CLIG (City Legal information Group) Committee members Dunstan Speight and Lisa Sabbage report on the findings of the CLIG Professional Skills survey, winter 2013*. Information professional roles have developed in different directions in law firms in recent years and this survey sought to map the range of tasks being carried out by information professionals. It also documented the range of skills within the profession, including skills and experience which law firms might be able to exploit further. The hope is that, by showing the diversity of tasks and skills to be found in LIS departments across the City, the survey might offer individuals ideas and strategies for developing their roles within their own firms.

Masoud Gerami, Managing Director of vLex Justis, and Aidan Hawes, Head of Commercial Development, discuss the development and launch of the new vLex Justis platform. They describe the process of making decisions behind the content and features available on the platform, and how these will be continually enhanced in the future. They also discuss the global circumstances the platform was launched within and share their goal of meeting customer needs in a future which will bring new ways of working.

Michael Prichard was born before the Second World War and lived through the bombing and destruction of much of London. When he entered university in 1945, King's College London had reoccupied its old quarters in the badly-damaged Somerset House, and along with LSE and UCL had pooled teaching resources to overcome staff shortages and accommodation damage. This inadvertently gave Michael a rich pool of mentors upon which to found his career, and who served him well in later years. He entered Queens’ College Cambridge in 1948 and experienced the unique post-war phenomena of the “returning warriors”, which continued, along with the “weekenders”, when he became a fellow at Gonville & Caius in 1950. Here he has remained, and is still a Fellow, seventy years later. His legacy is a fund of memories of a life-long journey through changing landscapes of legal research, teaching, and college and faculty administration. Lesley Dingle first interviewed Michael for the Eminent Scholars Archive in 2012, where his biography and general academic reminiscences are set forth. She now revisits aspects of these, following a conversation she had with David Yale for ESA in November 2019. David was Michael's career-long colleague, and his interview shone new light on their decades of joint endeavour unravelling the development of maritime law in the British Isles. Shortly after David's reminder of the magnitude of their project, an encounter with Professor David Ibbetson, and most recently a meeting with Michael, now in his 93rd year, spurred the author on to summarise particular aspects of Michael's varied research projects. In the process, she will emphasise the overall sense of adventure, and enjoyment - in short “fun”, with which he explored the history and jurisdictional intricacies of the Admiralty Court (jointly with David Yale), presented his enlightened insights into the evolution of aspects of tort law, and explained his research of the few esoteric conundrums in which a retiree was able to indulge.

This article, written by Emily Stannard, is based on her presentation at the 2015 BIALL Annual Conference. The article discusses the recent statutory changes to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and reflects on the impact it has had on information professionals, especially those working within the cultural heritage and education sectors. The wording of the legislation is considered in detail with the aid of case law to provide context where necessary, particularly with reference to fair dealing provisions. Developments within the Digital Single Market of the European Union also have a significant impact on national copyright law, and it is imperative that information professionals remain informed about upcoming copyright initiatives as well as making sense of the new statutory instruments.

The 6th Willi Steiner Memorial Lecture was delivered by David Allen Green and took place on 8 June 2017 during the Annual Conference of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) which was held in Manchester. His talk concerned libraries and public policy with particular reference to Brexit. He addressed the issues of how a debate like Brexit can be better informed and to what extent reliable legal and policy information makes any difference. In essence, he looks at how good information can help shape Brexit. This article is a later write-up from David's speaking notes. The lecture was, coincidentally, given on the same day as the general election.

In this article Michael Maher writes about the declining print needs for law libraries within UK law firms in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The article begins by looking at the initial financial impact Covid-19 had across UK law firms. The second part of the article covers how home-working patterns have become the preferable option to working in the office. Finally, the author takes a change management approach, addressing what information professionals need to do to best manage and embed the change so as to continue to play a key part of the future, post-pandemic, law firm business.

Elizabeth Mary Moys, known to all her colleagues as Betty, was born on 26 June 1928 at Wickford, Essex. She was brought up in Kent where she spent most of her life when in the UK. She attended Chislehurst County Grammar School then went on to Queen Mary College, London, to read English and took a BA (Hons) degree in 1949. Her first job was in Crayford Branch of Kent County Library Service from 1949–50. After library school in 1950–51 (Northwestern Polytechnic School of Librarianship, where she was one of the leading spirits in starting a School of Librarian-ship Students' Association), Betty became reference librarian at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1951.

