In 2010, BAILII had its 10th birthday. Three years ago, in August 2007, BAILII included 76 databases covering 7 jurisdictions. The system contains around 11 gigabytes of legal materials and around 200,000 searchable documents. By August of this year, it now contains 284,568 searchable documents, a 29 gigabyte database and has 32,275 individual users per week and close to a million weekly page requests.
Adam Wagner gives a tribute to BAILII and other open access repositories in the UK Human Rights Blog. Their blog said:
"BAILII’s unassuming website looks like it has barely changed since its launch in March 2000. But its basic text-driven interface belies an elegant search engine providing access to an enormous wealth of case law and legislation. In a common law system such as ours, the decisions of judges form the law of the land. Amazingly, without BAILII, nobody without an expensive subscription service would be able to read the case law which shapes the UK justice system"
They offer a variety of BAILII RSS feeds (live updates) for a wide range of courts as well as specialist topics such as Special Immigration Appeals Nominet's UK Dispute Resolution Service or the First-tier Tribunal (Health Education and Social Care Chamber) which may be useful additions to complement learning materials on your VLE.
There are 2,387 domains that refer to BAILII - advice is given on how to link to cases and materials so that the link will always work, and to link to specific paragraphs.
BAILII makes its website available on a subscription-free basis for the benefit of the public, including pro bono organisations, neighbourhood law centres, students and users in developing countries. BAILII incurs substantial running costs in maintaining its database and website, and is dependent on a continuing flow of donations in order to remain in operation. Commercial users of BAILII (including legal or other professionals, and publishers) and educational institutions are requested to make annual donations to BAILII in order to assist BAILII in meeting its running costs.
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