The Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques (ITTIG) came into being as a result of the reorganization of the Italian National Research Council - CNR set in motion by the Presidential Decree no. 15998 of 12/10/2001. It is a product of the fusion of the Institute for Legal Documentation - IDG, based in Florence, and the Research Centre for the Study of Roman Law and Legal Systems - CSDRSG, based in Rome. The Presidential Decree no. 59 of 29/4/2009 has modified the previous one.

The Institute for Legal Documentation had been set up in 1968 in order to continue the work of the Italian Legal Vocabulary Opus, one of the first projects promoted by the Committee for legal sciences of the CNR with the administrative and technical support of the Accademia della Crusca. From the 1980s on, its work was orientated specifically towards the documentation of Italian legal doctrine but subsequently it extended its competencies to cover the automatic documentation of legislation, of law, and of legal doctrine. More recently its work has also covered the application of computing technology to the various fields of legal doctrine.

The collaboration between the IDG and the CSDRSG has been consolidated over some years now. The Centre has availed itself on many occasions of the documentary expertise of the Institute for Legal Documentation of Florence; in conferences organized by the Center important papers have been assigned to researchers of the IDG; collaborative scholarly ventures, that have involved the work of research groups in both institutions, have been undertaken. There has also been profuse editorial collaboration leading to prestigious scholarly publications, chief of which the Indexes of Legal Lexicography, now at its fifth contribution.