{"id":74,"date":"2009-11-20T10:57:42","date_gmt":"2009-11-20T15:57:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/2009\/11\/20\/once-more-we-ask-for-your-support\/"},"modified":"2009-11-24T23:42:44","modified_gmt":"2009-11-25T04:42:44","slug":"once-more-we-ask-for-your-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/tbruce\/2009\/11\/20\/once-more-we-ask-for-your-support\/","title":{"rendered":"Once more, we ask for your support"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friends:<\/p>\n

For some of you, we can keep this really, really short: go to our donation page, right this very minute, and make a tax-deductible donation<\/a>.\u00a0 For those who can be convinced to do so by conventional means, I reproduce the letter that we are sending to our supporters, below<\/a>.\u00a0 But I think that readers of this blog are, maybe, a little different in the way they look at legal information. So I’ll add a layer to our usual pitch.\u00a0 It’s really meant for people with professional concerns about the future of public access to law in the US, and it’s one you may not have thought about.<\/p>\n

The real questions before us now are not questions about whether it’s a good idea to put caselaw on the Web<\/a>.\u00a0 That is, so far as anything can be, a done deal.\u00a0 We know how, and for the most part we know who.\u00a0 The challenging questions are questions about standards — how things interoperate, how we tie secondary materials to primary law, how we find out about the law in a new place given knowledge of law in our own place.\u00a0 Some of these are research questions. Some of these are metadata-wrangling. Some of them are matters for careful drafting of standards that are lightweight enough that they can easily be implemented and still deliver maximum results.\u00a0 Some, maybe most, are contemplated in Carl Malamud’s law.gov effort<\/a> — or will be brought into sharper relief by it, or become suddenly more interesting to a wider public because of it.\u00a0 All of them are things that require time, effort, and most of all participation.\u00a0 Most are areas where the LII has developed considerable, dare I say unique, craft knowledge over the 17 years it has been in business.<\/p>\n

Standards are shaped by those who have time to draft, and participate, and airfare to get to the meetings. That means that participation — and the power to shape the standard — comes most easily from industry groups, large commercial players<\/a>,\u00a0 professional organizations<\/a>,\u00a0 governments, and others who can afford to give someone time away from “real work” to work on projects with no immediate operational impact.\u00a0 At the moment, that doesn’t describe the LII, and it probably never has.\u00a0 Nor are these concerns — or legal-information concerns in general, it seems — particularly compelling to foundations,\u00a0 or even to donors who see an operation like ours as primarily one that provides a public service in the form of a public library. \u00a0 Those donors value the part of what we do that has a direct and immediate impact on people — the part that makes for good story<\/a>. We do have that impact, and we are deeply grateful for the support we get because of it.<\/p>\n

It takes a more sophisticated audience to appreciate — and engage — a need that is no less real because it operates at one remove from the direct delivery of services. Hopefully, if you’re reading this, that’s you.\u00a0 Detractors of open access to law are betting that cooperative, standards-based approaches can’t produce the level of integration and utility that has been achieved in the private sector.\u00a0 At this point, I’d be less than the geek I pretend to be if I failed to point out that a lot of people said that about Linux, too.<\/p>\n

Bottom line: we want you to buy us time<\/a>, time to participate in standards development, and to shape the legal infosphere for the\u00a0 next generation.\u00a0 Please do so by making a donation<\/a>, or by supporting us in other ways<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Our regular donor letter follows.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a> Dear friends:Each year at this time, we ask our audience to help support the Legal Information Institute. Every year we are impressed by your generosity, and by your involvement with our goal of making law available \u2013 for free.\u00a0 We’d like to say thanks to all of you, not only for your willingness to give, but for the sense of appreciation that it offers us personally and professionally.\u00a0 We are deeply grateful.<\/a>I’m sure that many of you are carefully rethinking your giving priorities this year.\u00a0 I am \u2013 there is a lot of need, and resources are more limited.\u00a0 Here are three reasons why you should support the LII by making a donation at http:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/donors<\/a> :<\/p>\n

<\/a>The LII helps people help people.\u00a0 <\/big><\/big><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>Last week, one of our donors told us:<\/p>\n

