Revolutionizing the legal profession

MANILA, Philippines - When the high profile pork barrel cases finally go to court, justice is likely to experience less delays and may even be delivered in a more consistent manner. After all, the lofty goals of speedier and well thought-out adjudication must have been foremost in the heads of the three government agencies leading the charge against pork barrel abusers when they embarked in recent years on projects to digitize their respective issuances.

The Department of Justice, the Office of the Ombudsman and the Commission on Audit have all partnered with publishing firm CD Technologies Asia, Inc. to build digital libraries of their opinions, rulings, regulations, orders and other issuances. Other CD Asia clients include the Department of Agrarian Reform which is successfully completing its mandate, and other agencies like the Bureau of the Treasury and the Energy Regulatory Commission set to modernize access to their documents and issuances in the interest of transparency.

By having issuances of their agencies electronically converted, formatted and tagged and/or linked to related jurisprudence, legislation and executive issuances, the research time of lawyers, prosecutors and auditors has been cut from days to minutes. Moreover, by having easy access to the data they need, agency personnel now have the basis for sound analysis and interpretation at their fingertips, a prerequisite to compelling and viable arguments against officials accused of misusing their Presidential Development Assistance Funds and other law breakers.

Lou Sitaca, president of CD Asia, recalls how research was being done in the pre-digital era in a government agency. After conducting a training session for some government lawyers on how to use CD Asia products to quickly access laws and government issuances, she and her partners realized that the arguments used by the counsellors were limited to their stock knowledge of a few cases. The CD Asia lawyers realized that lack of access to pertinent information was holding back the trainees from carrying out their crucial mission in a more strategic and effective manner. “Access to pertinent and up-to-date legal information is vital when a lawyer is preparing a pleading or document,” she says.  “A lawyer needs to find the right authority to support his position and argumentation.”

Since 1994, CD Asia has revolutionized the legal profession by producing such publications as the Lex Libris series, which are compilations of legislation, executive and administrative issuances, decisions of the Supreme Court, issuances of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, Securities and Exchange Commission, Department of Labor and Employment and Department of Trade and Industry, among others, programmed with an advanced search engine. By freeing the data from traditional access methods limited by ink and paper, CD Asia has enabled lawyers not only to save a considerable amount of research time but monetary resources as well. A well-stocked law library comprised of print publications can cost more than a million pesos. The complete CD Asia library in digital format, with much more content, only requires an investment of a fraction of that amount. Moreover, the entire electronic library will fit in a space the size of one law textbook.

Now the largest repository of Philippine legal information in electronic format in the country, CD Asia is setting its sights on providing magistrates and lawyers alike with tools that collate and harmonize, if necessary, rulings of the Supreme Court on a particular subject matter. Law professor Vyva Aguirre of Accesslaw, Inc., a community  of legal scholars and experts in various fields of law and CD Asia’s partner, discloses how difficult and time-consuming it is for judges to find precedent cases for the matters brought to them for resolution.

Even with skilled search techniques using a tool with a good search engine, looking for applicable cases on a subject matter can yield a hundred or more results. “You would have to open each case entry to understand the doctrines or overriding principles that guided each of those decisions,” says Aguirre. Decisions that adhere to valid and tested doctrines are naturally more compelling and less easy to overturn.

The vision of CD Asia and Accesslaw has been realized with the upcoming release of the Philippine Jurisprudence Encyclopedia (PJE), a multi-volume work covering different law subjects. Using the PJE, readers can follow the history of decision-making by the Supreme Court on a particular topic. The series, which begins with a volume on Obligations and Contracts, co-authored by Aguirre and lawyer Sedfrey Santiago, will help facilitate the penning of sound decisions and pleadings. The first volume will be launched soon with the second volume on Intellectual Property Rights fast on its heels.

Aguirre cites the case of a judge who ruled that a particular case belonged to the anti-dummy court and was eventually served a fine by a higher court for his decision. The judge did not know the anti-dummy court had long been abolished. Sitaca hopes to see magistrates using the PJE volumes to avoid mistakes like this and to write more scholarly decisions. “This is our way of helping people maintain their confidence in the courts, which is a prerequisite for a vibrant democracy.”

Indeed, CD Asia is taking legal research to the next level – from digitizing the law to providing tools for harmonizing the same. As the PJE is set to be launched, the legal community can expect more pioneering and innovative products from a company that continues to push legal research beyond boundaries.