Chapter 8 — Conduct and Capacity-Building of Trial-Monitoring Staff contradictions between domestic legal documents and binding international standards that might explain any breaches observed. Staff can also use good analysis provided by local practitioners to reinforce the programme’s findings and promote broader acceptance. OSCE reports and documents from trial-monitoring programmes in other countries may be searched online. Additionally, legislation from other countries that can be used as inspiration for analytical and comparative purposes can be accessed through the ODIHR-based web portal ­Legislationline.org. Staff should share with their colleagues any interesting articles and jurisprudence they come across. Some programmes have assigned focal points to share summaries of interesting articles or the tables of contents of legal periodicals relevant to the monitoring. It is a good practice to keep a central archive where all relevant materials that may be useful for analysis can be stored and, if possible, searched by keywords.99 Where laws are amended frequently, programme managers should consider assigning a focal point to keep abreast of developments and provide consolidated versions of legal documents to monitoring staff. It is advisable for the focal point to cross-check regularly with the responsible justice-system officials that the version used by the judiciary is the same as that of the monitoring programme, and to resolve any discrepancies. Since copying such materials may often place a strain on resources, programme managers may consider maintaining legal reference materials at central locations or providing them online. All monitors and staff should be aware of the existence of these materials and of how to access them quickly and easily. Managers must examine the budgetary and technical possibility of providing all monitoring staff with free access to the Internet, and train them to use it for legal research if they lack the skills. 8.3.2 Creating a legal reference manual as a field support tool Where resources permit, programmes may also consider creating a legal reference manual. In OSCE programmes, this has included incorporating domestic legal provisions and cases into the presentation of international and domestic fair trial standards to identify how such standards have been applied locally. The development of such a manual should be considered for a number of reasons: • The research required to compile a manual often identifies gaps and areas where domestic laws are not compliant with international standards; • A reference manual can be structured to correspond to a programme’s internal reporting template, providing guidelines to monitors on how to report their findings;100 • Programmes that have created a manual have the benefit of a permanent resource that will streamline the process of orienting and training new staff; • The development of a manual provides an opportunity to consult and obtain input from domestic legal experts and other organizations, expanding the reach of the programme and obtaining feedback that draws on local legal knowledge. The creation of a legal reference manual need not be unduly time-consuming. Where the manual will only collect and organize relevant laws, secondary sources and other easily obtainable materials, it may be created relatively quickly. Where more comprehensive treatment of applicable case law is undertaken, including original research on relevant international and domestic case law, the process may take several months. If it is decided that a legal reference manual will be used, the process 99  This may be taken into account when creating database, as set out in Chapter 5.2. 100 See Chapter 11.4.1, “Using instructions to ensure a clear reporting methodology”. 69