Challenges in Improving Access to Asian Laws: The Asian Legal Information Institute (AsianLII)

Abstract:     
The Asian Legal Information Institute (AsianLII) is a free access legal research facility, developed by the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII), in conjunction with partners in various Asian countries. Launched in December 2006, AsianLII now includes 120 databases from all 27 Asian countries, from Mongolia in the north to Timor Leste in the south, Japan in the east to Pakistan in the west. It includes about 150,000 full text cases, and over 15,000 items of legislation, plus law reform reports, a few law journals, and other materials. All of this content may be searched simultaneously, and individual country collections, or individual databases, may be searched separately. Some of the larger collections are from the Philippines, India, Singapore, and (for legislation) Timor-Leste and Vietnam. AsianLII also includes Hong Kong databases from HKLII, and Papua-New Guinea databases from PacLII, and Korean and Taiwanese databases from GLIN at the Law Library of the US Congress, exemplifying cooperation between members of the Free Access to Law Movement. AsianLII already receives over 50,000 'hits' per working day. This paper discusses the challenges involved in building AsianLII, particularly in a region of such linguistic diversity: its rationale, technical features, approaches to partnerships, migration of technology and content control, and sustainability.

Keywords: Free access law, legal research

Accepted Paper Series