Welcome back to Defamation Update.

We have completely rebuilt our site.  We’ve kept—and expanded—the most popular features of our site’s first edition, but have added much greater functionality.  Now all our content is properly accessible for whatever device one’s using.

In the first edition, Our Guide to Defamation Law was always comfortably our most popular resource.  During the daytime, we had a strong current of users from academic institution networks, and in the evening most visits were from users conducting general online searches about defamation.  With this in mind, our new Legal Guide is an effort to summarise every important aspect of defamation law in an accessible manner.  On our end, our Legal Guide is now much easier for us to update as the law and civil procedure evolves.

We’re aware that our case database—now under Court Decisions—was accessed considerably by legal networks and academic institutions during the daytime, but was not very busy in the evening.  On these patterns, we’ve remodelled the database to gear it more towards legal practice and academia.  In our first edition, we recorded New Zealand defamation judgments since 2013.  Our database now records almost all cases since 2000, including downloadable pdfs, and full citation references.  Our table is also fully responsive – so even a pleasure on the bus.

For a time, we maintained a Case of the Month.  These articles were reasonably popular but, in view that some were up to 30-hour projects, it proved too daunting to maintain these alongside work and family commitments.  Fortunately back in 2014 we were talked out of the original plan, Case of the Week!

All our previous posts have been given a home in our Posts page and we’ll continue to write new content when time permits.

Our last development is to loosen the reins and invite submissions for Case Reviews and Analysis.  We don’t mind if you’ve published it elsewhere, either.
Contact editor@defamationupdate.co.nz.

And if you don’t already, make sure to follow us on Twitter, where we link lots of news about defamation.

So, welcome back.  We hope you enjoy our resources – and all for free.  Not a bad deal.

— Editor