In early 2002, Legal Week, in conjunction with PA Consulting Group, published a survey of how the major law firms in the UK are using IT as a management and competitive weapon. The survey, targeted at both managing partners and IT directors of the top 100 law firms in the UK, was carried out during the latter part of 2001. An article highlighting the main results of the survey was published in Legal IT (www.legalit.net) and reported that law firms currently spend between 2% and 10% of their turnover on IT each year, the average being 5.5%. Client portal and knowledge management (KM) are the two areas of greatest activity in the near future (cited by 27% and 30% of the survey sample respectively).

Many years ago, not long after I first started work in an academic library in Northern New South Wales, I had a conversation with a colleague about how exciting it would be to work in ‘an old, traditional university like Oxford’ in what seemed from a distance, a ‘real university’ as opposed to the smallish modern one I was currently employed in. This vague musing on a quiet afternoon during the stifling build up of a regular afternoon tropical storm was strangely prophetic. In between assisting individual students with their research into the relationship between aliens and the Internet (I'm not joking), I was dreaming about the musty old collections, academic robes, traditions and reading rooms which reeked of intellectual strain and rigour. Well, you know what they say about being careful what you wish for!

In the essential work, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville (ISBN 1-56592-282-4), the authors state that the primary job of the information architect is to:

clarify the mission and vision for the site, balancing the needs of its sponsoring organisation and the needs of its audiences

determine what content and functionality the site will contain

specify how users will find information in the site by defining its organisation, navigation, labelling, and searching systems

map out how the site will accommodate change and growth over time.

These points rather succinctly describe what an information architect sets out to accomplish for any given site and/or situation. But given these points what should someone ‘do’ to implement improved information architecture (IA) for a site? Where do you start?

This is not intended to be a “how to do it” article as I am sure there are plenty of you out there who could do that, rather it is intended to be a description of the problems I ran into when attempting to complete a copyright audit form and to give you food for thought.

The seminar was designed to be compatible with the theme of the conference. It therefore concentrated on facilitating the limited time available so that participants could discuss, practice and reflect on the effective training skills they are required to use in the workplace when training either individuals or groups. In particular the seminar recognised that more and more we are being asked to train our customers to use new tools and techniques, very often involving IT.

An indexed and annotated copy of the Employment Rights Act 1996 as amended at 1st January 2000, including amendments made by the Employment Relations Act 1999, is included on the professional area of this Web site. DiscLaw Publishing Ltd provides e-LOAD (employment Law on a Disc). The subscription service includes CD-ROMs updated every six months plus a password to their Internet site, updated every three weeks with the latest employment law developments. The site also contains lots of free information based on an earlier issue of the CD.

Costs: Prices start from £5 plus VAT a day for the professional service (£190 plus VAT p.a.)

Contact DiscLaw Publishing Ltd 0870 751 8905 www.emplaw.co.uk

A brief, but very informative, summary of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) is contained in Legal Information Management in the Summer 2001 issue. This article doesn't attempt to replicate that summary but will examine some of the key decisions that need to be made in developing a policy that will enable the University of Birmingham to conform to the Act, its eight data protection principles, and the University's Data Protection policy when processing personal data and the practical procedures needed to deal with personal data processing in an information service.

The title of the legislation commonly referred to as the USA PATRIOT Act is in fact an acronym: the full name of this 342-page act is the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, passed on 26 October 2001. It amends more than 15 federal statutes covering criminal procedure, computer fraud and abuse, foreign intelligence, wiretapping and the privacy of student records. The USA PATRIOT legislation was introduced by Attorney-General John Ashcroft who sought to increase the powers to fight terrorism following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington DC. Some concern was expressed at the lack of public debate when the legislation was introduced: the Act was passed in around six weeks.

The following report outlines the activities and funding of academic law libraries in the UK and Ireland in the academic year 2001/2002. The figures have been taken from the results of a postal questionnaire undertaken by Information Services staff at Cardiff University on behalf of the Society of Legal Scholars (SLS).

I never wanted to get involved. I had a feeling it would take longer and be much more work than originally anticipated. I knew it would require an attention to detail which I would have trouble acquiring. I guessed it would take stamina, tact and perseverance. I worried it would put a strain on all sorts of relationships. How right I was!

It all started soon after I joined CMS ameron McKenna in April 1999. As a new PSL I was excited about giving up the relentless search for chargeable work required of all practising solicitors and I savoured the prospect of not having to complete a time sheet. Life was to become academically stimulating again—and above all stress free!

The article below, which is written by Gloria Orrego Hoyos, presents an overview of the Inter-American Human Rights System, its main instruments, its organs for the protection and promotion of human rights in the Americas and the available tools for the academic research and the activism in the vindication for human rights in the region. This information is presented from the contextualization of the system within a history of violation of human rights in the region, and the role of both the Inter-American Convention and the Inter-American Court in the transformation of the social, political and institutional realities of the people of the continent.

Amanda McKenzie from Olswangs presented a paper at the BIALL Annual Conference 2010 on the potential impact of the reforms contained in the Legal Services Act 2007.

Lesley Dingle, founder of the Eminent Scholars Archive, provides a further contribution based on interviews with Emeritus Professor John Anthony “Tony” Jolowicz, one of the great legal scholars at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College since 1952.

David Wills describes his experiences at the AALL summit with particular emphasis on the sessions on legal education, digital ephemera preservation, disaster planning and the rights of indigenous people.

Emily Allbon recounts her experiences in integrating social networking tools into her work with law students and, in particular, how she has integrated them with her prize-winning portal – Lawbore. She also documents her use of personal response systems in her teaching sessions.

In the article Rosemary Auchmuty discusses the nature of, and the approach to, her research into the life of Gwyneth Bebb who in 1913 challenged the Law Society over their refusal to admit women to the solicitors' profession.

This article by Joe Kennedy of Baker & McKenzie. Wong & Leow in Singapore outlines the legal system in Singapore; explains the legislative process; discusses case reporting and gives guidance on how to find legal materials in both hard copy and online sources and both free and for fee.

This issue of LIM has a theme of Scottish legal information and David Hart the highly respected and long-standing (ex) Scottish law librarian, kindly agreed to talk to the Editor about his long career on law librarianship and his involvement with BIALL

This paper by Dr. Mohd Muzzammil concerns the legal information resources at the Supreme Court of India Judges’ Library (SCJL). The article is based on a survey conducted by the researcher as part of his PhD work. He describes the Court and the library collections that support the work of the SCJL, and notes that print legal information resources are used more than electronic resources. The study also realised that a significant percentage of the library budget is expended on subscriptions for journals.

The impact of the Covid 19 lockdown of Western countries has had extensive coverage, but for other countries, like Myanmar, little information has been shared in the Western media. Yet the impact on everyday activities there has been just as great, including closure of workplaces and universities, the wearing of masks, and restrictions on travellers from outside Myanmar. When a planned programme of face-to-face legal research teaching in May 2020 could not be offered, another means had to be found to deliver a course which had been successfully introduced the previous year. In this article Ruth Bird outlines how the course went ahead even though she was in lockdown in Melbourne, while her colleagues and participants were locked down in Yangon.