Clicklaw Wikibooks

Clicklaw Wikibooks are collaboratively developed, plain language legal publications that are born-wiki and can also be printed.

Clicklaw Wikibooks are provided as part of the Clicklaw program operated by Courthouse Libraries BC to help the public in British Columbia find and use legal information. The main Clicklaw website offers a single window into legal information for the public from dozens of organizations in BC.

For more on Clicklaw Wikibooks, see the Clicklaw Wikibooks FAQ.

Try out our Clicklaw Wikibooks

JP Boyd on Family Law John-Paul Boyd & others New!

Legal Help for British Columbians Cliff Thorstenson & others Update coming April 2013

Consumer Law Wikibook People's Law School New!

File:Deathinyourfamilycover.png A Death in Your Family People's Law School New!

What are Clicklaw Wikibooks?

Clicklaw Wikibooks provide legal information for the public in British Columbia in a way that is:

• highly accessible both online and in print,
• accurate and up-to-date, and
• affordable to produce.

Clicklaw Wikibooks are an attempt to solve two central challenges in publishing legal information:

1. Law is constantly evolving: Legal information, to be helpful, has to be current with updates in the law. It can be cumbersome and time consuming to keep a legal publication up-to-date using the traditional book publishing model — that is, updating a word processing or page layout file; emailing versions back and forth between author, editor and reviewer; and sending a printable PDF off to the printer.
2. Formats are multiplying: Most legal publications are still optimized for printing, which typically compromises other formats (the web, ebooks, mobile), even as they grow in importance. The way many legal publications are produced is to format for printing, then create a PDF of the printed version, and put the PDF on the Internet. The resulting PDFs aren't easy to navigate around, to view on the screen, or to find for that matter.

Clicklaw Wikibooks try to solve these problems:

• They can be updated over the Internet, by multiple contributors. The wiki platform has a robust version history and comparison feature, and changes made are instantly available to readers.
• They offer a highly accessible online experience. As the wiki version is powered by the open source software MediaWiki, the software that powers the hugely popular Wikipedia, it offers a familiar, easy-to-read experience for anyone who has used Wikipedia.
• They offer up an online and print version from the same source. The wiki platform can be used to generate a print version of a publication that is a professional, good quality bound publication. The MediaWiki software is free and constantly evolving, providing an affordable means to produce legal information for multiple formats.