Putting the Law Online, A Law.Gov Workshop

A public workshop co-hosted by the Wise Law Library at the University of Colorado Law School and Public.Resource.Org.

Over the past decade, many governments–state, local, and federal–have made some of their laws, regulations, and cases available online, open to all for use without restriction. While these efforts have improved access to the law, they have been uncoordinated, inconsistent, and too-often short-lived.

The purpose of the Law.Gov process is to document what is entailed to create a distributed registry and repository of all primary legal materials in the United States. The process has the broad participation of academics, practitioners, government officials, jurists, and other stakeholders.

In preparation for this report, a national conversation is being held through a series of workshops hosted by major law schools and centers around the country. The Silicon Flatirons Center at the University of Colorado Law School, together with the Wise Law Library at the University of Colorado and Public.Resource.Org, is proud to host a workshop in this series on Friday, April 2, 2010, in Boulder, Colorado.

At the April 2nd workshop, we will focus specifically on two questions of special relevance to the Silicon Flatirons and Colorado communities: First, what does Law.Gov mean for state and local governments? What special challenges and opportunities do we face that we might miss if we were to focus only on the federal government? We hope to have members from every branch of the Colorado state government present to provide their thoughts.

Second, we will ask what broader access to the law will mean for legal research and social science. What new tools and studies might we expect to see after cases and laws are placed online?

Preregistration is required for this workshop and space is limited. To preregister, click the link near the top of this page. A more detailed agenda will be posted closer to the time of the workshop.