FLAG Foreign Law Guide

The FLAG Foreign Law Guide of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, is a searchable database which consists of a "collaborative Internet gateway to the holdings of foreign, international and comparative law in UK universities and national libraries."

Use of the search mechanism is a bit quirky and the database essentially finds internet library links in the UK to the subjects requested.

The FLAG 2002 Press Release wrote about FLAG as follows:

"FLAG (standing for Foreign Law Guide) is an Internet gateway to statute, case law and treaty collections held in nearly 60 UK libraries. It includes details of the active and historic collections in over 50 universities including Oxford, Cambridge, London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Cardiff. It also features the vast collections of foreign and international law held by the British Library, the Advocates’ Library (part of the National Library of Scotland) and the National Library of Wales. Of special interest is the inclusion of details of the law collections of research institutes covering Slavonic, East European, Russian and Arab affairs.

Within seconds, it is now possible to trace which libraries in the UK hold collections of legislation, case law or treaties for any one of over 200 countries (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland excluded). The database also includes locations for the working documents, proceedings, decisions and resolutions of over 60 international organisations, such as the World Trade Organisation and the Council of Europe (the European Union is excluded). It helps users identify the strongest collections of international and comparative law on a range of over 40 topics, including arbitration, intellectual property and environmental law."
.

Blawgs, Blogs and the Law

Sarah Kellogg has a nice piece about blawgs, blogs and the law at DCBar.org.
There is very little question that as blawging increases, specialty blogs for every area of law will surface, and indeed are surfacing, and that such blogs will become required reading down the road for people in the profession dealing with a particular legal field. Some law professors have already seen this vision, whereas the bulk of legal faculty apparently flounder in the fading world of yesteryear.

Still, the law is at the forefront of the blog movement and we see much innovation in legal blogs, whereas most of the rest of the academic disciplines are still not even out of the starting blocks. Most academics are still publishing to generally inaccessible traditional monopoloy-oriented peer-review journals, grinding out the same old jargoned pablum, without realizing that the world of tomorrow is beginning to pass them by.
.