What you need to apply for a licence

Please provide the details of the person we can discuss the application with:

1. Contact Full Name
2. Contact Email address


3. We need the contact details of the person who will be responsible for the licence. This should be someone senior who has overall responsibility for compliance with the terms and conditions of the licence.
   
   • This is the same person as the main contact
   • This is a different person (please enter their details below)

1a. Licence holder Full Name

2a. Licence holder Email

4. What is the full legal name of your organisation?
5. Please enter any other names your organisation is known by If your organisation is not known by any other names, please type none
6. Which country is your organisation registered in?
7. What type of organisation is it?
   Select all that apply
   • Private limited company
   • Public limited company
   • Partnership
   • Sole trader
   • Registered charity
   • Community interesr company
   • Independant research organisation
   • Public body
   • Independant body
   • Other (please specify)
8. Please provide your organisation identifier (e.g. company number or charity registration number)
   If your organisation does not have an identifier, please type none
9. Please provide the name of any partners or organisations you are working with to do the computational analysis
   If you are not working with any partners or organisations, please type none

10. Please give any project or product name associated with this work
11. Please share a link to the project or product site
    If you cannot share a link, please type none
12. What is the main purpose of your project or product?
    Select all that apply
    • Publish legal information
    • Produce summaries and interpretation of the records
    • Research and develop new technologies
    • Research activity and trends across records
    • Deliver a consumer service
    • Other (please specify)
13. Which one best describes who will be able to access the outcomes of your computational analysis?
    Please select one.
    • Public access (e.g. anyone can freely access)
    • Restricted access (e.g. only subscribers or research peers)
    • Internal access (e.g. only colleagues from within your organisation)
    • Private for personal use only
14. Which Individuals or communities will benefit from your computational analysis?
    Select all that apply
    • General public
    • Legal professionals and law firms
    • Court users (e.g. litigants in person)
    • The Judiciary
    • Public bodies
    • Researchers and academics
    • A specific community (please specify)
    • A specific (non-legal) profession (please specify)
    • Other (please specify)

Please provide a public statement that briefly describes:

• purpose and anticipated outcomes of your product or service,
• individuals or communities you intend to serve
• methodologies or activities you will use to analyse the records.

To help you write your statement we have included a fictional, example public statement.

Example public statement

15. Please provide a public statement
    Please aim for no more than around 150 words

16. Will the computational analysis focus on specific individuals or specific groups of people?
    
    • Yes
    • No
17. Will you anonymise Individuals before you analyse records?
    
    • Yes
    • No
18. Will you regularly review algorithms for bias?
    
    • Yes
    • No
19. Will you abide by a code of ethics?
    
    • Yes
    • No
20. Will an impartial party review your work against an ethical framework?
    For example an Ethics Advisory Board (EAB) or Research Ethics Committee (REC)
    • Yes
    • No
21. Will you make the entire record available online?
    For example, you may choose to signpost a full judgment to users, where you have published or highlighted parts of a judgment
    • Yes
    • No
22. Will data extracted from these records be published online?
    For example, any statistical analysis, lists of citations or entities from within the records
    
    • Yes
    • No
23. For transparency, will you make your methodology available to others for scrutiny?
    
    • Yes
    • No
24. Will you analyse and publish findings online?
    
    • Yes
    • No
25. Do you intend to use computational analysis to do any of the following?
    Select all that apply
    • Produce fully automated legal advice
    • Perform automation to anticipate legal decisions directly for a client or consumer
    • Directly inform or influence the decision of a third-party whether to pursue justice or legal action
    • None of the above
26. Will you notify people when they are using generative AIservice or content?
    
    • Yes
    • No
    • Not using generative AI
27. Will you explain to users how the limits of the Find Case Law collection impacts the outcomes of your computational analysis?
    
