Professor Dr. Daniel Poulin of Université de Montréal Faculté de Droit and Lexum has published results of a recent survey of users of Lexum’s Supreme Court of Canada decisions Website: Surprising Survey Results, at Slaw.ca.
(Click here to visit the Supreme Court of Canada decisions Website.)
The results include the following:
- users “are less eager to access legal content on mobile platforms than Lexum had initially assumed”;
- users’ “appetite for social web-related services appears much more limited than anticipated”;
- CanLII is users’ “favorite web site when looking for legal information”;
- French-speaking users’ preferences and behavior differ in several respects from those of English-speaking users:
French speakers care more for the Supreme Court of Canada’s press releases than their English speaking equivalents (72% of French respondents say they consult them v. 49% of the English respondents). French speaking respondents are also three times more likely to appreciate SMS as a way to be informed of the arrival of new decisions on the Lexum site (11% v. 4%).
Proof that English and French minds don’t think alike, the approaches taken to find a case varies according to the language of the respondent. English respondents are especially fond of searching by case name where their French peers prefer using the reference to the official report. English users also seem more familiar with neutral citations than the French users.
The post also describes the survey methodology.
For more information, please see the complete post.
Tags: Free access to law, Legal information behavior, Legal information retrieval, Web 2.0 and law, Legal social media, Legal communication, CANLII, LexUM, Daniel Poulin, Public access to legal information, Supreme Court of Canada, Legal Websites, Slaw.ca, Anglophone users' legal information behavior, Francophone users' legal information behavior, SMS and legal information, Surveys in legal communication studies, Surveys in legal informatics
