Law means words. Or does it? Three innovative young lawyers have mapped out the law (www.lawmaps.org) using spider diagrams, also known as mind maps. These legal cartographers offer an alternative way of teaching and presenting the law. Instead of using text, the maps offer diagrammatic representations of the law and legal concepts.

The legal maps are impressively detailed and have been crafted in many areas of law for students at undergraduate level and in professional training. It is early days for this not-for-profit website but it should appeal to aspiring lawyers who are happy to stray beyond text and have faith in aficionados of mind maps who have for long claimed that they support speedier and improved learning (for example, www.buzan.com.au).

That said, most lawyers do not think in terms of maps. Many are nervous about any sort of graphic or diagram. Some even maintain that now they are grown-ups, they no longer need to read with the help of pictures. For others, however, a picture is indeed worth a thousand words — a view held by the growing band of lawyers who welcome the electronic presentation of evidence in the courtroom.

Access to the law online is finally moving closer. An updated version of BAILII is available for preview at http://alpha.bailii.org. BAILII is the British and Irish Legal Information Institute and provides the largest, free-of-charge online collection of British and Irish primary legal materials (www.bailii.org). The improved system is part of The Open Law Project, an initiative backed by the Joint Information Systems Committee, the body that funds most of the academic computing infrastructure in the UK (www.bailii.org/openlaw). Feedback is being widely sought. Commentators on online legal services are likely to compare the evolving BAILII with the Government’s Statute Law Database, to which the general public is soon to have access (www.dca.gov.uk/lawdatfr.htm).

This long-awaited database of UK legislation contains the text of all Acts that were in force on February 1, 1991 and all Acts and printed Statutory Instruments passed since then. It also contains local legislation, both primary and printed secondary. An online inquiry service was launched for government staff in May.

Several of the world’s clearest thinkers about the impact of the internet are American law professors. These individuals are not black letter lawyers. Nor are they philosophical jurisprudes. Nor, again, are they high-tech dilettantes. Instead, in their academic work, they write authoritatively and influentially in the tradition of social theory and their focus is the information economy.

One such person is James Boyle, of Duke Law School (www.law.duke.edu/boylesite). Another is Lawrence Lessig, of Stanford Law School (www.lessig.org). A third is Yochai Benkler, a professor of law at Yale, whose new book, The Wealth of Networks, is a monumental contribution to our thinking about the future (www.benkler.org).

It is not an easy book. It is not a short book. But it is profoundly important. Premised on fundamental changes in the way in which information is created and shared in society, Benkler’s research and arguments anticipate a networked information economy that is increasingly underpinned by peer production and non-market collaboration, and a society in which we should be able to reshape our principles of state, justice, freedom and law.

The author lectures and consults internationally. He is IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice and Honorary Professor at Gresham College. He can be contacted at www.susskind.com

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