On June 13, 2013, Live Law started off as a small website with two reporters. The objective was to simplify court proceedings and judgements so as to make them easily understandable to any person, and to disseminate impartial reports from courts. That small establishment has now grown into an irreplaceable legal resource with 20 permanent reporters and 15 freelancers. In 2017, Live Law also ventured into reporting legal proceedings in Hindi and started Live Law Hindi. Since then, there have been multiple milestones for Live Law, like the Live Law Academy, Live Law citation, and the Legal Mentorship Program. PV Dinesh, Co-founder of Live Law, says that their commitment as an organisation is only to the values of the Indian Constitution. However, the journey has not been an easy one.
MA Rashid, Founder of Live Law, says that the portal has revolutionised legal reporting in India with the Supreme Court quoting Live Law reports, but recalls that the initial three years were extremely difficult. “In 2016, we even thought of shutting the organisation down. However, we had readers from the law fraternity and legal students, and we started getting website traffic. It was then that we got to know about Independent and Public-Spirited Media Foundation (IPSMF), and got funding from them for three years. This was a turning point in the Live Law history,” he says, highlighting how they were clear from the beginning that editorial independence should not be compromised at any cost. Therefore, offers from some investors were declined as the team did not want to dilute their editorial vision.
“Even within our limitations, we have never shied away from criticising the system when required. In doing that, we do not follow any party affiliations, and our editorial policies are solely guided by Constitutional principles. One attractive feature of Live Law was live tweeting. We live-tweeted court proceedings. Our reporters don’t miss anything in the court. Back in those days, judges did not have any mechanism to read about what happened in other courts. Now, the SC has come up with an AI-based solution for Constitution Benches, but back then, it was not a practice. So, judges and lawyers referred to Live Law to know about what happened in other courtrooms. In certain important cases like Aadhaar, Ayodhya, etc, we might be the only platform that has the complete and exhaustive reports of the hearing days,” he adds. Further, Rashid says that almost all the Supreme Court judges and High Court judges are subscribers of the website.
Another important achievement of Live Law in the past decade, Rashid says, is that it has changed the way in which ordinary people access legal news. “Court judgments are sometimes 100 pages, and sometimes 500 pages. Our reports break down the complexities in the judgement into simpler terms and explain its relevance and impact. That way, we communicate to the ordinary lay persons, bringing them closer to the judicial system,” he explains and adds that another milestone achieved by Live Law is starting the practice of adding citations and headnotes to judgments. “We report judgments mostly on the same day itself and this enables lawyers to know about the latest Supreme Court precedents at the earliest. Traditional journals take several months to publish judgments. Several High Court and Supreme Court judgments have used Live Law citations in their judgments,” he says.
Manu Sebastian, Managing Editor of Live Law says that transparency in legal reporting has remained one of the main goals of the organisation. “As there was little to no access for the public to court proceedings, there was a lot of misinformation or rather, lack of information regarding what happened inside courtrooms. The only reporting was through news channels and newspapers, which was also not comprehensive and exhaustive, but highlighted only certain matters that were considered important or sometimes sensational. We wanted to bring in more legal soundness into reporting and reproduce what happens inside the court without any particular lens or additions. Our reports are holistic and contain all the relevant context,” he adds.
Dinesh also agrees that legal news that was reported by many media houses had its own pitfalls due to multiple factors, including a lack of dedicated legal reporters with a law degree. “All reporters had other beats as well, and they had to accommodate court reporting amidst other work. The court reports that came out at times had clickbaity headlines and certain aspects were not properly reported. For instance, if the court makes remarks against an establishment which might be uncomfortable, that may not be reported. We wanted to reproduce what happens inside the court as it is with all the adjoining details,” he says.
He also adds that there were many suggestions by established journalists that the headlines should be made clickbaity, so that it attracts many readers. “However, we do not want the news to be sensational. We give reports in the raw format. We had our own convictions and styles, which went against the conventional journalism, but it paid off in the long run. The reach of the internet helped us in disseminating news at an affordable cost. As our operations are mostly online, the internet helped us to reduce the expense factor. Though there are multiple websites now, we are still able to survive in the market because we give good and impartial news. We believe that if we can really give good, impartial, independent and non-sensational content with some character, citizens will accept it,” he says.
Dinesh says that this has sometimes invited ‘branding’ of the organisation. “We are branded by different people. But we tell our reporters that come what may, we will just report facts. We follow the ideology of the Constitution as an organisation,” he asserts. Manu concurs, pointing out that the biggest difficulty initially was striking a balance between maintaining editorial independence and producing good-quality legal journalism. “It was not an easy endeavour,” he says.
In 2019, the organisation switched to a subscription-based revenue model, with all the archives going behind a paywall. “The articles and stories of the previous 30 days were made accessible free of cost, but archives were available only to subscribers. We were sceptical about this move but surprisingly, the subscription was a huge success,” he says.
Dinesh says that the Hindi page of Live Law is not behind a paywall in order to make legal reporting accessible to Hindi-speaking people. He also says that there is a plan to expand Live Law’s legal reportage to other languages, but it can be done only with the support of readers. Currently, the Hindi portal is cross-subsidised with the funds generated out of the English portal.