In 1997, 1999 and 2001 the first three International "Law via the Internet" conferences were held in Sydney (Australia) and hosted by the Australasian Institute of Legal Information (AustLII). In 2002, this international conference was held in North America and hosted by the LexUM lab at the University of Montreal. LexUM developed and manages the Canadian Legal Information Institute project. Last fall, AustLII once again hosted the conference in Sydney. Over the years the Law Via the Internet Conference has become known as the main conference focusing on the uses of the Internet for law and law-related issues.

Papers presented at previous conferences have been published in journals such as E-law, the Journal of Law and Information Science, and the Journal of Information, Law and Technology.

This Conference unites members of Commonwealth countries, the United States of America, French speaking countries, the twenty five countries of the European Union, and developing countries.

The Conference aims to bring together all actors in the legal realm: from the authorities, civil servants, local government officers, members of Parliament, professors, researchers, judges, attorneys and lawyers to diverse contributors and participants in the process of publishing and consulting legal information on the Web.

As in the past, Law via the Internet 2004 will hold several events for all these diverese groups to meet.

On the morning of November 3rd, a technical session and an institutional session restricted to representatives of the various LII (Legal Information Institutes) will be held. Another session devoted to the storage of computerised legal documents will be held on the afternoon of November 3rd.

On November 4th and 5th: Plenary sessions bringing together those working in an institutional context and private practice will be held.

A further session will be held on the afternoon of 3 November, devoted to the storage of computerised legal documents.

Papers must address challenges related to on-line legal resources. Subjects of particular interest include, but are not limited to:

1. The Creation, Development and Dissemination of Law.

 Codification

 Computer-assisted law development

• Consolidation processes, the Internet and law reform
• The role of Internet in the publication of positive law
• XML and legislation, the development of resources and of the challenges
• The translation, convergence and distribution of standards
• The development and transposition of international standards
• Access to regional standards

2. The On-line Dissemination of Case Law.

 The organisation of case law database inputting: those involved, selection

 On-line case law: the move towards a computerised court registry

 Internet-based case law and the protection of personal data

 Rules and techniques for making case law data anonymous

3. The Legal Internet: New Resources, New Inequalities

 Free access to law through the Internet: a new guarantee of democracy ?

 Free access to law through the Internet: a new forum for the struggle between influential trends

 Accessibility and intelligibility of law, the demands of open-access law on the Internet : an European principle?

 Access to law in developing nations : the Internet effect

 Legal Information Institutes and the open access to law : an interim situation report

 The development of the electronic-data market

• computerised commerce, a stroke of luck for legal publishing ?
• free software/free data/free Internet ?
• recent developments in publisher/consumer relations
• open access to the texts of legal reviews, creative commons; open access initiatives

4. Keeping Legal Data

 Who should keep computerised legal data?

 How should computerised legal data be kept?

• Storage of ministerial intranets
• Storage of notarised data
• Storage of private data

 Keeping legislation history

 Computerised official registration

 Non-accessible data or "shady areas"

Paper Submission Guidelines

Authors are invited to submit texts representing as yet unpublished original work.

All papers submitted will be assessed by a specialized scientific committee that will in turn inform authors which papers have been chosen.

Offers to contribute a paper must contain its title, an abstract and a detailed plan of contents along with the author’s name, his or her titles and the institution or company to which he or she belongs. Papers must be written in French or English.

All article submissions must be made by 5 September 2004 in RTF, HTML or PDF format by e-mail and sent to the following address: organisation@frlii.org

Proposed papers may be :

 chosen for a morning oral presentation and printed in full in the proceedings
 chosen for a morning oral presentation, with its abstract printed in the proceedings
 chosen for an afternoon round-table discussion, with its abstract printed in the proceedings
 not chosen for an oral presentation but published in the proceedings. Poster sessions will be organised to allow authors to present their work
 neither chosen nor published

All oral presentations may be accompanied by Power Point slides.

All papers chosen will be published. Various publishers have been approached and discussions are underway.