Indian Kanoon Bar & Bench talks to the mind behind Indian Legal Google

‘Indian Kanoon’, the name itself is enough to ring a bell in every law student’s mind. Emerging as the ‘legal Google’, Indian Kanoon has succeeded in creating its own unique space in the sphere of legal research. Associate Editor, Raghul Sudheesh spoke to the person behind this creation, Dr. Sushant Sinha (pictured) about his journey from Jamshedpur to IIT Madras and his reaction to the success of Indian Kanoon..Sinha was born in Jamshedpur, where his father worked as a mathematics professor at Jamshedpur Workers College. He completed fourteen years of schooling from Rajendra Vidyalaya there. After this, he secured admission in IIT Madras and studied computer science. He did his PhD from University of Michigan and returned to India in the year 2009..While in Michigan, Sinha’s inability to easily access legal information in India prompted him to establish Indian Kanoon. He opines, “I was looking for a Google like interface to search… but there was nothing like this at that point of time. Searching judgments was a time consuming affair back then. The government database was rudimentary in nature. The records were often incomplete.”.He says this lack of effective access to legal judgments made it difficult for him to quench his curiosity with respect to laws. Thanks to his innovative approach, now this problem will never be faced again, especially by law students. Although initially this endeavour was not taken seriously by his acquaintances, its eventual success and utility did make them feel proud, says Sinha. He says that he was constantly supported by his family..With the initial objective of making a legal search engine, Sinha started Indian Kanoon in 2008. Initially, it had a small database of 1,000 Supreme Court judgments. After that, gradual additions of High Court Judgments, Law Commission Reports, Constituent Assembly debates, Lok Sabha debates, Tribunals judgments etc. were made. Automated daily updation was done to ensure constant improvement in the quality of content..Considering that Sinha also had to complete his PhD research at Michigan and subsequently, cope with a full time job at Yahoo, the greatest struggle in maintaining Indian Kanoon was finding enough time. Nevertheless, Indian Kanoon’s popularity is growing day by day. With its growing reach and popularity, Sinha now plans to focus on adding other services to the website. According to him, till now the horizontal growth of the database was the primary concern. Now he is graduating to the vertical growth by adding semantic information (semantic web aims at converting the current web of unstructured documents into a web of data) and making thoroughly analysed content easily available to the users. The new mission is to make the resources available to the website more effective and relevant..Talking about the future, Sinha shared his plans of working full time for the website. Presently the website is of a non profit nature and Sinha does not believe in using advertisements to generate profit. According to him, advertisements do not generate substantial monetary benefits and clutter the interface. Rather, he plans to commercialise the website. These plans include addition of Value Added Services to the site, its incorporation as a company, launch of newer and better services to automate legal research, facilitate sharing of information among firms, lawyers, and others. However, he plans to keep the browsing of judgments a free service..When asked about the competition faced by Indian Kanoon from other legal databases, like Manupatra, Westlaw and Heinonline, Sinha highlighted the technological edge of his venture. He pointed out that though the other databases like Manupatra are high on resources, they are spending resources on manual updating. “They are not technology based websites. But if Google or Yahoo initiates any such model, I would rather be scared. As for Westlaw, it is in a different league. It is a US paid model and has an access problem” he opined..Lastly, he pressed upon the importance of legal information, not only for law students but also for a layman. He highlighted the role of law in our daily lives and said that his primary goal was to enhance people’s involvement and participation in the legal process. With promising future plans and Sinha’s confident and determined approach, we are sure to see great things coming from Indian Kanoon in the time to come.