is a good thing, since it will no doubt make the law far more relevant and accessible by all.

• Invest4Justice

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