Internet tools for legal protection The best protection on any new business move is informing. What do we do though when we have to face evolution on the field of our business activity or when we are ignorant of the legal aspect of our moves? Visiting a lawyer is certainly the safer solution. Is it inevitable in all cases or could we sometimes manage without his advice? And how does our lawyer stay informed in order to give us the wiser answers? Legal databases are the most modern and complete proposal for lawyers, judges but also any private individual in order to become informed in all legal matters. At this moment there are two grand legal databases in Greece, which cover almost the whole of the legislation and a big part of the jurisprudence not only of our country but the European Union’s too, which is the source of the most legislative developments. The idea of creating the Bank of Legal Information of the Athens Bar Association was born in 1992 and started to materialize in 1994 from the company Unisystems, while it is updated and enriched daily. It includes the following categories; a) National Jurisprudence: almost 65.000 case rulings, amongst them the whole of the Supreme Court’s decisions, as well as the ones of the Council of the State from 1992 till today. Also there are 120.000 legal provisions and approximately 60.000 relevant decisions (identical and opposite ones), while more than 30.000 bibliographic references have been registered so far. b) National Legislation, where the whole of the Greek state’s legislation is included from its beginning till today. Laws are presented with their current amendments, which are registered in the system promptly (Gov. A is entered within 24 hours while Gov. B in 48 hours), but the previous forms are also available from a table. c) Collective Labor Agreements d) EU Legislation e) EU case law f) Consultatory responses of the State Legal Council and lots of specialized information. The Athens Bar Association’s database is available via the website of the Association (for free for its members) www.dsa.gr, where you can find a lot of useful information, like the most recent legislations, just one click away. Commendable is Intracom’s initiative, which for years at the address lawdb.intrasoftnet.com gives us the fullest and most accurate legal database of the country. From NOMOS website you can calculate your due interest, but also find any law, Greek or European, case law from a big jurisprudential frame as well as articles and studies. The search engine is user friendly and is adjusted to the data the user knows, so finding the right law is always possible, even if you do not know the law’s numeric indication or the Gov where it’s published, or even the year when it was voted. If the user has no precise information to search the law he is interested in, he can search using a Greek and European index or even by “words or phrases or numbers”, so he can see all the relevant laws. The same is applied to case law. For example, if you want to search for decisions of Greek Courts on domain names, since the relevant laws are almost inexistent, you click “case law” and in the search field by “words or phrases or numbers” you enter “domain name” and you will see eighteen court decisions from 1999 till 2003 on the matter. Even legislation in NOMOS is linked to the relevant case law, so that along with the article of the law you are interested in, you can be informed on the case law as well. Legal databases do not appeal to lawyers only. They are essential to all companies and to every reliable and foreseeing businessman. This is the reason why most public and private organizations as well as enterprises have acquired access to the service, like the Technical Chamber of Greece, which offers a limited edition for free to its members. Published at: Financial RAM