AustLII
Making a vast world of legal information easier to search, navigate, and read.
Challenge
AustLII’s free public archive holds cases, legislation, journals, and other Australasian legal material. Finding a document is only the beginning: people also need to understand where it comes from and read it in context.
Some visitors know the exact citation. Others arrive with a question and little knowledge of the relevant jurisdiction or database. The interface has to serve both, preserving the depth regular researchers depend on while helping less experienced visitors find their bearings.
Solution
Follow a search through to the document
Our interface design and front-end work covered search results, document pages, sidebars, and navigation. We considered the movement between them: scanning results, choosing a source, checking its context, and reading the material. The search tools and the reading experience needed to work together.
Keep the detail people need
Titles, citations, jurisdictions, source collections, and search options all have a role in legal research. We explored a hierarchy that distinguished the document from the controls and context around it. Results pages needed to support scanning. Document pages needed space for reading, with the relevant tools still within reach.
Work within a public service’s constraints
We developed front-end studies and templates with AustLII’s team, accounting for integration and beta requirements. Existing systems, accessibility requirements, funding, and review all shaped what could be built and released. We worked through those decisions with the people who would integrate and maintain the interface.
Results
Studies and templates for review
AustLII received interface studies and front-end work spanning search, document reading, and contextual navigation. These gave the team specific proposals to review within its continuing development programme.
Front-end work for integration review
Front-end development allowed proposed changes to be evaluated against the service’s technical requirements.
The engagement remains ongoing
Design and development continue with AustLII’s team, with release decisions made together as the work progresses.
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