Organization of the Month | January 2018

The broader context

New Website

Courthouse Libraries BC (CLBC) has just launched a refreshed website to provide you with better service: https://www.courthouselibrary.ca

It’s awesome because it now has:

  • Search with precise and relevant results
  • Navigation that makes sense
  • A snappy new look and feel

User-centred approach

The whole process started over a year ago. As an organization committed to meeting the needs of our clients, we conducted interviews with lawyers to discover how they were using our website. Among other things, these interviews uncovered:

  • How effectively the website delivered service.
  • How effectively the website enabled legal research.
  • The most common complaints and areas for improvement.

We took this valuable feedback into consideration when we started work on refreshing the site.

Changes we made

We made some of the biggest changes to the areas of the site that let users help themselves. Search was completely overhauled – clients are no longer left sifting through hundreds of confusing results. Searches of the library catalogue and the website are more precise, and the results are more relevant. We also improved how clients can browse the site. The new website is clean, easy to use and simple to navigate for lawyers and the public.

Resources and services we provide

If you are just getting started in your legal research, the CLBC website is a great place to start. Not only does the new site allow clients to find what they are looking for faster, it houses resources like Our Legal Knowledge Base, our answers to clients’ particularly difficult legal questions. This resource continues to grow as we add new items and update older ones.

Members of the public are welcome to use our digital tools, which include links to self-help websites, Clicklaw and Clicklaw Wikibooks, as well as LawMatters, the program that supports legal collections in all public libraries in BC.

If you have a question or would like to get pointed in the right direction with your legal research contact us by phone, email or in person.

About Courthouse Libraries BC

Courthouse Libraries BC is a non-profit that serves the legal community, the judiciary and the public of BC. Our mission is to help lawyers, the legal community and the public find and use legal information. Our vision is that everyone in BC has access to the legal information they need and the ability to use it. The CLBC website is the heart of the Library’s online presence. It houses the library catalogue, awesome content created by our staff, legal information training resources, and explains our services, mission, and policies. It also provides access to subscription databases to members of the Law Society of BC.

The CLBC website can be found at https://www.courthouselibrary.ca

Stay informed with Courthouse Libraries BC:

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2017 Clicklaw & Wikibooks Survey Results

Get help using Clicklaw

The 2017 Clicklaw and Clicklaw Wikibooks website user surveys ran for two months, from late October to late December. Here are some highlights from the survey results:

What stayed constant

  • Demographics – the majority (over 55%) are still people with legal questions, then those who are assisting others.
  • The reasons for visiting – to find legal information, then to find a person who can help.

Highlights for Clicklaw

  • Over a quarter of all respondents to the survey identified as Self-Represented Litigants (SRLs) or were helping a SRL.
  • In hindsight, did Clicklaw increase users’ legal understanding and help them move forward to solutions? Yes, increasingly so. We saw:
    • 13% increase in those who strongly agreed that the information increased their understanding of a legal question or issue, and
    • 5% increase in those who strongly agreed or agreed that the information helped them take next steps.
  • There was a 10% increase in those who strongly agreed or agreed that they were able to find the information quickly and easily.

Highlights for Clicklaw Wikibooks

  • Did people find the info they were looking for in a Wikibook? Increasingly, yes. 4% more people strongly agreed or agreed, and those who disagreed or strongly agreed dropped from almost 19% in 2015, to less than 6% in 2017 – a more than 13% drop.
  • Was Clicklaw Wikibooks easy to use? Overwhelmingly, yes. 78% agree or strongly agree that the website was easy to use – a 7% increase since 2015. Fewer than 2% of users disagreed or strongly disagreed that the site was easy to use – an improvement from the almost 12% of users in 2015 who found the site hard to use.
  • Over 71% agreed or strongly agreed that Clicklaw Wikibooks helped them take next steps.

Comments from Users

There were also some great comments from users. We are promoting these through our social media channels, and I am sharing some of them here:

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