    • Yes
    • No

There are 9 principles that have been established by the Ministry of Justice. They form part of the terms of any licence we grant. You will need to read these principles carefully and explain in detail how you will meet these terms. The 9 principles are:

1. Dignity of the Court
2. Independence of the Court
3. Appropriate Scrutiny
4. Anti-Discriminatory Harm
5. Anti-Bias
6. Personal Privacy
7. Discoverability
8. Algorithmic Transparency
9. Accurate Data Representation

1. Dignity of the Courts

It is important that any analysis maintains the dignity of the courts and tribunals and does not undermine their functioning as working bodies. This is consistent with access to justice.

Licence holders must not undermine the courts and tribunals’ ability to function as working bodies.

You should consider anything that may undermine the ability for the justice system to operate impartially and with integrity and treat all members of the public equally and fairly, no matter who they are

2. Independence of the Court

It is important that any analysis respects the independence of the judiciary and their impartial judgment.

Licence holders must respect the independence of the judiciary.

You should consider anything that may undermine the ability for the justice system to be fair and transparent, free of any influence outside the rule of law.

3. Appropriate Scrutiny

We seek to encourage the analysis of machine-readable judgments to allow the public to scrutinise justice outcomes and the law more effectively. We also acknowledge that the incomplete nature of the dataset and the current lack of safeguard against opaque or biased methodologies increases the risk of inaccurate or biased conclusions which may cause harm to individuals named therein.

Licence holders must acknowledge the incomplete nature of the dataset and apply appropriate scrutiny

You should consider how you will prevent anonymised people from being identified. This is referred to as jigsaw identification - putting together information in a way that identifies individuals even if they have been anonymised.

4. Anti-discriminatory harm

Outcomes of analysis should not cause direct discriminatory harm and reasonable steps should be taken by the licence holder to avoid introducing or compounding bias. Licence holders must take actions to prevent discriminatory harm

You should consider how you will monitor for and address harmful outcomes including misleading analysis or conclusions and discrimination against individuals or communities.

5. Anti-bias

Licence holders have a responsibility to operate effective governance to ensure that bias does not enter the process over time.

Licence holders must ensure bias does not enter their process over time

You should consider any ethical governance structures you have in place.

6. Personal privacy

Re-users should satisfy themselves that their practices comply with the standards set out in the DPA and UK GDPR regarding data security and data subjects’ rights, regardless of their location.

Please note that this licence:

• is not a data sharing agreement for personal data
• is not a processing agreement for personal data

7. Discoverability

We acknowledge a distinction between publicly available and readily available information. For example, care should be given to data subjects’ discoverability in line with Ministry of Justice/The National Archives’ decision not to index the content of judgments on search engines.

Licence holders must not index the contents of judgments and decisions on search engines.

You should consider what you will do to prevent third party services from crawling or scraping either the text of the records or the data you have extracted from the records.

8.Algorithmic transparency

Where possible, algorithms should be explainable and transparent.

You should consider how you will be transparent in your use of algorithms to people using your project or product.

9. Accurate data representation

The Find Case Law service comprises an incomplete set of court judgments and tribunal decisions. Outcomes from analysis should therefore reflect the limitations of the data and avoid misrepresenting the significance of findings.

Licence holders must avoid misrepresenting the significance of findings Occasionally records that have been published will be revised and taken down by the court. Licence holders must regularly check to make sure they are re-using the authoritative version of the record

You should consider how you will make sure the records you use are the most up to date published version of the records.

28. Licence holders must acknowledge and abide by all 9 principles. Do you accept all 9 principles as licence terms?
    
    • Yes
    • No

9 Principles Statement

Please describe how you will meet the 9 Principles as terms of your licence. You should state:

• any risks you have identified
• how you plan to address these risks.

In your answer you should be clear about which principle you are referring to. You should consider all the principles. Applications that don’t consider each of these principles may experience delays.

To help you write your answer we have included a fictional, example answer.

Example answer

29. Please describe how you will meet the 9 principles as terms?