<\/a>I am a licensed attorney and I do pro bono work when I can. Recently I signed up to take an immigration case. I used a manual from the Immigrant Legal Resources Center and the LII to learn about federal immigration law. When I had to look up specific provisions in the INA for my case, I used the LII. I am thankful that I can rely on the LII for accurate and up to date legal information–otherwise, I might not be able to take these cases.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
\nThe LII is used by literally hundreds of nonprofits and public service organizations \u2013 local, national, and international — whose leadership and legal staff can’t afford commercial legal information services.\u00a0 As budgets for government and nonprofits become more and more strained, we help provide the information they use to help others.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The LII provides unbiased information about law and government<\/big><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>Last month, Maricopa County’s controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio claimed the authority to make arrests of illegal aliens under a Federal statute that just doesn’t exist.\u00a0 Using the LII site, reporters were able to quickly verify that no such law is found in the US Code \u2013 Arpaio’s \u201claw\u201d was made up by\u00a0 a nativist organization in Connecticut.\u00a0\u00a0 Everyone needs to be able to find out what the law is. We meet that need with unbiased, unfiltered access to accurate legal information as it is delivered by the courts and legislatures that create it \u2013 without bias or external agendas.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The LII is a longstanding leader in open access to law<\/big><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>Since 1992, the LII has been a technical and editorial leader in open access to law.\u00a0 We introduced law to the Web\u00a0 by mounting the first web-based collections of Federal legislation and judicial opinions.\u00a0 Since then we have grown into a service that is relied on by more than 90,000 people for both primary and secondary legal information \u2013 each day.\u00a0 Our editorial and technical innovations have been widely adopted by others.\u00a0 Over the last 17 years, open access to law has grown into a global movement, with\u00a0 more than 20 namesake Legal Information Institutes worldwide.<\/p>\n

<\/a>A bonus reason: we use your money carefully<\/big><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>We are 5 people maintaining more than 500,000 web pages used by more than 2,000,000 visitors each month.\u00a0 About 85% of our half-million-dollar budget goes toward salaries for the staff and for stipends paid to student editors.\u00a0 The remaining funds take care of machinery and technical infrastructure \u2013 costs that we are now reducing by use of advanced cloud-computing techniques to replace expensive physical hardware. Increasingly,\u00a0 we are able to leverage your contributions into broader support by offering a variety of sponsorship opportunities that appeal both to lawyers wanting to reach clients and others who wish to reach lawyers.\u00a0 This hybrid approach is, we believe, the key to our sustainability for many years to come.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Here’s what you can do <\/em><\/big><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>90,000 individuals visit the LII each day. Although their legal circumstances and expertise vary hugely, most of them are trying to answer some variation on a common question: \u201cWhat am I expected to do?\u201d\u00a0 A gift of $100 to the LII is little more than the cost of a single search using a commercial legal-information service.\u00a0 That gift supports unlimited use of the LII by 3 people for about 13 months.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s the generosity of our donors that makes our service available to so many, and we are grateful for the vote of confidence that represents.
\nWe can make effective use of any and every dollar that you choose to give us.\u00a0 We suggest a $100 donation.\u00a0 More will help us do more. It’s up to you. It’s the generosity of our donors that makes our service available to so many, and we are grateful for the vote of confidence that represents.<\/p>\n

<\/a>We’ve made a short video that explains the case for open access to law.\u00a0 You can see it on YouTube at http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=lYGfrBVBkpE<\/a> .\u00a0\u00a0 We hope you’ll take a few minutes (three, to be precise) to take a look at it and tell us what you think.<\/p>\n

The mechanics for making a contribution (or supporting the LII in other ways) appear at the bottom of this note, below my signature.\u00a0\u00a0 I’d also be very grateful if you’d send in any suggestions, questions, complaints, or stories you might have.\u00a0 We need to understand much more than we do about why our audience values us, what we’re doing that’s working, and what we can improve.\u00a0 We love knowing more about the impact we’re having, and only you can tell us that.<\/p>\n

Thank you again for your help and support, and our best wishes for the coming year,
\nTb. (along with Dave, Brian, Sara,\u00a0 and Dan)<\/p>\n

<\/a> Donation mechanics, and more ways to stay in touch<\/p>\n