30 years of legal research: From newspaper clippings to the internet
An interview with Ewa Bernaciak, legal information specialist at Wardynski & Partners, who remembers what legal research was like, and how time-consuming it was, in the pre-internet era.
In Principle: Many people who have come to work at the firm over the years have noted our impressive library. Why does a law firm need a library at all?
Ewa Bernaciak: First of all, as a knowledge base for lawyers.
It’s hard to imagine today, but when we started in the early 1990s a basic problem was establishing what laws were actually in force. Like today, paper editions were constantly falling out of date. It was necessary to check the current issues of the Journal of Laws to see if any amendments had appeared, as the index of laws was published only once a year. Consolidated versions of laws appeared infrequently, so we had to photocopy the amendments to the most important laws on an ongoing basis and collect them in binders.
The consolidated texts published in the “yellow pages” (law section) of Rzeczposopolita daily were a great help. Everyone fought over access to the yellow pages and the ability to photocopy them, but it was a temporary solution too. After a while, the law would change, and we had to check the Journal of Laws again for the latest.
Then, minor databases appeared, saved on floppy disks, such as guides to case law and other materials published in the Rzeczpospolita yellow pages, or the case law of the courts of appeal (published by Erida). If something escaped our attention and we did not copy it into a binder on the day of publication, it could be quickly found on a floppy disk without digging through stacks of newspapers. Ryszard Strzelczyk’s updated index of legal provisions was the first bit of legal software, and very helpful. Although it did not contain the texts of laws, it was a great help in determining which acts and regulations were current, and indicated the laws replacing those that were repealed.
We also welcomed with great relief the advent of collections of laws in binders with interchangeable pages, regularly updated. We only had to make sure that after receiving the set of updates that they were quickly added to the collection, and the old pages swapped out. To keep track of which updates were included, an attached card was annotated to reflect the date.
It was also time-consuming to prepare sets of case law and legal literature interpreting a specific legal provision.
Decisions from the courts were published in monthly magazines, with current indexes, and an annual index would appear with the first issue of the following year. Searching through these indexes and then copying the rulings took a lot of time. Nor was it easy to access the latest case law, not yet published. The Rzeczpospolita yellow pages, where information on new rulings was published, as well as rulings and glosses published in legal journals, came to the rescue. You could also ask the court for a copy of the ruling, but you had to know the case number and the date of the ruling, and the lawyer had to justify the need to review the particular ruling.
The Polish Legal Bibliography published by the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences was helpful in selecting commentaries, monographs, and journal articles. It was published as a yearbook (starting from 1945) and as monthly compilations in the journal Państwo i Prawo.
If there were publications in the bibliography that we did not hold in our collection, we searched for them in bookstores or libraries to copy the necessary passages. If the books were published much earlier, we looked for them in antique stores. Sometimes it was possible to get duplicates from other libraries or exchange them for others.
The stacks of issues of Rzeczpospolita and other newspapers we subscribed to piled up along the walls, as it might always be necessary to search through them again. Once copied, the results of these searches went into the appropriate binders. The library shelves swelled as the binders steadily increased.
And what did the library catalogue look like?
Originally, there was no software in the library, as there was no computer. The internet came much later. The catalogue was maintained in drawers, alphabetically, and contained paper cards with bibliographic descriptions and case numbers affixed, organised by the author’s name. The book collection was organised by subject area to make it easier to find out what we had and which books in the field were the newest (this arrangement has remained to this day).
When a book was borrowed, this was noted on the book card and it was placed in the compartment with the borrower’s name, located in the reader’s file.
The inventory was a large paper book, filled out by hand.
How many items did the library inventory count at the peak of its development?
I have only a dim recollection of the paper catalogue, but today’s electronic inventory contains 7,690 items. Items cannot be deleted from the inventory, only crossed out. Thus the numbering of the collection remains constant. Volumes we removed, which were crossed out, are now noted in the loss book, to which roughly a third of our book collection has been moved, and there are also periodicals.
When the first library software appeared at our firm, we had to enter all the data manually from the paper inventory and enter descriptions of books and periodicals from scratch. Today we are on our third program, but migrating the data to new software no longer requires manual data entry.
