We have been travelling around Australia showing lawyers and law librarians the delights of the BarNet JADE legal research platform. As ever, we are honoured that you have let us see the many ways in which you would like to do legal research. Apart from making JADE the best way to perform legal research, we also want to make life easier for budding legal bloggers.

The Present

That's us, inside the mind of a budding student blogger.

Most bloggers love to blog with references to AustLII. That’s because AustLII was the only option for many Courts and Tribunals. Now you have a choice for your legal research. At least for some Courts and Tribunals. If we have missed some, let us know and we will do our best to obtain coverage.

JADE has almost 150,000 items in its database, we have more than 750,000 references to cases. Almost every case cited in a decision in Australia in the past few years is included. We are working to ensure complete full text coverage in important areas. We code for topics. And we support specialist panels in particular subject areas.

But, if your blog is covering recent cases, you will already find us comprehensive and timely.

Blogging with JADE (or keeping a legal electronic scrapbook)

Blogging with JADE is just as easy as blogging using AustLII. In fact, our field tests show that it is easier. Let us show you how and why.

Hey, we will even alert you to decisions so you can blog about them. Simply sign up to JADE today. It’s free and will enhance your legal blog.  Send us a note, and we will include your blog on our list of bloggers and promote it for you.

Want to find a case reference URL? You have three choices

You can construct a URL using a medium neutral citation, using the AustLII format (but with a different front domain, of course), and you can even get direct access to the format within JADE, so you can retrieve the HTML of the case directly, using a specially formulated URL

Medium Neutral Citation (/mnc/)

The first variant allows you to use a simple reference in your blog which uses a medium neutral citation, in upper or lower case, separated by forward slashes.

http://jade.barnet.com.au/mnc/<year>/<acronym>/<number>

AustLII ‘style’ (/au/cases/)

The second variant captures the beauty of the AustLII legal taxonomy. In the “<state>” section use cth or CTH for the commonwealth. Make sure that you put the “acronym” which is the Medium Neutral part in UPPER CASE.

Direct access to content for bloggers (/content/ext/mnc/)

Some bloggers have complained that JADE is slow to load. We are working on our iPad and iPhone releases of JADE which are coming in December.

If you want to get quick access to the HTML, the case text or even the source documents, you can directly by using a URL, without using JADE’s excellent legal research interface.

Example: http://jade.barnet.com.au/content/ext/mnc/2011/hca/1. This gives an HTML wrapped version of [2011] HCA 1.

If you have any questions, please email us at: jade@barnet.com.au. We have more planned, but this should get you started using JADE for all of your blogging and legal scrapbook needs.

Categories: Content, New Features, Printing, User Guides