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.

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, 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

The internet provides access to a huge amount of information, and most people experience problems with information overload rather than scarcity. Glenda Browne explains how indexing provides a way of increasing retrieval of relevant information from the content available. Manual, book-style indexes can be created for websites and individual web documents such as online books. Keyword metadata is a crucial behind the scenes aid to improved search engine functioning, and categorisation, social bookmarking and automated indexing also play a part.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the scholarly peer-reviewed publications relating to social media objectives and challenges of law libraries. The methodology is that of a systematic literature review. The studies included in this literature review shows that the social media objectives of law libraries are: promoting and marketing resources and services, supporting legal research teaching and tutorials and providing reference services. Secondly, law libraries face some challenges with their social media usage regarding the quality and scope of content, technological difficulties and online privacy.

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 article by Jane Secker and Maria Bell presents an overview of the challenges of providing copyright training for staff at LSE. The institution does not employ a dedicated copyright officer, but uses a range of tactics to ensure academic, administrative and Library staff are made aware of copyright issues. Several training sessions are run throughout the year. LSE have also developed an online course and produce a range of online and printed guides to brief staff. Advice and queries are also dealt with by a number of individuals who have specialist knowledge in areas such as copyright and the internet and copying archival materials.

At large City firm Herbert Smith, the legal research training programme for trainee solicitors is taken very seriously and includes a compulsory training course in their first two weeks, followed by research exercises and further courses which have been carefully designed in association with the partners to ensure that trainees qualify with excellent legal research skills.

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.

Legal education in each of the jurisdictions varies in the requirements of its lawyers. In this paper, Ruth Bird, addresses the requirements in each country to study law; the specific requirement for foreign law graduates to study law, and which bodies regulate legal education. The answers to these questions are presented in a series of charts to provide a degree of clarity for the reader.

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.

Nick Brotchie, Librarian of the Scottish Law Commission, provides a history of law reform initiatives in Scotland, traces the evolution of the Scottish Law Commission and explains the process of law reform in Scotland.

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.

Nicola Wakefield and Emily Allbon are academic law librarians. They offer their thoughts on the future that all academic law librarians may face as we move further into the 21st Century. They look at the key issues and examine possibilities for the future role of law librarians, considering how changes in technology, library spaces, study habits and the pressures of time and funding could affect us as a profession.

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.