First published in 1875 and administered since inception by the Council of Law Reporting in Victoria, the Victorian Reports will be available this month on Westlaw AU.

It’s an exciting Westlaw AU development as upon launch, there will be tens of thousands of new live links to Victorian primary law from within existing Thomson Reuters products. The Victorian Reports joins ten other authorised law report series on our legal platform. The collection will include the backset reports since 1957, including PDFs for submission in Court, and all upcoming reports published by Little William Bourke who have been appointed the official print and non-exclusive online publishers for the reports.

In a recent interview for Q&A on Insight, Peter G Willis SC talks about taking on the role as new Editor. With a distinguished and diverse legal career spanning roles from associate-designate to High Court Justice Sir Ninian Stephen to over 17 years in private practice at a leading national law firm, Mr Willis  brings a great depth of commercial and public law expertise to the Victorian Reports.

What are you looking forward to in your new role as editor of the Victorian Reports?

I hope to contribute to the vitality of the report series and enhance its value to the profession. Part of the editor’s role is building the corpus of judgments available to legal professionals and students across the country. The Victorian Reports has a fantastic legacy, and one of my aims is to assist it to adapt to and flourish in the modern electronic environment. It’s important to make authorised reports available as widely as possible, and in a timely manner.

What is the value to legal practitioners of an authorised law report?

An authorised report, as opposed to more general legal reporting or a copy of the unreported judgment, is an authoritative contribution to the development of the law. It’s valuable because it has been curated – that is, selected, reviewed, carefully summarised and thoroughly revised, including by the relevant judge(s) that handed it down. When we might otherwise be drowning in a sea of individual cases, the process of selection and reporting is a marker of value.

One significant benefit of the new arrangements for online publication of the Victorian Reports is that legal practitioners and students across the country will have access to authorised reports of Victorian Supreme Court cases almost as soon as the report is settled by the Court, without waiting for a printed part or bound volume.

See the full interview on Insight here.

For more information see the factsheet or contact Product Manager, Thu Luc (thu.luc@thomsonreuters.com).