Hi everyone, "charge like a wounded bull" Alistair you have hit the nail on the head. With the new government now in full swing I am looking anywhere for support to encourage Phil Goff to pile more government resources into FREE online legal databases. THe government already spends a massive amount on lawyers and also something like $100 million on legal aid per year. Therefore any investment in this area will reap immediate dividends for the Government and the principle of user pays should not be applied to public access to the law. It is vital that large private legal databases do not gain a foothold because the only access to them will be by lawyers who in turn will offload the cost to their clients. Everyone has the right to know at no cost what the law is. I beleive that the legal profession is grossly overated and in fact backward in the area of information technology. The fees charged by ALL lawyers is outrageous. I have seen numerous cases where lawyers have done more harm to their clients than good. The Australians are on the right track with the Australian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) http://www.austlii.edu.au but even so with more government backing far more can be achieved. When the NZ government "gave away" Government Print (GP) it appears that they gave away a lot of the copyright on the Statutes,legislation,rules,regulations< Hansard etc so it appears that getting all this on the Internet is now more complicated. There is a bit of free legal information available such as the Statutes but really it is of token nature and piecemeal in nature. Some providers such as Butterworths,Status,etc do provide some free case reports but really as a sweetener to the paid services. Hansard is available free of charge but if you want to search it there is a cost. Sure any initiative should be rewarded but when it comes to the law the government must take more responsibility. If a proper National Legal Database is set up then the rates that lawyers charge can be halved. Most lawyers are not worth more than $50.00 per hour in any case. Regards Peter M. At 10:40 AM 14/2/00 +1300, you wrote: >> There is a guy here in CHCH who does this sort of thing, I will try and >> rtrack his name down, and get back to you.... >> >> Cheers, >> >> Jeremy Coulter >> Application Developer >Plenty of them up here too J, but they want to charge like a wounded bull! >Alistair+ >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- > New Zealand Delphi Users group - Offtopic List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Offtopic List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
