Derek Hamill

Information Technology Adviser, Law Society of New South Wales, March 1998

This paper details how the Law Society of NSW adopted the Internet as a business strategy for

communication and providing services to members.

1.) The Commitment 1

In June 1996, following a decision by the Law Society Council, budget was allocated

permitting the development and implementation of a first stage internet services site.

As a policy matter the Council of the Law Society adopted the Internet as its preferred

electronic medium for publishing and communicating with its members. Strategic objectives were formulated to implement Council policy and take advantage of the evolving Internet paradigm. The Internet implementation strategy sought to build an Internet site:

These objectives reflect that the Law Society has a vision and long term strategy for delivering

information and services to members via the Internet. From the beginning the site was planned, in terms of services and content, to reflect a holistic and integrated Law Society, and not an amalgamation of disjointed and isolated departmental and technocrat fiefdoms from within the Law Society.

The Law Society views the Internet as an important and strategic business tool to enable the Law Society to alter fundamentally the way it interacts with its members.

Importantly for the Internet strategy it was integrated and factored into the Law Society’s business and budget planning. The Law Society, therefore, has committed recurrent expenditure to fund and resource Internet projects to appropriate levels .

In the Law Society’s IT Strategic Plan KPMG identified and endorsed the Council’s earlier

decision to "...extend the use of the Internet as a strategic tool in communicating with and

providing services and information to the Law Society’s members and the public

(including other stakeholders in the legal domain...". KPMG identified the Internet as having the highest business impact and the greatest business urgency of the numerous recommendations made within the Law Society’s IT Strategic Plan.

Other principle drivers of the Law Society’s Internet strategy are:

development of Internet technologies and service;

Identify content managers to take the lead in maintaining the information;

Provide tools that assist with content creation and maintenance.

The Law Society is building a virtual community, where the common connection between the

Law Society and its members is digital, and where potentially closer relationships can evolve.

By taking advantage of Internet technologies the Law Society has an opportunity to reach into

every member's practice on a daily basis and create, over time, an indispensable service for

members that bonds them more closely to the Law Society.

This persistent delivery of the Law Society and its services into a member's practice should engender a more positive profile of the Law Society and improve its relevancy to both members and to potential members.

The Internet allows the Law Society to establish an infrastructure that enhances the ability of

the Law Society and its members to communicate, co-ordinate and collaborate with each other

to deliver business benefits to both the Law Society and its members.

The public and open nature of the Internet mean that it is an ideal medium for the Law Society

to provide services and information that make the law and its administration more open and

visible to the public.

independent of Web developers;

Purchased SUN Netra Web server, running Netscape Enterprise WWW server.

This functions as a public Internet server with integrated secure Web interface for systems

administration and server maintenance.

Co-location arrangement with Access One.

Hardware maintenance agreement with Mitsu Systems for Sun Computer.

Systems administration, maintenance and development agreement with Social Change

Online.

The design brief for the Law Society was to produce a professional and distinctive WWW site.

The WWW site was designed to be simple and intuitive for new users, content rich and

powerful for experienced users and provide cost effective value added services for Law Society

members. The design of the site had to support these goals. The design had to contemplate and

accommodate a large hierarchical information structure and the possibility of changes in design

at a later date.

One of the first and most important tasks was to develop the information hierarchy. This

required a significant audit of information holdings. This assisted in the graphics design process

and with future content planning. The goal was to arrive at a generic structure that

contemplated current and future resources.

Adding new content to the site should be intuitive and not demand significant further site planning. The result was a ‘road-map’ for content implementation and a hierarchical design styleguide (that is, the ‘look’ of a document is controlled by its position in the information hierarchy).

Every page was to be ‘branded’ and identified as being part of ‘Law Society Online’. The site was not to be burdened by graphics, but still be visually distinctive. Graphics were to be more than mere ‘eye-candy’, and permit navigation.

Pages must convey their position in the document hierarchy and also allow navigation within it. Pages must allow quick access to content. To this end, key index pages need to be succinct and yet convey the information contained underneath that level. The Home page and key content index pages must have no more than 2 screens of information. The visual branding, access to functionality and access to major content must be visible from the first screen.

Every page must have a consistent access to various functions supported by the site —

such as ‘Search’, ‘Site Map’, ‘Feedback/Contact Us’, etc.

It should never be assumed that the user has arrived at a particular page through any particular pathway. There is a distinction between buttons that are related to function and those related to content.

Designed for fast graphics download and pages being able to be displayed on low-end monitors.

The page design and layout is such that relatively few new images are introduced once a user has been to three HTML pages. Once an image is presented as part of a WWW page it stays in the computer’s memory and can easily be re-used on other pages without any time penalty for having to re-download the image. A technique to ensure pages are presented quickly is to re-use previously presented graphics.

The site was carefully planned and designed to allow easy, intuitive navigation, and speed of

access. We relied on simple interactivity strategies which produce the high levels of functionality with the lowest dependence on technology.

This allows, for example, the creation of header and footer html fragments. There are significant

advantages to this: Separation of content from design; Avoidance of HTML frames; Don’t have to rely on image maps; Maintenance of design happens in one place; Easy to redesign entire site or post site wide messages; Ability to put dynamic date and URL stamps on pages.

Every page is structured in such a way that all other major areas of content are no more than 3

links away. This is done by: Having an information hierarchy that is ‘not too deep and not too wide’; Ensuring there is always navigation hierarchy links; Ensuring a detailed contents page (site map) is available from every page; Ensuring every page has important function buttons; Every footer has a ‘Go Menu’ —allowing for navigation other significant areas of content.

