World Legal Information Institute

User Guide to WorldLII

World Legal Information Institute

User Guide to WorldLII

This User Guide is © AustLII but may be copied unaltered and distributed.
Version: 1 May 2007 - Check the WorldLII website <http://www.worldlii.org/> for later versions.

Essentials: Free access, World-wide coverage

The World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) <http://www.worldlii.org/> provides free access to the following:

• Over 800 full text Databases from over 120 countries on all continents. They can be searched together, separately, by jurisdiction, or as individual databases. They include many hundreds of thousands of cases and pieces of legislation, plus treaties, law journals, law reform reports and other content. Almost all of the databases come from other Legal Information Institutes in the Free Access to Law Movement.
• A Catalog of thousands of websites and a Websearch which allows searches of the content of many (but not all) of the websites in the Catalog.
• A ‘Law on Google’ facility which assists users to more easily find legal materials from a particular jurisdiction, or on a particular topic, using the Google search engine.

Browsing the Databases

From the front page

To go to all databases from a country, there are 2 options from WorldLII’s front page:
(i) on the L, choose ‘All Countries’ for an alphabetic list of all countries; or choose the Region for the country, then the country; or choose the Grouping for the country, then the country - .all of these take you to the country’s page, from which you can search the Databases, Websearch and Law on Google for that country, or ;
(ii) on the L, choose ‘All Databases’, or from the top click on the number of databases on WorldLII – this goes to one list of all databases on WorldLII, grouped by region and country; searching is not provided, you can only browse to the database on the LII where it is located.

Additional materials which can be accessed from the front page:
Under ‘Libraries and Projects’ on the L are collections of databases on particular topics (eg ‘Privacy Law’) or from particular types (eg ‘International Decisions’, ‘Treaties’, ‘Law Reform’);
Under ‘Catalog’ are the main headings of the catalog of websites, including the Subject index;

Databases on country pages The databases are listed first on the country page, under ‘Databases’. Select the name of a database to go to its home page on the LII where it is located, which usually shows the number of items in the database, the range of years from which they are derived, the date of the most recent addition and tables of contents (annual and/or alphabetic).

Legislation databases

Front page of each database

[Database Search] limits scope of search to database named at the top of page.

[Name Search] limits scope of the search to names of legislation in this database. Search with key words in the title of a known piece of legislation.

‘Last updated: ...’ most recent date database was updated on system;
NOTE- does not indicate legislation is consolidated to that date.

Additional button on each piece of legislation or section (if available)

[Table] goes to the table of contents, at the entry for this section.

[Notes] displays associated notes; amendment histories etc.

[Noteup] searches automatically for materials on WorldLII which refer to this section.

[Previous] goes to preceding section; use for ‘stepping back’ through sections.

[Next] goes to the next section; use to ‘step through’ sections.

[Download] downloads copy of whole legislation (not single section); choose ASCII or (if available) RTF; if ASCII, print or save using normal browser commands

[Related Items] (if available) lists related items: Explanatory Memorandum, Statement, Notes etc

Case Law databases

[Database Search] limits search to only the current database.

[Name Search] limits scope of search to titles of cases in current database only.

[Recent Decisions] displays most recent cases added, by date of the case.

Searching the Databases

There are 3 search options in addition to searching from a database’s own front page:

• The Front page search is at the top of WorldLII’s front page - use to search all databases
• The Country page search limits searches only to databases from the country selected; it also allows searches of the Catalog/Websearch or law on Google, for material from that jurisdiction.
• The Advanced Search Form (accessed from the front page) allows various special searches (eg legislation only); it also allows special search types (eg this Boolean query).

Connectors (used for all 3 search options)

Searching for phrases = To search for a phrase, put it in double quotes (eg “freedom of information”). This is not necessary for a Boolean search (ie if connectors are used) but it is better to be sure.

Search terms the same as connectors – If a phrase is searched for which contains a connector, the whole phrase should be put in double quotes (eg “fit and proper person”).

Display of Database search results

Where Databases are searched, four options allow different displays of search results.

By Relevance – The default results display is by order of likely relevance to the search request, most relevant first. The percentage ranking (‘relevance ranking’) next to each document shows 100% for the first document if it contains all search terms. All others are ranked pro-rata to that document according to number, frequency and location of search terms they contained. The ‘Collapse Multi-sections | Show All Sections’ option makes search results which contain numerous references to legislation more readable by reducing the number of sections visible.

By Date – Results are sorted by date order, most recent date displayed first (ie reverse chronological order). Legislation is displayed by the date the Act was passed or the Regulation made, not by the date on which a particular section or clause was amended. The ‘Collapse Multi-sections’ option is available.

By Title – The results are sorted alphabetically by the title of the document, and displayed from a-z. The ‘Collapse Multi-sections’ option is available. The ‘Collapse Title’ option groups the results together based on the first alphanumeric character in the title, that is, ‘A’ to ‘Z’ and then ‘0-9’.

By Database – The search results are displayed grouped into the databases on which they are located. The databases are displayed in the order in which they appear in WorldLII’s menu structure (not by number of results found in each). To view the results from only one database, click on the number of documents next to the name of the database (Note: to see the results from all databases again, it is necessary to use the ‘back’ button). The ‘Collapse Listing | Expand Listing’ option is only available with the ‘By Database’ display.

