Shecter on Making the California Laws Easy to Read

Robb Shecter, Esq., creator of OregonLaws.org and WebLaws.org, has posted Making the California Laws Easy to Read, at the Weblaws.org Blog.

In this post, Robb shows a screenshot of the new version of the California Codes that he is developing on the Weblaws.org platform. He says recent development of the Weblaws.org version of the California Codes is aimed at improving readability and navigation.

Robb also writes that the next steps of the the Weblaws.org California Codes development process will include adding many of the features of OregonLaws.org, including:

• Print feature
• Citations to sources
• Legal news
• Interlinked & related statutes
• Smart search

For more information, please see the complete post.

For more information on Robb’s approach to online legal publishing and free access to law, please see Robb’s VoxPopuLII post entitled The Recipe for Better Legal Information Services, and my post entitled WebLaws.org: What’s Next for This New Resource from Robb Shecter?

New Blog on Legal Informatics: Grant Vergottini: Legix.info: Applying Legal Informatics Technologies

Grant Vergottini of Xcential Group has launched a new blog entitled Legix.info: Applying Legal Informatics Technologies.

Mr. Vergottini writes that the purpose of the blog is to explore “how Legal Informatics technologies can be applied to create a world-wide semantic web for law.” He writes that his posts will address both “philosophical and technical” issues respecting legal informatics.

According to the first post, the blog will address such issues as “open standards,” Semantic Web technologies for law, and “how to model legislation in XML.”

Mr. Vergottini writes that the his next post will address the question: “How can we heed the call for better open source data without hindering the for-profit motive that will foster an industry?” He also invites readers to suggest topics for future posts.

In addition, Mr. Vergottini has recently introduced two innovative legal information technologies:

• At his Legix.info Website, he has developed a new legal identifier system based on the URN:LEX standard;
• Also at Legix.info, Mr. Vergottini has published SLIM (Simplified Legislative Information Model), an XML model for legislation, “under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license” (click here for documentation on SLIM, entitled Understanding SLIM (in PDF), and click here for the SLIM schema (in .xsd format)).

HT Ari Hershowitz’s tweet and Google + post.