From court listings to case law, legislation to court transcripts, the criminal justice and legal sector generates vast amounts of data each day. The legal data landscape and ways in which it is exchanged across the sector are complex and often underpinned by systems that weren’t designed for effective data sharing or publishing.
Taking a more open approach for the sector would help to address inequality, inefficiency and accountability. It would inform public policy, improve access to justice and contribute to public confidence in court proceedings. There are several steps the sector could take to adopt a more open approach. It could open up new data sources and improve data sharing for those in the sector in order to improve trust, create opportunities for collaboration and help people to understand the legal process from the outset. Finally, it could work to engage people in the ecosystem with more accessible legal data.
Adopting an open approach for the legal sector: key considerations
Transforming the ways in which organisations collect, manage and publish legal data will present certain challenges that must be made clear from the outset. An important point of reference here is the Data Spectrum, which can help us to categorise data, from ‘closed’ to ‘shared’ to ‘open’. Some data should be open, some shared between groups and some closed, depending on its type.
Any approach to making data open must balance transparency with privacy. Data that needs to be private should be kept private. Within the context of the legal sector, a strong focus must be placed on ensuring that vulnerable victims, witnesses and defendants are protected in sensitive cases. However, where data can be open – such as judgements (case law), court listings or court performance statistics – it should be open. Both privacy and openness build trust, and our openness principles for organisations handling personal data can guide organisations in getting the balance right.
This is an excerpt of a post from our partner, the Open Data Institute. Read the full post here: Strengthening our Legal Data Infrastructure
