It is possible that no one was more influential in shaping the universe of online access to legal information than Tom Bruce. Way back in 1992 — a year before the launch of the World Wide Web and when only scraps of legal information could be found on the Internet — Tom and colleague Peter Martin founded the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School, with the goal of making the law available to everyone online, for free.
So ahead of his time was Tom that, when the LII first began to publish legal materials on the web, Tom had to create a web browser, Cello, because there was no browser then that worked with Windows, even though that was the operating system used by most legal professionals.
Today, Tom announced that he will retire June 30. Taking over to lead the LII are Sara Frug, who will direct the LII’s technical efforts, and Craig Newton, who will be in charge of the editorial and outreach facets of the organization.
To this old-timer (meaning me), this news truly marks the end of an era — or perhaps a major turning point. Given the world of legal information as it now exists, it is hard to describe how revolutionary was the LII in its early days. It published Supreme Court opinions 10 years before the court had a website. It published the first online version of the U.S. Code. It offered the first distance-learning courses for the graduate study of law.
“I’m proud of what the LII has done,” Tom said in a statement announcing his retirement. “We’ve helped a lot of people to find and understand the law — over the years, hundreds of millions. That is the most important thing to the world, I think.”
But as important as that
