Lawlinker

Lawlinker is a legal reference helper application that identifies legal citations and references and provides direct links to the full text source materials and further search links to aid your research.

There are three ways you can use Lawlinker:

• To look up an individual citation.
• The Lawlinker page processor identifies all citations and references on a web page and generates links for all these.
• infolaw Lawtags for MS Office identifies all citations and references in an MS Office document and then invokes Lawlinker to look up the individual citations. See the Lawtags information page.

Note that to view Lawlinker results you need to be registered for Lawfinder. A Login form will be invoked as required when you run Lawlinker. New users, please first Register.

Look up an individual citation

Use the citation lookup form provided in the Lawfinder sidebar. The form is displayed only if you are logged in to Lawfinder.

The Lawlinker page processor

To see how the Lawlinker page processor works, using this page as the example, run Lawlinker on this page.

The Lawlinker page processor will currently work on any normal web page (html, asp, php etc) that is publicly available. It will not work on pages with restricted access; for example pages on your intranet (internal web) or pages that require you to be logged in (whether explicitly or via a stored cookie). Nor will Lawlinker work on other documents such as Word or PDF. We expect to add support for restricted access pages and other document formats later.

Lawlinker results

Lawlinker opens a new page with a Reference table in the frame at the top. Using the page processor, the original page is shown in the Document frame below. The Reference table shows:

• Type. The type of reference identified. Entries are sorted by type.
• Title. The title of the document where available in our Lawfinder database. Lawlinker looks up the citation in Lawfinder and displays the title. Because of performance issues, we do not currently match and verify referenced titles of Cases. Use the Searches links to look these up.
• Citation. The citation for the document in a regularised form.
• Direct link(s). Direct web links to one or more publicly available sources.
• Searches. These links will generate search queries on the SLD, BAILII, infolaw Lawfinder and Google. They will be useful where Lawlinker has been unable to generate a direct link or where it is desired to find other resources mentioning the document title. Note that the Lawfinder search will only produce results if you are logged in to Lawfinder.

Clicking on any link in the Reference table will open the new page in the Document frame, ie leaving the Reference table in view.

More page processor examples

For more examples, click these links to run Lawlinker on ...

• an Act on the Statute Law Database
• a judgment on BAILII
• an update page on the DCA site

Add the Lawlinker page processor to your browser

Right-click this link and choose Add to Favorites (IE) or Bookmark This Link (Firefox) or just drag it to your Bookmarks Toolbar (Firefox).

Then, whenever you want to run Lawlinker on the current page, just click the favorite/bookmark.

Lawlinker FAQ

Following are answers to some common questions. If you have questions that are not answered here or comments that will help us improve Lawlinker, email feedback@infolaw.co.uk. If you have a problem or question on specific results, please use the mailback link on the bottom right of the Reference table.

What references will Lawlinker recognise?

Lawlinker currently recognises:

• Citations of UK, Scottish and NI Acts and SIs, eg 2003 c. 15, 2004 asp 1, SI 2004 No. 289, Scottish SI 2004 No. 15
• Titles of all UK Acts (from 1800), and all Scottish and NI Acts, eg Extradition Act 2003, Dog Fouling (Scotland) Act 2003
• Citations of EU legislation, eg Directive 2003/8/EC, Regulation 101/99, Decision 2003/391/EC, Com Doc 2000/132
• Citations of UK cases, eg [2004] UKHL 4, [2005] UKPC 5
• Citations of England and Wales cases, eg [2004] EWCA Civ 53, [2005] EWHC 30 (QB)
• Citations of Scottish cases, eg [2004] ScotCS 5, [2005] CSOH 12
• Citations of NI cases, eg [2004] NIQB 15
• Citations of ECJ cases, eg Case C-448/01
• Titles of other cases (if delimited in some way), eg Coys of Kensington Holdings Ltd v McDonald

Lawlinker will generally recognise most variations of the citation types noted, but there will be exceptions. Further reference types and citation variations will be catered for in future.

Why do I get no results in the Reference table?

Citations must be in a format that Lawlinker can recognise (see above). Formats are case sensitive.

The Lawlinker page processor cannot read a restricted page, eg one that requires a login. Lawlinker cannot presently process such pages even if you are logged in to the appropriate service.

Why is the reference to ... missing?

• Neutral citations. Lawlinker will recognise most variations of neutral (non-proprietary) citations. It may fail to recognise a citation because of an unusual or incorrect variation in its format.
• Proprietary citations. Lawfinder does not attempt to recognise citations of proprietary publications, eg All ER, WLR etc.
• Act titles. Lawlinker recognises the titles of post-1800 UK, NI and Scottish Acts on the Statute Law Database; it will not recognise Acts wholly repealed prior to 1991.
• SI titles. Lawlinker does not currently recognise the titles of SIs (only citations).
• Case names. Lawlinker will only recognise a case name if it is delimited in some way. Usually case names are within italics, links or table cells.

If you believe Lawlinker has failed to recognise a valid format, please report the instance to us.

Why is the Direct link to ... missing?

Lawlinker can only provide direct links where the source document is known to be published on the web. Thus links are not provided for Acts not on the Stratute Law Database and links cannot be provided for Cases without a valid neutral citation. Where a direct link is not provided, you can use the Searches links to search for the document you need.

Why does the Direct link to ... not work or take me to the wrong document?

Direct links are generated from the citation, using rules and look-ups in infolaw's Lawfinder database. It's possible the reference in the source document is wrong OR there is some error or change on the target site OR there is an error in the Lawlinker rules or the Lawfinder database that needs fixing. Please report the problem to us. Using the Searches links may help you find the document you need.

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