Welcome!

This is the web site of the Legal Advocacy Foundation (LAF). The LAF was founded in 2007 as a not for profit foundation operating pursuant to Estonian law.  

We are a legal policy research institute dedicated to promoting better learning about legal reform. To do that, we improve linkages between people, institutions and better ideas in how policy is discussed, formulated and implemented.  The goal is to identify and promote “best practices”. This emphasizes the learning nature of legal institutions, insisting on accountable dialogue over time.

This web site is our main tool to build partnerships. We work through partnerships using the internet to make it easier to share learning experiences and ideas. For that reason, we are also trying to develop best practices in how the web site works.

We start from several principles. First, if we are promoting a dialogue, the web site should be the starting point for interaction --- not just a passive repository for data. How do we get this going? Mainly, we see ourselves in the business of asking questions rather than asserting dogma. We make only one assertion that doing law is about asking and answering questions over time --- not about spouting off “right answers”. We like the idea of the laboratory aspect of legal thinking that promotes “learning by doing”.

Second, we can only expect you to do something if it is relatively easy to do. We recognize that our partners are all busy doing many things. We cannot make coming to our web page your main occupation. But we do have the goal that coming here will enhance your ability to work as you connect to networks of people doing similar things.

We can only propose such outlandish ideas because the internet has dramatically reduced the costs and burdens of networking. We propose here to make the most of this tool. We will keep thinking about how to develop this capacity in our web site so that it is a daily resource, augmented by the ideas of our partners and friends, teaching us how to better communicate and succeed in our work. In this way, our goal is to make this web site a daily tool (on your desk top ready to be used).

So, as director of the LAF, I hope that you place this tool on your desk top and enjoy working with us. As a first step, you will benefit if you take a moment to register as a user. We can only interact with you if you are registered! We will hold all information provided as confidential and will not provide registration lists to any other entity without your express permission.

Finally, we welcome all feedback on the ideas and information we are developing. Especially if you are not satisfied or find an aspect of the web site does not function properly please let us know.