CaseLaw NSW is a resulting judgment management system which contains the following participants:

• Supreme Court;
• Court of Appeal;
• Court of Criminal Appeal;
• Land and Environment Court; and
• Administrative Decisions Tribunal

• improve the access, and timeliness of access, to decisions within the court system to enhance awareness of judicial decisions and aide consistency of decision making
• reduce the cost of storage and retrieval of judgments within the court system
• provide a refined searching system for judicial decisions to reduce research time
• provide improved and timely access to judicial decisions for the public on the Internet, and to reduce the cost for the public of access to decisions
• provide a streamlined electronic system for the distribution of judicial decisions to relevant stakeholders, such as commercial and non-commercial publishers and legal practitioners.

• a judgment production template using Microsoft Word to make the writing and formatting of judgments easier and to enhance consistency across the courts;
• a database to easily capture and translate relevant data for publication and distribution;
• high level inherent security to ensure data integrity;
• a system adaptable to the needs of all NSW Courts and Tribunals;
• an internal refined search mechanism to support judicial research; and
• delivery of judicial decisions to publishers and other interested 3rd parties electronically.

1. the judgment is produced in the ordinary manner using a specially developed Microsoft Word template that automates routine formatting functions associated with judgment production;
2. the judgment is imported as a Rich Text Format document into the CaseLaw NSW database by a judicial Associate or court officer relevant to each Court or jurisdiction;
3. a series of fields are completed to identify the judgment. Fields include the parties, reference number, judge, keywords, legislation cited, cases cited and so forth. These fields are used to generate a standardised Cover Sheet for each jurisdiction. In addition to these fields, the author requests a sequential citation number for the judgment from a centralised database which is automatically inserted. The medium neutral citation itself is constructed automatically by the database from the fields completed by the author to ensure consistency and accuracy in our approach to citation;
4. a security feature built into the database allows the judgment to be set to `draft’, `restricted’ or `public’ status. Ordinarily, the judgment is stored in the database prior to handing down and would be saved as a `draft’ or `restricted’ judgment. I will comment further on the security status of judgments below;
5. on handing down, the judgment is shifted from its `draft’ or `restricted’ status to a `public’status, authorising its publication.

FOLLOWING BY ARE:

• decisions are immediately available to participating NSW courts and tribunals across an Intranet supported by a Wide Area Network;
• decisions are replicated to the Attorney General’s Department’s web service, LawLink NSW, on a regular daily cycle.

As mentioned, the security of judgments prior to handing down was of critical importance to many of the courts. Decisions in most cases are entered by the Associate, Judge or a registry officer prior to the handing down of the decision. This allows the decisions to be ready for distribution as soon as it handed down in open court. This was one of the reasons for being able to assign a security level to the judgment at various stage in the production life cycle.

The draft status limits access to the decision to the authoring judge and their associate. Ordinarily a draft will be activated at the time the text is settled by the author and is ready to be allocated a citation number. After a judgment is drafted using the Word template it will be imported into CaseLaw NSW as a draft, permitting the completion of the coversheet and automatic allocation of the citation reference. While a judgment is in draft status, it can be accessed only by the author of the judgment and their associate, and can be modified as required.

Restricted status registers the judgment has having been handed down, but prevents access except by the author judge and associate. This status is ordinarily used in cases where the publication of a judgment is restricted because of a non-publication order. In this status, as in the `public’ status, the judgment cannot be modified except by the author or associate. Any modification of the judgment automatically prompts a revision date which is incorporated into the medium neutral citation. This ensures the integrity of the judgment and acts to notify users of the judgment that a modification has been made.

The best way to view case law from NSW and nationally is through Austlii. It contains all cases and legislation from all states and territories.

It is estimated that the NSW courts and tribunals will contribute almost 2500 decisions to public Internet services this year alone. On current projections, it is not unrealistic to expect that a total of more than 30,000 decisions from NSW courts and tribunals will be available to the public to search in the next 10 years alone. CaseLaw NSW is a first step in realising the potential of the web not only to deliver legal information to the courts and community in a timely, consistent and efficient manner, but also to provide tools that allow that information to be interrogated in a more meaningful way.

(Materials from http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/CompLRes/1999/10/index.html)