Introducing the Common Law Project: A free, comprehensive wiki for law students
By Patrick Hartford (4L)
Ori Barbut and I have launched the Common Law Project, a comprehensive wiki for law students. Crunch time is here, and many of us are trying to find good case briefs and course maps. Finding notes is difficult, and if you find them they can be out of date or just plain wrong. A lot depends on luck and connections.
Our idea is simple enough. The Common Law Project is a free site full of case briefs and course maps. So what distinguishes us from the SLS wiki or similar resources online? Two things.
First, we built the Common Law Project with the best law school notes. We reached out to top law students at our school and across the country—gold medalists, Supreme Court clerks, etc.—and asked them for their notes. Thanks to their help, we compiled an initial library covering over a dozen areas of law, with more than 600 case briefs.
Second, we take full advantage of the wiki format. To grasp an area of law, you often need to look at the specifics of particular cases as well as how multiple cases fit together. Our library links the maps and cases, allowing users to jump back and forth between these two levels of detail.
Generally speaking, the common law doesn’t change dramatically from year to year (Jeffrey MacIntosh’s issues with BCE notwithstanding). Our hope is that, with the current library as a starting point, law students will contribute their own notes and keep the Common Law Project up to date.
There is a lot we plan to do going forward. Right now, the site layout is very simple. We are working to build a more advanced interface. We are considering adding a forum, where users can ask questions and discuss points of law.
We are also looking into crowdsourcing bar exam indexing. How many 3Ls are currently thinking about which indexing group they will join? Why not collaborate with hundreds of law students across Ontario and build an index together?
If any of this sounds appealing to you, join our site. Most importantly, if you have any ideas about what features you would like us to add, let us know. This initiative is very much a work in progress.
Visit us at www.commonlawproject.org, follow us on Twitter @CLP_Org, or reach us by email at [email protected].
