Thread by @gavinsblog

A brief @vizlegal work thread *stay with me here* 1/

@Vizlegal We launched @vizlegal back in June and have had a very positive reception from law librarians, solicitors and barristers. One thing kept coming up in conversations with them though...

@Vizlegal Was how slow, difficult, or near impossible it was to find decisions of the WRC, the Labour Court, the Employment Appeals Tribunal or the Equality Tribunal...

@Vizlegal There was also no easy facility to *alert people* when new decisions were issued. This is not an uncommon problem with government websites anywhere in the world.

@Vizlegal You can see the search facility here: workplacerelations.ie/en/search/?adv…

Working with one of our customers we set out to scope the extend of the problem, and see if we could make things better. We started earlier in the summer...

@Vizlegal We came across several issues. First the search was slow, particularly when searching for generic phrases. There are 46,000+ decisions going back to 1986 from the four bodies. Users could wait up to 30 seconds to see a results page.

@Vizlegal Second was the filters. Some didn't work, others were not intuitive. Other filters, such as filtering by the chairperson, were unavailable (but users told us would be useful).

"Even if I know something is there, I still can't find it" one user told us.

@Vizlegal This affects many, many professionals where time is a precious resource: HR professionals, Employment PSLs, solicitors, barristers, librarians. They all need access to these important decisions, via search, or to keep up to date on new developments.

@Vizlegal And during our data discovery we happened upon up to 12,000 decisions of the EAT that users could be led to believe they were searching, but were in fact not. These decisions were PDF-only decisions generally ranging from 2007-2014.

@Vizlegal So, how to fix it?

- Pull all 46,000 decisions
- Standardise and clean the data
- Clean the chairperson/decision maker names
- Remove duplicates
- Pull text from 12,000 PDFs and index the text to make them searchable
- Standardise other filters like legislation/county

@Vizlegal During our data discovery phase, the WRC actually rolled out a full change to their search facility. Within a few days reviews from the users we spoke to were not good: many said the improvements had actually made the situation worse.

@Vizlegal So today we are pleased to announce that @Vizlegal has added a fully searchable index of the WRC/LC/EAT/ET decisions to our system, in all instances we link back to where we got it from. Our searches are lightning fast, and our filters work instantly.

@Vizlegal We've also made it super easy to find a decision where you already know the ID. Just type it in, and it will show it.

@Vizlegal Another thing users asked: why can't I just browse easily? So we've built a snappy system to zone in fast on what you're looking for.

Another user said: "I don't like how all Labour Court titles are ALL CAPS. It makes them hard to read." So we made them titlecase.

@Vizlegal Of course we still link to all decisions on the original website, as users told us that is where they would want to print from.

Oh and we made all this mobile and tablet friendly via a Progressive Web App... so no matter where you are, you can find what you need.

We think people need this type of thing when they're on the DART or the bus on the way to work in the morning!

The other need users told us about was:

"Tell me each morning about all the new decisions issued" or

"Tell me when new decisions are issued that contain this word or phrase, or happen under certain legislation".

So we built those features too.

Just ticking these boxes means you get an email each morning containing links to newly issued decisions (if any). You can do the same for any of our other sources, including ECHR, CJEU, Irish judgments, Irish High Court filings and more

We think this is a valuable resource for anyone interested in Irish employment law - and we're adding to our existing data as part of our standard package - for €99/month or €990/year, which gives access to all of the sources we have

If you'd like to signup for a 10 day trial, take a look:

app.vizlegal.com/register

We'd love to have everyone on board, and even improve on what we have in collaboration with our customers.

If you know someone who works in employment and might find this useful, let em know! ☺️

Thanks everyone!

And thanks to the team @Vizlegal for being awesome and working their asses off on this.