This paper is drawn from a presentation, by John Morison, that was made to a plenary session of the 43rd BIALL Annual Study Conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland 2012. The presentation introduced the audience to a research study, recently funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, entitled “What Makes an ‘Important Case’? A Study of the Creation, Transmission and Validation of Legal Knowledge”, and being carried out with Professor Gordon Anthony. The presentation to BIALL also attempted to engage the audience of legal information specialists with the specifics of the project and enlist their help in understanding how an important aspect of legal practice actually works. This paper has the same objective, and, additionally, it reports on some of the initial findings of the research which aims to develop a comprehensive sociology of legal knowledge.

In this article, which closely relates to Adrian Dale's topic for the Willi Steiner Memorial Lecture, Derek Sturdy explains what ECM is. He discusses the storage, editorial and publishing processes involved in ECM. He explains the importance of workflow and considers the advantages and disadvantages of potential software solutions to manage the process.

This article by Renae Satterley discusses a trial conducted over a four month period at Middle Temple Library where members were allowed to borrow iPads for a week, free of charge. The iPads were lent to the library by LexisNexis and had ebooks and a subscription to LexisLibrary loaded on to them. In this article the author discusses the pros and cons of lending tablets to library users and whether law ebooks are as popular as some claim. It also examines the possibilities of integrating tablet computers into legal research training sessions.

This article by Rachel Brett of Lovells reports on the results of a survey into classification practice in law libraries carried out through the BIALL and LIS-Law mailing lists in March 2007. Major findings were that only three respondents did not use any form of subject classification. The most frequently used classification scheme was Moys, and the single largest grouping was the 40 respondents (40.8%) who used their own in-house classification schemes.

In a paper presented at the 39th Annual BIALL Conference held in Dublin in June 2008, Victoria Jannetta, described how her firm implemented a new tool to help better exploit its internal information resources.

Undeniably the perception of success of an information unit or library in a law firm (or any other organisation for that matter) is down to two main factors. The level of support from the organisation is one, and often that could be interpreted as attitude and/or the level of the person who is responsible for allocating budget etc (ie the library partner) and/or how influential he or she is. The second: the way in which the Library or Information Unit Manager operates, their influencing and interpersonal skills, their general management of the information function, in particular creating the perception of being good value for money and invariably providing the right (quality) information in the right quantity at the right time.

Fiona Fogden gave a very practical talk at the BIALL Conference 2010 in Brighton on contract negotiation with online vendors and it has been held over to this issue of LIM as it fits so well with our vendor relations theme.

Technological developments and scientific innovations have enhanced the way people live and work. Courts are places where people seek justice and millions of cases across the globe are examined every day, and judgments are delivered. The courts system in India is on a vast and complex scale. The application and dissemination of information in India has been spreading at a faster pace over the past few decades. This has set the stage for the computerisation of courts to enhance transparency and efficiency in the Indian judicial system. The Indian sub-continent is a highly populated nation and from 2007 the government of India began implementing the eCourts Project as a citizen-centric initiative for expeditious and affordable justice delivery. This article analyses the various dimensions involved in the eCourts process and explains its significance in the justice delivery system in India. In also looks at the various challenges of implementing such a vast system across judicial system of India.

In her BIALL Conference Paper last June, Ann Hemming considered the potential impact of e-learning on the legal profession and legal information professionals in particular. She discussed what is meant by e-learning and how it can be incorporated into our current knowledge systems. She then considered the needs of the current generation of info pros and the potential uses of social networking tools, such as Second Life, in the e-learning environment.

This article, written by Josephine Bailey and Kate Faulkner, discusses the collection of library usage data at the Squire Law Library, an academic law library embedded in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. Two initiatives were employed to survey usage: firstly, regular headcounts of library users and secondly, occasional spot-checks of university cards. This article details the data that was collected and how it fits into a wider ethnographic approach to understanding how students and researchers use libraries. The article also discusses how the pilots have developed into long-term procedures, and how this has led to improvements to the delivery of the service.

This article from the Chair of the Bar Standards Board, Baroness Ruth Deech, considers the impact of the Legal Services Act 2007 on the regulation of the Bar.

This article, written by Susan Mansfield, Head of Information Services, on the eve of the Scottish Parliament's tenth anniversary, discusses how the Parliament came into being and explains how it works. There are a number of resources mentioned to assist the reader in following the business of the Scottish Parliament. The article goes on to discuss how the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) was set up, its founding principles, its structure, staffing and services and concludes with a look at future challenges for SPICe.

The coronavirus pandemic has had a profound effect on the conduct of legal business generally, but nowhere perhaps more drastically than on the conduct of litigation in the courts. This article by Paul Magrath considers how the judiciary, court services and practitioners of England and Wales have been working together to continue to administer justice in spite of the restrictions necessitated by the pandemic, and the challenges that have been faced in managing court information and reporting court proceedings.

In this article Leslie J. Moran turns to objects that are often marginal to legal biography and neglected by those engaging in legal biographical projects; pictures. Drawing upon his previous and current work on judicial portraits the article outlines three biographical dimensions of these legal images. The first explores the legal biography potential of what lies within the frame of a judicial portrait. The second focuses upon the biographical dimensions of the process of portrait making. The third draws upon the now well established insight that the meaning of the object, the judicial portrait, is not generated exclusively by, or confined to, what is to be found within the frame of the picture. This provides an opportunity to consider the role of pictures as a method for use by those engaging in legal biographical projects.

In this article Nadine Fathers focuses on the increased accessibility to information relating to pending appeal cases.

In this article Simon Boyes traces the development of the discipline of sports law as represented and effected by the literature in the field. The article identifies different aspects of sports law and the various levels and locations within which it operates and identifies the leading academic and practitioner works associated with each. The article also considers the major developments in the field and the way in which they have shaped the sports law literature.

This article by David Gee gives an overview of the current copyright regime in this country, from the perspective of both rights-owners and librarians. It considers the issues raised by the digital copyright regime and the latest official developments in this area.

What are Web 2.0 applications and which ones will you be implementing in your library? Do “Baby Boomers” fear change and rely too much on email? Are “Gen X-ers/Gen Y-ers” more computer savvy in today's rapidly changing environment? Can social networking technologies enhance our productivity, or are they time-wasters in a professional environment? In this article, based on his paper given at the 39th Annual BIALL Conference held in Dublin in June 2008, Stephen Weiter attempts to answer these questions.

Mark Scott and Nigel Smith provide the background to the development of Sweet & Maxwell's Legal Taxonomy before outlining its structure and explaining how it is used by Sweet & Maxwell and other Thomson Reuters companies.

This paper by Nicola Wakefield was presented at the BIALL 2006 Conference in Brighton. The presentation discussed the formation of a working partnership between the School of Law Staff and the Law Library at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). The two parties have worked together successfully for many years to embed legal information skills training into all law teaching programmes. The paper looks at how collaboration occurred, what training materials have been developed, working methods, and the reasons for the project's success.