Abstract
Indian Judiciary is known to experience issues related to huge caseload and delays. Furthermore, litigants do not have easy access to legal advice which often discourages them from reaching out to courts for resolving disputes and other legal troubles. From a macroeconomic perspective, this can be considered a hurdle to economic growth and improved quality of life for individuals and firms.
To help democratize the access to legal information, Indian Kanoon was rolled out in 2008. The primary goal behind the creation of India Kanoon was to democratize access to legal documents. Before its existence, accessing judgments and other legal documents was difficult for ordinary citizens unless they subscribed to expensive legal databases.One of the key features of India Kanoon is its user-friendly search capability. The platform breaks down judgments into paragraphs and provides direct links to referenced statutes, making it easier for users to understand the context.
Researchers are partnering with the Indian Kanoon team to conduct an RCT that aims to measure the economic and judicial impact of providing access to an improved user-friendly version of the legal search engine. The study involves over 100k users over a period of 1 year from all over India. The study measures the impact on the users’ legal knowledge after access to the website. The users will be linked with cases to track the judicial outcomes. The Researchers will also collect administrative data on the financial outcomes of the firms associated with the users.