JAMAICAN LAW RESOURCES

Not all legal practitioners can afford to subscribe to electronic legal research services like Lexis-Nexis. When I started practicing, the court I was assigned to didn’t even have an up-to-date set of the Laws of Jamaica. Practitioners who cannot afford subscription fees must rely on the good old Law Library, judgments published online and their stash of photocopied cases acquired over the years.   In Jamaica, Kingston is the home to the only two Law Libraries in the entire island.   The attorneys in St. James have been resourceful enough to create a small library but it is not extensive. Maintaining an organized digital library can help to make legal research and case preparation a breeze but conducting legal research electronically is often more challenging for senior attorneys and young attorneys who are not as computer savvy as they should be.   Furthermore, most attorneys simply LOVE PAPER and all things stationery. I am guilty.  I love law offices ...

While I was a prosecutor at the Director of Public Prosecution's office, I received a few traffic tickets, but the traffic ticket that changed my life was one I received from a police constable who had only recently graduated from training school. I was determined to dispute the charge, but my research revealed I had no case, so I just had to attend court, plead guilty, and pay the fine. Sitting in court as a defendant was a very sobering experience. For a change, I was able to sit in court as an observer--I mean defendant--and what I observed changed the way I did my work thereafter. Lesson 1 - I do not know everything I always knew, and accepted, that I do not know everything, but I clearly needed this reminder. It is easy to assume that you know everything in your area of practice, especially after you have had reason to go through a piece of legislation several times. I had been through the Road Traffic Act so many times, and I had never come across a se...