This article by Emily Allbon introduces readers to the discipline of legal design, offering an insight into its application, its methodology, and the contexts in which it appears. There is coverage of why legal design is so pivotal for ensuring access to the law and an exploration of where it is being used: in legal practice, in academia, in public legal education and in the courts. There is also a close look at one element; that of visual contracts, and some consideration of where the legal information profession might position itself.

legal information has specific features due to its nature, its different utilisation purposes and the intrinsic need for integration of its components, represented by legislation, cases and doctrine. access to legal literature in particular is a primary requirement; it responds to the demand for understanding and interpretation of statutes and cases, an objective that law scholars and professionals greatly contribute to.

Following the enactment of the Civil Procedure Rules in 1999, potential litigants are expected to pursue alternative means to litigation for solving their disputes. In this article, Nigel Broadbent a Director at Lupton Fawcett LLP in Leeds clearly explains the various activities which fall within ADR, including mediation, family dispute resolution, arbitration, conciliation and adjudication.

A campaign to bring the law up-to-date with the current world of publishing has been led by the British Library, on behalf of all the legal deposit libraries and the publisher trade bodies. If the move is successful, new generic legislation will ensure that non-print formats are included within legal deposit – allowing UK businesses and education to benefit from access to the widest possible collections of research material, now and in the future.

On 18th April 2002, I found myself on a flight to Chicago. My ultimate destination was Madison, Wisconsin, and I would be spending the next month at the University of Wisconsin's Law Library. This article gives me the opportunity to share some of my experiences, as well as outlining the benefits of this type of professional development opportunity.

This well-attended full-day seminar on 22 April 2002 was held at the British Library Conference Centre, a comfortable venue with space for a small exhibition by the main legal information providers separate from the auditorium. It was organised jointly by BIALL and SCOOP (Standing Committee on Official Publications). Speakers included Sarah Carter (University of Kent), Alan Pawsey of HMSO, Tony Hopkins from the Statutory Publications Office and Joe Ury, Executive Director of BAILII. The afternoon focused on the commercial providers of legal information, providing a forum for speakers from Context, Westlaw UK, LEXIS and Lawtel.

Since May 1997, the constitutional structure of the United Kingdom has been transformed. A developed Parliment in Scotland and a devolved Assembly in Wales have been established. After a false start in December 1999 which lasted only 11 weeks before suspension in February 2000, the Northern Ireland Assembly was reconvened in May 2000. In England, Regional Development Agencies and Regional Chambers are up and running in each of the English regions and the Government is strengthening the Government Offices of the Regions. Campaigns for directly elected regional assemblies are becoming increasingly active in some of the english regions. In May 2000 Ken Livingstone was elected London's first directly elected Mayor. In elections of the Greater London Assembly the Labour amd Conservative parties won 9 candidates each, the Liberal Democrats 4 and the Green 3. Devolution has also brought about changes in the centre, with a reduction in the number of Scottish and the Welsh ministers and changes in Parlimentary procedures.

This article by Thomas Shaw discusses the key findings of an MSc dissertation which examined legal information professionals' perceptions of what facilitates, and what impedes, the use of free and paid-for legal information resources. It also compares and contrasts the views of information professionals working in academia with those working in law firms. It is situated in the context of significant criticism of commercial legal publishing and the existence of many resources providing free legal information.

Andrew Mills, of Freeth Cartwright LLP, gave a paper at the 38th Annual BIALL Study Conference in Sheffield in June 2007 on blogging. He describes how he set up IMPACT(R), his blog, which covers intellectual property and IT issues. He describes the software he used and the potential pitfalls involved when starting out. He emphasises the importance of using RSS feeds and considers whether blogs will present a threat to traditional hard copy publishing because of the speed with which they can communicate information.

In this article John Bell follows his previous LIM article which was published in December 20121 by suggesting that, despite the development towards an open access world for publically funded research, the journal as a form of publication for peer reviewed research is far from dead; indeed, it has an active role to play in the future.

In this conference report Vola Walker gives an account of the conference of the Australian Law Librarians Association (ALLA) held in Sydney in 2013.

In this article Margarethe Sannino shares some information on how legal research works in an international law firm with several offices. The focus is on German law and legal materials. A short introduction to German law is followed by an outline of German research resources in general and then, further on, there are two parts describing specific approaches to research from Margarethe's daily work; research on company/corporate law requests as well as research on legislative acts.