Over the past decade, there has been a remarkable growth in the availability and use of Irish legal materials in electronic form (principally through the internet). There has been a transformation in the ease of access to legal materials – from a jurisdiction in which legal practitioners obtained up-to-date paper materials with difficulty to one where up-to-the-minute information is freely available online. It is now possible to access online the full text of Irish legislation, judgments, explanatory codes and memoranda, details of administrative procedures, parliamentary debates, certain secondary legislation, guidance notes and statements of practice. What has led to this remarkable transformation? What are the principal factors which have encouraged the continuing free flow of official legal materials onto the internet?