Amending pages is largely a matter of amending content (text), not the enclosing HTML

structure, page layout and graphic design. Administrative control has seen the implementation of HTML version control and HTML validation.

Adoption of Dublin Core meta data standards.

Draft Guidelines for World Wide Web Access under the Disability Discrimination Act and

specifically, the NSW Attorney General’s Department "Universal Specifications" Accessibility Standards for Web Design. An example of designing for disability access, is the use of ALT tags in images ensuring pages display properly when ‘graphics is turned off’.

HTML pages have been designed to display on non-table enabled Lynx browsers.

BoulderIO, streaming data interchange format, is used on the site. BoulderIO is designed to handle multiple sources of data and formats and use legacy data efficiently. This enabled the Law

Society to reduce its disparate data sources to a common data format.

As BoulderIO is an open cross platform database interchange standard it permits the use of

powerful and complex search engines, provides a common set of tools for data massage and if required, upload to SQL databases or output to SGML/HTML.

Implementation of Perl modules (CGI.pm, BoulderIO, LWP, Net, etc) and RCS version control. Control of DNS, creation of hardware virtual WWW servers and creation virtual mail

domains. Setup of a secure server. Multiple forms processing, and majordomo email lists.

The server functionality and web design permitted the incorporation of subsidiary

organisations, and the possible creation of ‘resident’ virtual sites on the server. For example, Young Lawyers and Specialist Accreditation.

Content posting and maintenance was to be undertaken at its source within the Law Society and was to be independent of Web developers. Therefore ‘tailored’ rather than ‘shrink-wrapped’ publishing engines provided the ideal solution. Scalable item publishing engines, with a secure web interface, allow content to be added, deleted, tested. Indexes are created automatically as is the required ‘page design’ and HTML tags. No manual HTML editing in these areas occurs.

The ‘engines’ are a modular design that permits particular content to be ‘tailored’ to fit the engine and it also means that much of the underlying programming work is re-useable.

By normalising all data (whether it be from SQL databases, PC database programs, bibliographic and abstract management databases, text reports, Word Processing documents, etc) to a standard data interchange format, a common suite of publishing modules can process different content and provide different services.

A full time WebEditor was appointed. The term ‘WebEditor’ was deliberately chosen, rather than WebMaster, to suggest the non-technical nature of position. The focus for the WebEditor is on publishing and editorial skills.

The WebEditor manages content on the Web site and seeks to ‘unlock’ information held within

the Law Society. The WebEditor also functions as an evangeliser, facilitator and coach

(promoting the sharing of ideas and techniques) rather than a technocrat.

Measuring the effectiveness of the Law Society’s implementation of its Internet strategies is a

complex task. On one level, it is quite easy to state that there has been more than x million

hits. There are a range of other metrics, such as ROI (Return On Investment) which at this early stage are difficult to measure.

The statistic packages used, when analysed correctly allow the Law Society to assess the

success of services and information provided and therefore target those services and content

which has proved of value, via the statistic returns.

The Law Society is evolving its measurement processes. The Law Society believes that any of

its services should be measurable, quantifiable and justified as to their cost and absorption of

resources.

Total Hits: 3.5 million (November 1996 - February 1998);

Average hits per day - 18,000 - 20,000

Total pages served: Over 1 million (November 1996 - February 1998);

Pages served January 1998 - 135,000

Total data served: 16GB (November 1996 - February 1998);

Caveat email subscribers - 2,800

1997 Nov 1598

1997 Dec 3538

1998 Jan 3502

1998 Feb 3150

1998 Mar (12) 1486

Total: 13274

30,000 pages downloaded since launch in late November, 1997

5,700 pages downloaded a week

805 practice records downloaded (on average) each day

284MB of data has been downloaded from the practice directory

3,167 visitors from distinct hosts to the practice directory

Practising certificate survey June 1997 showed that 56% of the profession in NSW had access to the Internet, this was up from 36% the previous year.

Library Catalogue:

http://www.lawsocnsw.asn.au/resources/library/index.html

The Law Society's online Library catalogue database contains more than 12,500 items.

http://www.lawsocnsw.asn.au/resources/lsj/archive/

Searchable full text archive of all Journal articles back to February 1995. The Journal contains information on developments in NSW and Australian law and legal practice, and discussions on law reform.

http://www.lawsocnsw.asn.au/resources/lsj/subject/

The Journal subject index goes back February 1990, and is integrated with the Journal archive. Requests for articles to be faxed can be made if an article is not in the archive.

http://www.lawsocnsw.asn.au/resources/caveat/

A periodic news bulletin carrying matters of immediate importance to the NSW legal profession. The Caveat archive contains issues back to December 1990. There is also a free email subscription service to Caveat.

http://www.lawsocnsw.asn.au/directory/firms/

The practice directory contains over 4000 records. Different categories of legal practice, such as private practice, corporate and government are distinguished. It also includes other community, educational and representative categories of legal practice. An example of the latter are community legal centres, university faculties and aboriginal legal services.

http://www.lawsocnsw.asn.au/directory/members/

The members database of over 13,000 records can be queried using a number of different variables such as, practice type (private practice, corporate, government), location (region suburb,town), languages, accredited speciality and other qualifications such as Notary Public and Commissioner of Oaths & Affidavits.