Qudoc is an experimental search engine for Australian lawyers, and anyone interested in finding legal information. At the moment it's geared slightly more towards lawyers - it has a tendency to find in-depth legal information.
Qudoc uses purpose-built algorithms to search the internet and automatically retrieve only web pages which are talking about Australian law. It has the ability to look at a website and determine which pages are talking about law and which ones aren't.
Only the ones talking about law are indexed by Qudoc. So, when you search Qudoc you get the law, and only the law, without any irrelevant content!
Once Qudoc has identified an Australian law web page, it automatically filters it according to various categories such as subject, jurisdiction and so on. It uses another set of purpose-built algorithms to show citations between documents.
Qudoc is unique amongst legal information platforms in that we use algorithms, rather than humans, to perform this work. Using this approach allows us to filter and retrieve a vast amount of legal information within a very short time.
Read the latest Qudoc updates at http://qudoc.wordpress.com/
As at the time of writing (30 July 2010), Qudoc is searching legislation and journals from AustLII and 1,915 websites for secondary material (law firms, information providers and so on).
Qudoc consists of 2 full time staff, and a small army of helpers, friends, girlfriends and contractors. We’re based in Leichhardt, NSW, Australia.
In the near future, we plan to add more Australian law - more primary sources, a greater range of primary material such as cases, and of course more secondary sources (articles and so on) from the internet.
If we haven’t found your site yet, you can help us by submitting it using the site submission form. If you have a list of legal links you always use, by all means send them on to us.
Qudoc is still in beta mode, so please be patient whilst we iron out the kinks. If you find something that doesn't work, or drives you up the wall, let us know by dropping us a line on our feedback form.
The word "Qudoc" is made up. It doesn’t mean anything.
It was originally meant to be an amalgamation of the words "kudos" and "document" (and be spelt "Kudoc") but then we changed the concept of the site (and, "kudoc.com" was already taken).
So, it doesn’t really mean anything now, which is fine with us. We think people will attach meaning to it as time goes on.
Kieran Morgan - manager, founder, conceptual development
James Gorman - geek extraordinaire, senior programmer, technical architect
