Canadian Lawyer

Regional wrap-up Central SOQUIJ UNDERGOING A TRANSFORMATION T he organization responsible for disseminating Quebec court decisions is undergoing a major transformation to keep up with the fast-growing online legal information market. In April, SOQUIJ, the Société québécoise d'information juridique, unveiled a new corporate image for the first time in more than 35 years of operation and this summer will begin beta-testing a new online search engine it promises will make researching Quebec jurisprudence much easier for lawyers and judges. The marketing campaign and the new portal, set for launch in the fall, are intended to throw into sharper relief SOQUIJ's capacity not only to provide widespread public access to rulings by Quebec courts and tribunals, but also legal intelligence to guide litigators and others. Claude Paul-Hus, executive director of SOQUIJ, says the new portal is the product of months of exploration and work within the 110-employee organization in consultation with law firms of different sizes. The rebooting of SOQUIJ's technological capacity and the campaign to emphasize its services as a legal intelligence provider is needed because the organization is facing more competition from legal information providers that source their material from the SOQUIJ database, says Paul-Hus. SOQUIJ was an early pioneer in the legal information business after it was created by the Quebec government in 1976 with a mandate to be the vehicle for public access to legal information and research through the collection, organization, and distribution of decisions from Quebec courts, interpretive summaries, and annotated collections. It has 25 staff lawyers who read judgments sent to it by Quebec courts and tribunals, select those that create jurispru- 8 June 2013 www.CANADIAN dence, highlight and index them accordingly, and write special jurisprudential summaries. Its database of more than one million documents covers all decisions rendered by Quebec courts and administrative tribunals as well as rulings from the Federal Court and other appeal courts across Canada. There are close to 300,000 summaries of cases and special articles explaining how court decisions affect different issues and areas of law. As well, the lawyers remove personal identifying information from thousands of documents each year so relevant judgments in areas where privacy must be protected are still available for consultation by the public and lawyers. The SOQUIJ web site (jugements.qc.ca) where people can consult full text judgments in 61 areas of law from 1963 to 2013 receives about 1.4 million visits a year. But a multiplicity of other Internet sites also offer free access to legal judgments from Quebec and elsewhere in addition to companies like Thomson Reuters (which owns Canadian Lawyer) that provide legal research and information through paid subscriptions. One of the most popular free sites is CanLII, or the Canadian Legal Information Institute, the non-profit organization created and funded by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada on behalf of its 14 provincial and territorial member law societies. It receives an estimated 30,000 visits a day from those who consult its database of court decisions from across the country as well as its links to federal and provincial laws and statutes, according to Lexum. Lexum, the Montreal-based company that provides products and services to legal information users and legal institutions, designed, created, and operates CanLII. It launched in 1993, collaborating with the Supreme Court of Canada to L a w ye r m a g . c o m publish its decisions on the Internet. A national online survey on client needs for CanLII conducted for the FLSC by CorbinPartners Inc. indicated the demand for online legal resources "is significant and growing" and CanLII ranks above other sources in frequency of use in part because it is free and easy to use. SOQUIJ proudly points out that out of all Canadian provinces, Quebec has the largest number of decisions distributed online, according to CanLII research statistics compiled this past January. With players vying for the attention — and dollars — of law firms seeking online resources, the challenge for SOQUIJ is to maintain its market position for the provision of online subscription services. Paul-Hus says SOQUIJ believes it can remain relevant — and profitable — by providing faster access and greater database searchability with added value that helps to lessen or improve their workload. SOQUIJ now has close to 37,000 users who pay $15 a month for basic access, plus per-use fees for online consultations. While it has a mandate from the government, it is self-financing with annual revenue of $13.7 million for the past year from its products and services and a surplus of $724,881. Beside jurisprudence, its other main business line is the pay-for-use access to more than 7,600,000 plumitifs, or computerized files, from Quebec courthouses, including 80 of the province's 87 municipal courts. That content, consulted by human resources professionals, hiring firms, and all others who want to do background checks on individuals or get information on the status of a file, remains exclusive to SOQUIJ's paying customers. — Kathryn Leger kathryn.leger@videotron.ca

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