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A lawyer on your desk
Written by: Jasna Sýkorová

In business today, a legal education or at least some awareness of the law is crucial. However, searching through printed (and often out-of-date) collections of legislation is time-consuming. Electronic portals on law compile all of the information together, supplemented by commentaries by experts. Together, they often provide useful information.

http://www.epravo.cz A site for those knowledgeable enough about legal matters to know what they are looking for. It features commentaries on individual legal issues, news from the government, as well as a directory of consultants, and you can search through the collection of laws. The crowning jewel is vast material on topical issues such as Czech accession to the EU, or links to prepared general meetings or bankruptcies. For those with less expertise, it offers a discussion forum and a Q & A section. Unfortunately, no one guarantees you an answer, and if you get one, it is not very specific or understandable for laymen. @@@@

http://www.pravnik.cz Although this site has been up for only a few months, it contains a good number of interesting articles and commentaries on legal issues. Of greatest interest is the fledgling discussion forum, which allows readers to rate the advice and add their own observations on the matter. The Services section includes draft contracts for various legal relationships. The Full Wording section offers standards and laws published in the given area, such as commercial law. The site also includes an acceptable level of news. Pravnik.cz does not publish its own list of experts, but it has links to professional organizations under the Links and Databases section. @@@@@

http://poradna.infomost.cz Legal advice from Brno School of Law students. The consulting center, which is the main content of the site, goes down from time to time because the authors are busy. Nevertheless, you can still browse through old topics, thanks to the simple, functional search form. Besides the consulting center, the site also contains legal regulations and legal humor. Unfortunately, the other sections - articles and judicature (case studies) - are too brief to be of any real use. @@

http://spolek.juristic.cz An extensive, non-commercial project by law school students and graduates, that associates specialized projects like Law and the EU, where you can scroll through an option, or "Go to project", in the upper right corner. Each of these projects contains mainly expert commentaries, model contracts, and summaries of laws and standards. Advice and discussion contributions can be found under the Layman or Questions bookmarks. Answers are general, but understandable. The service for searching for people (experts) and links to institutions are interesting. Unfortunately, this site is not very well arranged, and full-text searching is not yet operational. @@@@

http://www.iporadny.cz A portal site for internet consulting centers, including legal ones. Users can access a consulting center provided by a nonprofit consumer protection organization (spotrebitele.cz) and another expressly for trademarks (poradenstvi.finance.cz). Other links are not functional, or they go to paid services. The discussion forum would be better if it were more lively. It's a good idea for it to function as an interface for consulting services on the net, but the links should be updated, and the graphics and organization of the site should be worked out more professionally. This also applies to projects submitted by single authors as a hobby. @