In one program, we have an inventory, a register of periodicals, and a loss book. We prepare the bibliographic descriptions of new books as they enter the catalogue, and record any loans. The catalogue is available on the firm’s intranet.
Did the library’s work consist solely in issuing publications to lawyers?
No, we also searched for information and prepared materials for specific cases. But often the lawyers themselves indicated a list of publications they would like to use, or the names of preferred authors. In the early stages of the firm’s existence, the lawyers formulated more general search queries, so they could then do their own analysis of the content that was generated and identify the most relevant sources. Preparing a set of publications and case law was more time-consuming. We had at our disposal our book collection, periodicals we subscribed to, collections of case law, and a legal bibliography. Everything we found had to be photocopied, including publications from other libraries.
How does it look now, after digitalisation, when the Lex and Legalis systems exist? Does the library also handle legal research?
Yes, of course! The development of technology has steadily changed and improved the work of the library, and this is still happening, probably faster and faster, so the results of our search become increasingly precise.
The needs and expectations of lawyers are also evolving. We look for information on topics on the edges of the law or quite outside this field. The firm’s clients come from a variety of industries and expect support in their fields as well. Sometimes we need to get our bearings first, to know where and how to look for the information.
We have access to electronic editions of newspapers, books and magazines. We also have two legal information systems at our disposal, Lex and Legalis, where laws are updated regularly, but older versions of any law can be tracked by selecting the legal status on a requested date. Tracing the history of a law no longer poses a problem, including access to the original bill and legislative history. The legal bibliography is a Lex module with data on publications since 1965, while the case law and literature are assigned to specific provisions of an act and are freely searchable. The databases include the full text of books and journals from the publisher of the database, as well as bibliographic notes on items from other publishers.
And on the internet, there are websites with case law from specific courts, the Government Legislation Centre (RCL) website where users can follow the legislative process at the government stage, and websites of the Polish Sejm, Senate and President, which legislation passes through before publication in the Journal of Laws, the electronic editions of which are also available on the RCL website.
Every ministry and central office, as well as local governments, also have their own websites, which we draw information from, e.g. when looking for decisions, results of inspections by the competition authority, and zoning plans. International agreements are found in the treaty database of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Similarly, we look for information and case law on EU institutional websites (EUR-Lex, the Court of Justice, the European Parliament, the European Commission, etc), and websites of institutions and offices in other countries.
Then there are digital libraries and foreign full-text databases (if we do not have access ourselves, we can use them at other libraries).
At times you have conducted primary investigations for cases handled by the firm. Could you tell us about one of them?
What I remember the most, as it required a lot of effort, was a search for laws identifying the pre-war borders of Warsaw for a case involving land reform. The property in question was a palace, and everyone knew it was within the city limits before World War II, but no one knew the legal act that would confirm this.
I searched Poland’s pre-war Journal of Laws and Official Gazette, starting from 1918, but found nothing.
Then a lawyer hinted that the course of the border could be found on pre-war military maps, so I looked for a pre-war map. I found it, but it turned out that what is relevant for an ordnance map is not the borders of cities, but the terrain, hills, buildings, bodies of water, etc.
So I decided to look for information about the history of the city, to find out what happened before 1918. It was part of the Russian partition, but I could not find anything about it in Russian laws. Then I found information that during World War I, the city was ocupied by the Germans. The palace in question was used by the Germans as their administrative headquarters, so they must have issued some kind of legal act on the subject. I started looking first for the names of the German institutions that operated there, and then I looked to see if there was a journal of laws where the Germans could promulgate the act, and I found it. But then there was the problem of finding this source in libraries. This indeed took a long time, but it also brought me great satisfaction when I found a yearbook for these journals in the main public library on ul. Koszykowa in Warsaw. The yearbook included information that due to the occupation of the palace for the needs of the German administration, the palace was incorporated into the city limits.
I understand that was central to the case?
Yes, because if the palace was within the city limits, it could not fall under the land reform and could not be nationalised along with the land. And thanks to this, the owners managed to recover the property.
