Since the early ages the issue of ease access to the law has been a serious issue. So serious in fact, that Napoleon ordered that the law of the time be written up in books so that the general public can access the law more easily. Although Napoleon was not the first ruler to have all laws written down, he is generally credited as being the first ruler to simplify a confusing legal system so that everybody can access it and in doing so, establish the rule of law.

Because of historic reasons, South Africa’s legal system is not entirely codified but in this age of information sharing and collaborative effort, it may just become easier for the general public to lay their hands on the law.

The platform for this, is the well-known wiki-format. According to wikipedia (how very fitting!), a wiki is defined as follows:

“(n) A collaborative website which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it.”

JurisPedia (http://en.jurispedia.org/index.php/South_Africa) is a site that aims to use the wiki-platform to make the law more easily accessible for all. The idea is that lawyers and law professors (and law students) contribute to the page. At this stage, only one topic has been covered, being “An Introduction to the Law of Contract”. Hopefully this will be expanded on soon.

One way of making the law more accessible to all would be for the Law Societies to recognise contributions to the site as legitimate pro-bono work (currently only the Cape Law Society’s members have to provide pro bono services (24 hours per year), with the Law Society of the Free State to follow soon). Urge your local law society to embrace the modern age and recognise JurisPedia as a legitimate pro bono activity.

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