Wikis for Lawyers
Lawyers in many settings, both within the legal aid community and without, have begun to develop wikis to share information on relevant topics and collaboration around legal issues. Below is a list of wikis in several areas, from wikis centered around legal aid issues to wikis run by courts, to wikis tracking legislation and legal scholarship. These wikis range in size and use different technologies—the intent is to present a breadth of examples of wikis in practice.
Legal Services Wikis
Poverty Law Resources for New Legal Aid Attorneys
Compiled and edited by the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, this wiki features resources of interest to the new legal aid lawyer, including the full text of the Poverty Law Manual for the New Lawyer. The articles in this manual, originally published in 2002, describe the basics of the principal legal issues facing low-income clients and discuss the skills needed for poverty law practice. Articles are currently being updated by their original authors. This wiki also includes links to relevant governmental agencies, federal statutes, case law, and organizations of interest.
Helps the survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita obtain adequate assistance from FEMA by providing information about FEMA programs and what benefits survivors should receive. Co-sponsored by the Shriver Center and the Public Interest Law Project. Features include Survivor Testimony, Housing Recovery, FEMA Litigation, News and Links & Assistance.
Georgia Legal Services Food Stamp Fraud Wiki
Developed by Brad Sperr of the Georgia Legal Services Project and Mike Monahan, pro bono project director at the Georgia Bar Association, this wiki is intended to both educate and generate discussion about effective advocacy of food stamp fraud cases in Georgia. Restricted to registered users.
A collaborative effort to provide relevant, current information on legal issues facing people with criminal records in Michigan. Based on the manual Providing Civil Legal Assistance to People with Criminal Convictions in Michigan produced by Legal Aid of West Michigan and hosted by the Michigan Poverty Law Program.
Courts
Currently features the full text of the Practitioner’s Handbook for the Seventh Circuit. Spearheaded by Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, the intent of the wiki is to document notes on practice and procedure before the court of appeals, not to act as a forum on substantive law.
Legislation
Project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Media and Democracy. A collaboratively written “citizens’ encyclopedia on Congress,” designed to shine more light on the workings of the U.S. Congress. Includes user-contributed information on each member of Congress, including the member’s voting record, information on controversies concerning the member, biographical information, campaign contributions and personal finances, committees and affiliations, and links to articles and other resources.
Tracks federal legislation. Enables registered users to comment, “vote†for or against bills, discuss, contact legislators, etc. Project of Jim Harper, Director of Information Services at the Cato Institute, a conservative public policy research foundation.
User-created wiki on the Utah Legislature.
Legal Reference
Cornell Law School’s effort to build a collaboratively created, public-access law dictionary and encyclopedia. Welcomes contributions from qualified experts. Encyclopedia features articles on 130 legal topics, including bankruptcy, child custody, disability law, education, employment/employment discrimination, food stamps, health, human rights, immigration, landlord-tenant, Medicaid, Medicare, mental health, unemployment compensation, and welfare. Dictionary features 193 articles.
Dictionary of civil and common law terms. Project initiated by Vicenç Feliú; law librarian at Louisiana State University.
A wiki for law librarians interested in researching with wikis and creating wikis for their own libraries.
A project of law schools in France, Vietnam, Netherlands, Germany and Canada, JurisPedia is an encyclopedic project of academic initiative devoted to worldwide law, legal and political sciences. Good source for international law resources. It contains more than 300 articles available in seven languages.
New version of Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, originally published in 1999, which was collaboratively updated with material added on the wiki for the original book. Code v2 is now online in a SocialText wiki; contributors are invited to comment for a third edition of the book.
# Conor Kenny (December 5th, 2007 2:57 pm):
I’m one of the staff editors of Congresspedia and we’d love to have some lawyers or other policy experts come and make additions to Congresspedia. We have an extensive collection of articles on past and current legislation (click on “Legislation and Issues” at the top of the Congresspedia homepage. Please email me if you’re intersted: ckenny [at] congresspedia [dot] org.
# eJustice » Blog Archive » Wikis for Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing (February 13th, 2009 11:19 am):
[...] what they can and cannot do, and how to choose a wiki platform. Accompanying articles offers some examples of law-related and legal services wikis and choices for creating low-cost [...]