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The ICLR (Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales), publisher of the official law reports, has partnered with BAILII (The British and Irish Legal Information Institute) by linking their two services online to provide a seamless delivery of content to the legal community. The new service launches today.

This service will provide benefits to users of both services. ICLR users will now be able to access the huge database of reported and unreported judgments on BAILII. BAILII users will be able to access at the ICLR summary of a judgment (where one exits) and purchase the authorized case report, or go directly to the authorized case report if already an ICLR subscriber (see for example: [2012] UKSC 37). Users will be able to move from one database to the other whatever your point of entry.

Kevin Laws, CEO of the ICLR, commented "We are delighted to have entered into this key partnership with BAILII as part of our charitable goal to deliver a comprehensive information service to the legal profession. Partnering with another not-for-profit organisation, and also one so widely respected, is a comfortable fit for us and we are confident that we will be able to deliver a nimble and flexible service free of the commercial demands of shareholders. "

Joe Ury, Executive Director of BAILII, said "We are very pleased that this new cooperative arrangement with ICLR will enable us to provide improved facilities for BAILII's users, and assist us in achieving our objective of providing the public with access to primary and secondary legal materials. "

ICLR users will be able to link to BAILII judgments and open them within the ICLR browser, and similarly BAILII users will be able to link to the ICLR site if the BAILII judgment indicates an ICLR law report or a summary exists of the same case. BAILII users will be able to access directly the free ICLR case summaries that are currently available via the ICLR site and guardian.co.uk. They will also be able to subscribe to the ICLR reports via the BAILII site or purchase a PDF of the ICLR reported version of a judgment, which might be needed for court. This collaboration is intended to be mutually beneficial for both organisations but ultimately to benefit the development of the law.