If you've put a home page on the World Wide Web, you've more than likely posted some form of you resumé along with it. After all, people who stop by will want to know what qualifies you as an expert on whatever you say you are.

You're not the only one who needs credentials. What's on your website needs them too. An illustration will help.

Your client is a small distiller in the Okanagan valley, who wants to expand beyond wines into spirits.

She plans on introducing a new product to the market, and expects to call this newest hootch-du-jour "Kentucky Bourbon."

She's told you about the name, and you wonder if there's anything in the North American Free Trade Agreement that could present a problem.

A tip from your favourite subject index leads you to a site that, to your delight, offers the entire text of NAFTA. Using the high-speed search engine provided, you streak though thousands of paragraphs, tunnelling for the provision dealing with the nomenclature of alcoholic beverages.

In a matter of instants you screech to a halt at the relevant section. A quick reading confirms your suspicion: she should stick with "Kelowna Kognac" if she wants to avoid running afoul of the FTA.

But wait? How reliable is the paragraph you've just read? Your eyes dart to the location of the current document, indicated near the top of the browser.

It says http://www.uoqem.edu/nafta/law/something_or_other. . . you don't bother to read the rest of it.

It's obviously some university somewhererather than the legislative body that passed the statutebut that doesn't tell you anything about the document you're looking at.

Maybe they'll tell you more about it on their Home Page. You back up several screens to where you encountered the document in the first place. The introduction gives you the full title of the act, the date of proclamation . . . project funding . . . blah blah blah . . . et cetera . . . et garbage . . . et alors?

The page leaves you with more questions than it answers: When was the last time the sponsor checked this page? Who is the sponsor anyway? A person? A professor, maybe? A department? A grad student who left last year?

Knowing the identify of the sponsor is still not enough if you don't know how reliable he, she or it is.

What reason did the sponsor have for putting the Free Trade Act on the Web in the first place?

What motivation does the sponsor have today for ensuring the accuracy and currency of the page? This isn't QuickLaw, remember.

Even if we assume the best intentions in setting the site up, that tells us nothing about mechanics. What processes were in place to ensure accuracy when it was coded? Was the electronic text taken directly from an official printing office or was it scanned in? Was any of it retyped? Was it edited? Was it proofread?

There are too many unknowns about this text to make it definitive.

While it might be a truly accurate, comprehensive, next-best-thing-to-being-there copy of the document, since the sponsor did not give us any information on which to assess the credibility of either the document or the website, we can't rely on it completely for our search.

Before you give the client the final word, you must track down a more reliable version, and double-check the provision there.

We have been spoiled big-time in the legal profession. Our information specialiststhe librarians, researchers and on-line case reporting serviceshave been of such good quality that we didn't have to spend much time trying to authenticate materials.

But if we look to the Internet for source material, we're going to have to start.

If you have made documents available on your website, you should be asking the same questions. For each document, have you spelled out its credentials and background, so that visitors can make a judgement as to whether or not to rely on you and your efforts?

Aside from your documents, you must also credentialize yourself. Maybe you've hung your shingle on the World Wide Web so that people from Europe or the Pacific Rim can find you when they need a Canadian legal expert.

You might be a member in good standing of your own Law Society, but how is someone from Ooga-booga supposed to know that? How would someone from Portugal or Burma even begin to know which body is responsible for licencing and regulating you in your current province of practice?

You can help visitors to your site establish your credentials by not only listing the appropriate body on your website, but providing a link to it.

If you're practising in Lunenberg, for example, you should have a link to the Law Society of Nova Scotia. Your link tells visitors that they can confirm your status, if necessary, by checking with this organization.

Lewis S. Eisen is a computer trainer and consultant to the legal profession, and the author of The Canadian Lawyer's Internet Guide. He can be contacted at leisen@pfx.on.ca, or http://www.magma.ca/~leisen/.

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