[PDF] results – If a search result has ‘[PDF]’ in front of it then it can not yet be displayed as a HTML file (a web page), but instead will automatically be downloaded as a PDF (Portable Document Format) file if the link to the result is selected. PDF files are in the original format provided by the data source and do not have internal hypertext links or ‘context’ and other navigation buttons otherwise found on LII documents.

Modifying searches - The Search Results page always displays your current search (or stored search) at the top of the page, allowing it to be modified and another search run.

The ‘Repeat search over:’ box On the right side of each display of Database search results, the options in this box allow the same search as has just been executed to be repeated over any of 4 other broader sets of data: (i) All WorldLII databases (valuable if only one jurisdiction has been searched); (ii) Catalog & Websearch (all countries); (iii) WorldLII Databases (all databases in WorldLII); and (iv) ‘Law on Google’ (no limitation to one country or jurisdiction).

‘Context’ - going to the occurrences of search terms - The ‘Context’ button appears at the top of most documents found in a search. Click on the red arrow to go to the first search term, then forward (or back) on further red arrows to go from one occurrence of search terms to the next. Wait until the whole document has loaded before using the ‘context’ button ie when the status line at the bottom of the screen says ‘Document done’.

Advanced search

Advanced Search is used principally to choose special selections of databases, and also to select some special search types which it may be easier to use here.

Special selections of databases

The following special selections of databases are available (the default is ‘All Databases’).

Selecting ‘All Legislation’ on WorldLII Remember to change back to ‘All Databases’ after a search. To change a selection you must return to the Advanced Search Form.

Search type options

The ‘Autosearch’ method used on the front page and on the country pages of WorldLII tries to work out which type of search the user is conducting and automatically uses that type. The advanced search page allows the choice of 5 other search types (it is rarely needed, and only by advanced users):

• this Boolean query – (default option) Assumes logical and proximity connectors (see above) will be used. Equivalent to including any logical or proximity connector in a search from the front page or a country page. Hint - use reasonably broad searches (to aid completeness), and rely on the relevance ranking then to provide more precision.

• any of these words – Equivalent to putting a Boolean OR between each separate word. Simply enter a few words to indicate the main concepts for which you are looking (eg ‘pollution river’ or ‘program patent’). Equivalent to entering search terms with no connectors on the front page or country page (default option.
• all of these words – Equivalent to putting a Boolean AND between each separate word.
• this phrase – words entered are treated as a literal phrase even if they contain terms normally connectors (eg ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘near’). There is no need to put inverted commas around the phrase. You can achieve the same thing by putting double quotes around a phrase in any search.
• this document/legislation title – only titles are searched, not the text. This option is used rarely. You can also limit searches to titles only by using the ‘title()’ or ‘@’operator (eg ‘title(privacy)’).

Searching from country pages – 3 options

On each country page, the following search box appears. The default search scope is ‘Databases’ for that jurisdiction (if it has no databases, ‘Catalog & Websearch’ is the default).

The Databases search option

The Databases search will then search all of the databases listed on that country page, but no others. To search only one of the databases, go to that database’s home page and choose the ‘Databases Search’ option (described above). There is at present no way to search a combination of databases from one jurisdiction on this page (an enhancement is planned) but you can use the ‘Advanced Search’ page to do this.

The Law on Google option

If the ‘Law on Google’ option is chosen and search terms inserted, then the search is sent to the Google search engine to be carried out, but it is first transformed in three ways:

• The search syntax used by the WorldLII search engine is translated into that required by Google’s search engine (for example, ‘or’ is translated into ‘OR’; phrases are put into quotes);
• Terms to restrict results to those relevant to the jurisdiction are added; eg a search from the NSW page will have ‘New South Wales OR site:.nsw.gov.au’ added;
• A list of law-related search terms is added to reduce the likelihood of sites unrelated to law being found or ranked highly.

It may sound complicated, but it generally produces good results.

The Catalog & Websearch option

If ‘Catalog & Websearch’ is selected and search terms inserted, then two results will be displayed.

The search results will first list ‘WorldLII Catalog - Categories found:’ and list the number of category pages in the whole WorldLII catalog (ie not just for the jurisdiction concerned) satisfying the search request, followed by the first four categories and a link to ‘More categories...’ if there are more. (This is being improved to limit the search to only display categories relevant to the jurisdiction concerned.)

The search will also search the full text of web sites listed in the catalog in any of the categories listed on the country page, or those below them in the catalog. In other words, a search from the ‘India’ country page should only find websites from India or about India. The results are not as good as the other two options but may sometimes provide additional useful materials. Use this option last.

Browsing the Catalog

The Catalog of websites may be browsed from the categories listed on a country page under the heading ‘Catalog and Websearch’. The categories listed relate only to the jurisdiction concerned. Selecting any of the categories will take the user to the relevant part of the WorldLII Catalog.

To go to Catalog categories other than those concerning a particular country, start from ‘All Catagories’ at the bottom L of the front page.

These LIIs participate with WorldLII in the free access to law movement