openlaws.eu: State-of-the-art report for legal, social and business aspects of re-use of legal information

This Deliverable specifies the main existing stakeholders involved in legal publication for the BOLD2020 vision, and their working practices with regards to the consumption, creation, use and exploitation of legal data. Workstream 1 involves the identification of the problem through a Soft Systems Methodology approach (Annex 1), the mapping of stakeholders and the identification of their understanding of the problem domain, the activities they are engaged in, and the key use cases for the re­use and consumption of legal data. It also maps the flows of data as a result of the legal, social and market limitations and identifies potential flows of value in the same context. Together with country case studies Deliverables 1.2.d1­5 (four reports based on protocol D1.2.d1), this report will feed into Workstream 2 activities 2.3­2.4, and the “White paper on the OpenLaws.eu open innovation community" (finalized in M24) to provide an updated set of recommendations based on the overall findings of the OpenLaws.eu project.

The report analyses using the standard subtitles for the BOLD2020 vision: big data, open data and legal data. In Big Data, it explains the term, its impacting by digitalisation, mash­ups, machine­readability, interoperability. Open Data is explored for the use of standards, licences, and the impact of reuse of Public Sector Information (PSI) as well as generating of open data by users. Free Data within open data is explored via the Free/Open Source Software movement, the reuse and enhancement of law as a public goods via the history of the Free Access to Law Movement (FALM). Legal Data is analysed within sectors of users including law firms, universities, citizens. The typology of judgements, legislation, regulations, soft law, legal literature is used. We examine consumption patterns, stakeholders, users, and ‘prosumers’. Prosumerism and the law is finally explored, which introduces the concept of the lawyer creating their own sources of law via both authorship and stewardship of online resources.