The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales (ICLR) launch of ICLR&D taps into dramatic changes in legal research and the proliferation of legal-tech, as the legal sector begins to demand more from their data. The launch reflects different approaches between UK and North America.

‘In a stange place’

Whilst other markets such as the US and Canada have embraced the use of historical data to inform their legal solutions, to date this has not been fully realised in the UK says ICLR. To address this issue, ICLR has created ICLR&D with the aim of improving the accessibility of primary sources of English law: case law and legislation. Acting as an R&D lab, ICLR will be leveraging an extensive archive of structured case law data dating back to 1865 to provide support to collaborative projects which utilise primary legal texts as a source of data and insights. The new lab will aim to promote a collaborative approach to solving issues within the legal sector utilising technology and data. Commenting on ICLR&D’s inception, Daniel Hoadley, head of research and design, said ‘legal innovation in the UK is in a strange place. On the one hand, the big firms are furiously investing in technology to gain an edge over their competitors. On the other hand, the basic components of a modern legal system that works for all, such as comprehensive open access to case law, are conspicuous by their absence. We want to marry our data and expertise in the common law domain with new techniques and emerging technologies to level the playing-field and create platforms and tools that will help the English legal system to catch up with the pace of development across the Atlantic.’

Collaborative approach

ICLR will be working closely with a number of key players in the legal market to identify and facilitate projects that will support the workings of the legal sector in new and innovative ways. Potential partners will include the courts, universities, barristers, law firms, third-sector organisations, technology companies and start-ups. Examples of projects ICLR&D is working on, include collaborating with journalists and researchers to understand the trends and insights that lie hidden in the case law corpus, developing a gold-standard structure for primary legal text markup, and, the development of open source models capable of accurately identifying entities peculiar to legal writing, such as issues, axioms and ratio.