On-line Legal Database Summarization

Author: Zhong Yi, Attorney at Law
Translated by: Michael Ni

Legal Research is one of the basic skills of being a lawyer and also one of the standards to evaluate a lawyer's practice skill. Some scholar said that" Legal research is kind of art and a kind of wisdom and a technical activity of solving a problem. We should analyze every topic to be researched and evaluate the tools we exploit so as to choose the best appropriate method. "For different lawyers in different majors have different applications and requirements on legal database, right choice and proper use are one of the key points of legal research and will have influence on the quality and efficiency of legal service. I briefly compared the following database on the basis of the usage of database from the view of foreign related intellectual property practice so as to attract professions to participate in discussion and complementation.

Chinalawinfo: http://law.chinalawinfo.com

"Chinalawinfo", Search System of Laws in China, is a intelligent legal search system produced by Peking University Center for Legal Information and www.chinalawinfo.com. Shanghai Bar Association provides every lawyer practicing in Shanghai an account for Chinalawinfo which is used as basic database by me. The characteristic of this database:
1. It provides laws, regulations, cases, documents, contracts, data and so on. The previous translations of database in English is just on average level, but the integrate cost performance is quite good.
2. "Intelligent Association" two-direction connection technology primarily solves association search. Besides some related laws and cases, jurisprudence documents can also be searched.
3. The disc provided can be installed into local computer and is very useful for off-line search.

Westlaw: http://www.westlawchina.com

"Westlaw" is an intellectual solution for legal study in China which is established by Thomson Reuters for legal professions in China and English-speaking countries based on the technology and experience of the leading legal information platform of Westlaw. The characteristic of this database:
1. It provides bilingual search in both Chinese and English on laws, regulations, legal topics, instruments of ruling and legal news.
2. "Legal Topic" is a unique feature of Westlaw which provide 32 legal topics. It covers 25000 legal points and every point collects statutes, rulings, related files and references, which enables you to get a general idea of the unfamiliar legal area.
3. It does not include bilingual data of cases, contracts and forms and its translations of those data are quite good but with small quantity.

LexisNexis: http://www.lexiscn.com

LexisNexis was established in China in 2001. It is spread widely in China due to its mega information resources and high-quality information services. Its characteristics are:
1. Providing bilingual database search on regulations, professional books and periodicals, practical materials, experts' opinions and case analysis and so on in both Chinese and English. It is a relatively comprehensive database;
2. Bilingual regulations with good quality of translations are of large quantity, providing some free-translation services for commercial clients, lacking case analysis and bilingual ruling documents.

CCH: http://www.cchchina.com.cn

CCH Asia is founded in 1987 which is a Wolters Kluwer business. CCH Asia aims at providing high standard repots to clients and enjoys high reputation all over the world.The data of CCH can be divided into five parts and the characteristic is:
1. Large amount of reports on specific topics in Chinese or English, laws and regulations and cases and so forth. For example: China Intellectual Property Law Reference Case Analyses, Case Digest and Full Text Judgments, Laws and Regulations are not so profound that the database can meet the requirements of professional intellectual property lawyers.
2. The reports on specific topics cover the whole Asian area (legal topics not involving China are all in English version) which can help lawyers to immediately get a general idea about the legal system in Asian countries in the aspects of accounting, business, human resources, laws and tax.

These four legal databases all provide laws of both English and Chinese version and bilingual cases. But they do not use GIM Technology to manage the current data, or at least they do not use GIM Technology to provide clients with high level bilingual or multi-lingual data with efficiency, which makes the terminologies and translations in the legal database, are not consistent under the same special topic. Moreover, legal databases still have some drawbacks like coving a very narrow area, lacking bilingual contracts and legal forms. Although we have advised four database suppliers to use GIM Technology, no substantial change will appear in a short period. So we can only try to establish an internal intellectual property database through GIM Technology.

The four legal databases mentioned above mainly provide information through the modes as follows:
1. Collecting laws, regulations, cases, forms and so on; providing research service for clients through classification and keywords. For example: Chinalawinfo, LexisNexis. ( I call them "data derived from mechanized search")
2. Laws, regulations, cases and documents are systematical inducted and coordinated by professionals to provide clients with integrated legal reports on specific topic. For example: CCH.( I call them "data derived from professional generalization")
3. The combination of "data derived from mechanized search" and "data derived from professional generalization"; For example: Westlaw (the blending of some topic and its sub-topic builds a complete legal report on specific topic)

I classified them based on the source of data and the search method. In fact, the above four databases more or less simultaneously use "data derived from mechanized search" and "commentary data". This classification makes it easy for users to get to know the characteristics or trend of database if users need to quote legal advice to search data derived from mechanized search base and if they need to search in the data derived from professional generalization base for studying some legal topic.

Taking an overall look at these four databases, I think Chinalawinfo's data is more comprehensive and its advantages are the good combination of legal documents and data derived from mechanized search and the local installation and usage of the disc. Westlaw's advantage lies in the good combination of the clear and rich classification of legal topics and data derived from mechanized search. LexisNexis also has a comprehensive database to provide certain amount of free-translation services, which will show its advantages on bilingual data in the future. The reports on special topics of CCH are the best among these databases. Chinlawinfo is more suitable for non-foreign-related lawyers. Foreign-related lawyers can choose LexisNexis; Those who have a higher requirement on database can combine Chinalawinfo with CCH. (The combination of "data derived from mechanized search" and "data derived from professional generalization)If Westlaw increases the quantity of his database in the future, it will be a better choice.

I reckon that under the irrevocable trend of global economy integration, a new multi-lingual database will appear which provides bilingual or even multi-lingual Translation Unit (TU), terminology search and comparison based on GIM technology under the preconditions of ensuring the quality and quantity of such a database and the efficiency of searching, Such database will become the tycoon in the on-line legal database market.

The comments above are only the feelings after my using of the databases and they are only for your references to raise the efficiency of legal research. Due to lacking time of systematically assessing the database products mentioned above, I do not ensure the accuracy and integration of such information. The information and opinions contained in this article do not indicate any support or prejudice to some database project.