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Wikipedia’s Wikilaw Project

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From the ABA’s question of the week: QUESTION OF THE WEEK
PICKING YOUR BRAIN: What would you be willing to contribute to Wikipedia’s Wikilaw project?
There’s a new legal resource on the horizon, and it’s going to be written by you—or anyone else who has knowledge of the law and time to put it into words. It’s called WikilawSee the interesting debate on Larry Lessig’s blog about whether this is a doomed undertaking, and it’s being spawned from Wikipedia, the Internet-based encyclopedia that allows anyone to contribute and/or edit entries. The goal of Wikilaw—as stated on its home page—is to be the largest open-content legal resource in the world, and its creators are asking those with legal experience to share their knowledge.

With so much expertise in so many areas of the law, ABA members would seem well-equipped to make substantial contributions to this undertaking. Maybe you could share with the world some of your insights into international law, some especially helpful litigation techniques or ways to handle landlord/tenant disputes. So this week’s question is: What would you be willing to contribute to Wikipedia’s Wikilaw project?

There are prizes for the best entries, but since it’s only a mug, it may be tougher getting the winnings across the real border – so let’s brainstorm for the glory.

Comments

  1. Rob Hyndman
    January 16th, 2006 at 3:19 pm

    Simon,

    I thought seriously about lauching this about a year ago. Seriously enough that I reserved (.ca) domain names. My original concept was that it would be a content management system for small to medium sized firms. But (the lack of time) intervened. It’s in better hands now, of course. I think it’s a worthwhile effort but the main Q as with any wiki is will people contribute. My gut instinct is that they will.

  2. Simon C
    January 16th, 2006 at 4:18 pm

    Thanks Rob. There is a real need for this both for non-lawyers and lawyers too.
    Don’t underestimate the size of the job – but that said I would have put money on the inevitable failure of the Wikipedia – and look how wrong I would have been.

  3. John G
    January 18th, 2006 at 6:41 pm

    There are a number of wiki law projects under way. One with a pretty sound backing is http://www.jurispedia.org, based in France and appearing in several languages. For the moment its English-language contact is at the U of Ottawa’s Law and Technology project (per Marcus Bornfreund).

    Cornell U has something that looks like a wiki (http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/index.php/Main_Page), and there is also a private lawyer running http://www.wiki-law.org – not very full yet.

    The limits (in time, in continuity, in depth) to what people will do without being paid for it is a big issue in free access law, as it is elsewhere. I don’t have the answers…