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A legal collation aid for Books of Authority in many Canadian courts.

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digital-books-of-authority

Going to court in Ontario is expensive. There are a lot of reasons for that, but if you made a list of 'Costs that shouldn't be an issue in the 21st century' Books of Authority would be near the top. A simple technical solution could lower the cost of most trials in Ontario by $200-$500.

What is the problem you're trying to solve? Lawyers currently prepare a list of all cases they plan to rely on in a trial, and then print them in full to create a 'book of authorities'. For most cases, this means 6-12 cases, or about 200 pages. A copy of this book is handed to the judge, and a copy of this book is handed to lawyers for the opposing council. It is rare that more than a few paragraphs will be read at trial, but each side has to bear the cost of printing, binding, and transporting 200+ page books, in triplicate. Individual lawyers can't solve this problem. Even if they implement a streamlined system for printing the books, it's difficult to imagine getting costs much lower than $150.

We want to develop voluntary standards, and a web application that creates books by those standards, create training materials for lawyers and judges, and offer the solution to judges as something they can offer to council on a 'opt in' basis. Most lawyers prepare their books by drawing from 1 or 2 electronic databases of case law. CanLII is free to all and has a new API to help. Their cases have standardized naming and are displayed in HTML.

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