The Birth of Quicklaw

My next door neighbour at Heenan Blaikie, Ryan Teschner ^[1] lent me this morning a history of the Queen’s Law School at 50 ^[2] – “Let Right Be Done”:
A History of the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University by Professor Mark D. Walters ^[3]
I was very pleased to see 3 pages about the early days of computerized legal research in Common Law Canada, which all started at KingstonThe story of Datum/Soquij is for another day..
The Genesis of Quicklaw
In October 1972, it was reported that a sense of manic chaos reigned in the house at 140 Beverly Street, just one block from the Queen’s campus: “anxious-looking individuals” paraded through the house and everywhere were machines producing “nothing but paper — paper that overflows filing cabinets, crawls out of cardboard boxes, submerges work desks and creeps across floor space.”Martin Jones, “Queen’s University Investigation of Computing & Law” The Queen’s Journal (31 October 1972) 10 In fact, this chaos was the QUIC-LAW project, “a unique and significant project,” it was said, “that promises to improve the quality of legal services throughout the world” by providing lawyers with instant computer access to legal resources. The mastermind behind the project was Queen’s law professor Hugh Lawford, and over time the project would meet and surpass these ambitious objectives.
Lawford’s interest in developing searchable computer databases for legal materials developed in the mid-1960s, and by September 1968, he had entered into discussions with I.B.M. to establish a project of “considerable proportions.”Queen’s Law Faculty Board Minutes, 105th Meeting (9 September 1968) (Dean Soberman’s expression). Queen’s Law Faculty Board Minutes, 108th Meeting (28 October 1968) (Lawford reports on “the progress of negotiations with I.B.M.”). A deal was finalized, and by the end of that year Lawford and Dick von Briesen, a visiting professor in the law school, were running a $2.5 million project on the legal applications of computer technology, funded jointly by Queen’s University, I.B.M. and the federal government.

QUIC/LAW — the acronym for Queen’s University Institute for Computing and Law — showed some early signs of success, but the issue of continued university funding soon became controversial. Lawford argued that if Queen’s did not continue to support the project, a purely commercial entity would develop the technology, and equitable access to it might be threatened.Hugh Lawford, Keith Latta & Richard von Briesen, The QUIC/LAW System of Editing and Retrieving Legal Documents (Kingston, Ont.: Queen’s University, 1970) at 1, 7-8. “The whole point of computerized information systems is to enable more people to have access to more information more quickly,” Lawford stated in 1970, and it would be “unfortunate” if the effect of computerizing information was “to make it into a valuable commodity and to restrict rather than expand its use.”“Notes for a Speech by Professor Hugh Lawford, Director, QUIC/LAW Project, Queen’s University on Wednesday, September 16, 1970” Queen’s Library, W.D. Jordan Special Collections – Lorne Pierce, Canada Pamphlet 1970 no. 021, 3. By 1973, however, I.B.M., the government and the university had withdrawn support for the project, and Lawford and von Briesen had established their own company, “QL Systems,” to pursue what they feared someone else would pursue — the commercial computerization of the lawBill Rogers, “Quicklaw founder a trailblazer in online legal research — Hugh Lawford’s on-line research database turns 25” The Lawyers Weekly 18:24 (30 October 1998)..

One year later, the system was ready for a trial run. It was the computer serviceman making the final installation of the equipment who put the first question to the new system: “[W]asn’t there a case where a cow was struck by a car driving up a hilly, winding road?”
Lawford doubted whether his system could produce the answer on the basis of such limited information, but he typed in the question anyway. Within fifteen seconds he had the answer: Fleming v. Atkinson, a case decided by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1959Lee Belland, “Computer law service not cowed by any question” The Toronto Star (25 January 1974) C9. Fleming v. Atkinson is reported at [1959] S.C.R. 513..Legal research would never be the same again.

In 1979 the new technology was made available to students at Queen’s: a computer terminal was placed in the library to permit access to the QL databaseMemorandum from Dean Adell to Law Students, “Re: Use of QL Systems terminal in Law Library” (6 November 1979) QA MAM Papers 1/3.. By 1989, the law library had a computer lab with 24 workstations and with access to various databases, QL included.

Associate Dean and Chief Law Librarian Denis Marshall explained in 1992: “University mainframe computers throughout North America are linked together by a series of regional communications networks known collectively as the Internet” — a reminder of just how quickly things have evolved“Trends and Technology in the Law Library” Queen’s Law Reports (Winter 1992) 5..

The QL system was original and hugely successful. Eventually Lawford sold the rights to the concept to the massive West Publishing Company in the United States, and it was used in the development of the “Westlaw” legal database. QL Systems was re-incorporated as Quicklaw Inc. in 1999 and merged with LexisNexis Butterworths Canada in 2002, with Lawford continuing as C.E.O. until 2004“Quicklaw founder Lawford retiring” The Lawyers Weekly 24:3 (21 May 2004). Lawford remained a member of the law faculty until he retired in 1999.

In recognition of his contributions to Canadian legal publishing, the Canadian Association of Law Libraries awards the Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing each year.

Homenaje a Hugh