Access to Legal Information in Ethiopia: Overview of Attainments and Prospects

Access to legal information facilitates an efficient and effective search for legal facts. It is indispensable in legal education, legislative drafting, law-making, access to justice, legal writing, litigation, judicial decisions and alternative dispute resolution. Moreover, it is essential for researchers on interdisciplinary themes and the public at large. Attainments and gaps in the flow of legal information at legal and justice sector institutions, academia and the legal profession depend on key factors that include the level of indexing, compilation and sustained accessibility of laws, policies, judicial decisions, law gazettes and other documents issued by the relevant legislative, judicial or executive organs. With regard to legislative intent, legal information flow relates to explanatory notes (mabraria), minutes, and other documents that constitute the basis for the initiation, suspension or amendment of laws. The search for legal information further refers to the accessibility of publications, including law journals and theses. To this end, there is a need for systematic law-finding tools such as chronologically and thematically indexed search tools. Ethiopia can enhance its attainments and also draw lessons from the good practices of Kenya and Rwanda in access to legislation upon enactment and the official gazettes that are annually compiled. The positive contribution of Artificial intelligence (AI) in access to legal information and the need for caution thereof have also been highlighted. This article uses an analytical and descriptive legal research method to examine the attainments in access to legal information and the prospects of improvement regarding its momentum and outcomes.