Today, we also get very interesting searches, for example about chemical or plant substances and whether and in what quantities they can be used in foods or dietary supplements.
In that situation, we check laws, court rulings, and the website of the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate, which indicates the maximum permissible levels if they are not stated in the act authorising the substance for use.
We conduct similar searches if we want to check whether the terms or information that a client wishes to put on a product or in an ad are correct, and whether similar information and terms already functioning on the market have been challenged by the trade inspectorate, the agriculture and food quality inspectorate, or the competition authority.
Some time ago, I lost my appetite for many products for a long time, after learning perhaps too much about food safety and the false information sometimes provided by manufacturers on their packaging. Today the law is stricter and inspections are active, but I remain vigilant—I am an informed consumer.
It was also interesting to search for information on treaties from the communist era, which were not published.
Why were they not published? Was it a political decision?
So it seems. Among other things, these included treaties granting compensation for real estate and other property in Poland belonging to citizens of foreign countries, but nationalised after World War II. No one offered such compensation to Poles, or it was only a token amount.
There were also problems with establishing citizenship. It might happen for example that someone was a Polish citizen before the war, but during the war was evacuated to the Soviet Union or lived in areas incorporated into the USSR, and there the person was forcibly granted Soviet citizenship. It was necessary to locate agreements between Poland and the Soviet Union and the various republics, so that the lawyer could determine whether the person had lost their Polish citizenship, and if they were still alive, whether they could apply for restoration of their Polish citizenship. All these treaties were deposited in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Now, anyone looking for an international agreement to which Poland is a party, but without access to legal software, can check the treaty database on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. They will also find the texts of these treaties in their original languages.
We often seek information for the intellectual property practice, for use in cases for example on trademark infringement or passing off of bogus goods. It was difficult and time-consuming to search the press and the internet for ads of companies infringing on others’ rights. But there was also a very interesting case for me concerning the rights to a painting from before the war. We conducted quasi-genealogical searches to determine the set of people who might have acquired rights to the painting via inheritance or a will, and to obtain all possible information on the fate of the painter’s works. The online database compiled by a contemporary genealogist named Minakowski proved helpful in finding information about the painter’s family.
I also remember a funny story where my knowledge from studying library science came in handy. A client wanted to obtain an international book number (ISBN) for an unusual cookbook. The format was a plastic box containing loose file cards of recipes, issued by subscription. A foreign law firm had submitted the first application for an ISBN for the client, but it was rejected. Without an ISBN number, importing the cookbook into Poland would have been unprofitable due to the high VAT.
But according to international standards, such a box of recipes could qualify as a “book.” It was enough to add a title page identifying the authors and the publisher, with a table of contents and clearly separated chapters. The box served as the “cover” of the book. An ISBN was duly assigned for this item.
It seems you are not so much a library as a legal research department.
But a library too. Although currently there is more research than classic library work, we still buy books on an ongoing basis, catalogue them and lend them out, and also subscribe to magazines. Primarily we collect publications not found in legal databases. If a case concerns the olden days, legal literature from the period is essential, and not everything has been digitised. Every branch library should have a scientific information department supporting users conducting such searches. The only difference is that such support usually consists in identifying sources, and we search for them ourselves.
Readers sometimes make surprising requests. A friend of mine was asked to find a “yellow book on rubber”—the reader was a “visualiser” and thought of the colour of the book rather than its title. No one is surprised by requests for the FIDIC Yellow Book or Red Book, because these are colloquial names commonly used instead of the longer titles of contract publications issued by the International Federation of Consulting Engineers.
Do you ever feel like the heroine of a classic courtroom drama, whose research in the library uncovers a key piece of information that will win the case? After all, it does seem that this is part of your work.
Sometimes I do, especially when I have the satisfaction of managing to find something particularly difficult. But it is up to the lawyers to assess the usefulness of the materials and decide whether they are sufficient. Once I worriedly informed a lawyer that I had not found what they asked for, but the lawyer smiled and said, “Excellent, that is what I expected.”
Interview conducted by Justyna Zandberg-Malec