Beginning in the early 1800s, New York has followed a comprehensive model of law-reporting with official law reports. This article by Charles Dewey Cole, Jr. looks at the influence of James Kent in establishing comprehensive law-reporting in New York, reviews the 1938 legislation that created the law reporting bureau and charged the state reporter with reporting almost all appellate court and selective trial court decisions, describes the state reporter's current publication practices and considers both the advantages of and the challenges presented by comprehensive official law-reporting. The article is based on a June 2019 presentation given at the annual conference of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians in Bournemouth.

This article by Jill Henderson and Louise Young is based on their ‘Lightning Talk’ at the 2018 BIALL Conference and describes the recent current awareness project at Irwin Mitchell. It outlines each stage of the project from recognising there was a need to change and choosing the right product to enable that, through to gathering requirements, building searches and launching the new alerts. It goes through each stage in detail and outlines the lessons learnt to help others who may be considering a similar project.

This article, written by Mark Hatcher, provides an overview of the background and achievements of the Bar Council, the professional body for barristers in England and Wales, since its formation in 1894. It traces the early years of the council and its expansion after the second world war, following the growth in legal aid and other post-war reconstruction measures. It describes changes in the structure and organisation of the Bar Council culminating in the implementation of reforms which followed the Legal Services Act 2007, which resulted in the separation of representation of the Bar from regulation of the profession which was delegated to the Bar Standards Board in 2006. It concludes with an overview of the key issues that are driving the Bar Council's activity to promote the Bar's high quality specialist advocacy and advisory services, and to promote access to justice for all.

This article, written by Samuel Wiggins, examines current trends within commercial law firm libraries, and considers how those trends might continue over the next five to ten years. Areas considered include legal technology, the future of the library space, the role of the professional body, training, and the relationship between traditional librarianship and knowledge management.

In this article Sue Shreeve and Julie Hamley give an overview of how the subject support librarian role at UWE Bristol has evolved over the last five years, broadening from subject information specialist to encompass academic skills support and English language/communication skills support. They outline how they have implemented this change in role profile by evolving the skills set of the subject librarians and share some of the student online learning materials that have been created during this evolution in role.

In this article Kate Faulkner writes about the significant moments in the journey of women as they entered into the legal profession taking a perspective from the University of Cambridge. Her article is based around a recent exhibition that was held at the Squire Law Library as part of the Open Cambridge annual event. The aim of the exhibition was to mark the centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918 and the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 which finally allowed women into the professions.

This article written by Hester Swift is based on the online course entitled, ‘Customary International Law’, which was created by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) Library for the Postgraduate Online Research Training (PORT) platform and is available to all at <https://port.sas.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=120>. The PORT service is provided by the University of London's School of Advanced Study.

The legal information landscape has always been one of instability and change. The rate of these changes seems to be speeding up as societal and technological changes interact and impact our lives. In the face of this volatility, we should remain constant by being the human factor between information and our clients. We are the interface between new technology and the changing information usage behaviours of our clients. We must understand both aspects to ensure the best outcomes. Our client centric attitude positions us perfectly to be leaders when exploring, and perhaps even creating, new solutions. We are best placed to bring them back to our institutions and provide the human touch to ensure they are implemented in a way that will succeed and add value. It is important to embrace this constant state of flux and find our value in being supportive change agents, while also ensuring that we can ensure, and advocate for, the importance of safeguarding legal information for generations to come.

In this combined article, five authors provide a brief summary of the activities of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) and the developments in law librarianship over the past 50 years, each writing about a different decade. Barbara Tearle (writing about the 1970s), Christine Miskin (the 1980s), Michael Maher (1990s), Fiona Fogden (2000s) and Narinder Toor (2010s) each bring their own experiences and memories to their writing and complete a half century of reflections to coincide with BIALL's 50th anniversary in 2019.

On the 15th February 2019, the Overall Winner for the Justis International Law & Technology Writing Competition was announced alongside three Best in Category articles for each of the three topics of this year's competition. Dr Matthew Terrell and David Hand of Justis who organise this yearly student opportunity share insights from the latest competition alongside the winning articles.

This article by Ann-Christin Karlén Gramming, Elisabeth Ejemyr and Elin Thunell is based on a presentation delivered at the BIALL Annual Conference in 2019. It focuses on promoting library services through an e-learning system called ‘Nano-learning’. It is an innovative way of promoting the library and its services in a new and engaging manner. It combats information overdose (usually followed by a rapid forgetting curve) by relying on spaced repetition. The system also comes with useful analytics and reporting tools, making it easy to measure and showcase ROI (return on investment) to partners.

In this article, John Sinkins, Chairman of Wildy & Sons Ltd, outlines a brief history of the company and how his family have been involved since 1895. It describes how the company has evolved, particularly since the turn of the millennium. He describes his personal journey and that of the company since he joined in 1968, more than 50 years ago.

In the 1970s London law firms realised just how useful law librarians could be and there was a huge growth in their number during the 1980s. The first co-operative venture began in the mid-70s when we produced a Union List of Holdings and from that grew the City Law Librarians Group. By 1986 there were at least 60 firms in London employing over 150 professional law librarians. Provincial law firms were generally smaller but by the same date firms in Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Norwich and Bristol were employing law librarians.

With the adoption of the new 17 SMART Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), access to government information becomes essential for these goals to be realised. This view was corroborated by IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) at its 2015 Cape Town Declaration. In Nigeria, the drastic reduction in the revenue accruable to the government following the sharp decline in the price of crude oil and the subsequent impact on the nation's economy have made it imperative for citizens of the country to insist on transparency and accountability regarding the activities of the government. Otherwise, the SDGs could end up like the much-talked-about MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) whose records were unimpressive despite the oil boom of that era. Public libraries could serve as useful channels for providing government information to citizens. However, their managers lack the necessary technical skills. This article considers how public libraries in Nigeria could provide access to government information for its users. This study is based on existing literature, international binding documents and observations, as well as drawing on the wealth of experience of the researchers themselves and their interactions with public librarians. It is recommended that the scope of the curricula of library schools in Nigeria be broadened to include the mandatory teaching of management of government information to budding librarians. Also, there should be collaboration between public librarians and law librarians. Such collaboration would help provide more access to government information for the citizens of Nigeria. Law librarians could also benefit from the collaboration and devise better skills to help improve their services to users.

Blockchain, arguably the most discussed and promising of FinTech trends, has incredible potential to transform legal technology. Infamous as the technology behind cryptocurrencies, distributed ledger technology (DLT) has developed far beyond these origins and may prove far more valuable than the currency it supports. As a form of DLT, blockchain allows for secure decentralisation of peer-to-peer, irreversible exchanges, providing a transparent and irrevocable record as these occur. The technology is already used across the legal industry and a plethora of opportunities to extend its application bubble beneath the surface, under development, waiting to break into the current market.

In this article Sophie Thompson describes what design thinking is and gives practical exercises to see how design thinking can be used to give a fresh perspective on delivering knowledge services. The article is based on a parallel session delivered as a workshop at the BIALL Annual Conference 2019.

This was the decade of the IT office revolution which would have a profound impact on working practices within law firms, including the library. The first, and arguably biggest, change was the creation of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991. The first law firm website was set up in 1994, and by the end of the decade virtually all law firms were using this as the key way to present their offerings. The first text message was sent in 1992. In 1994 Amazon was founded, as a source for buying books! By 1996 we were able to organize our contacts and diaries on a PalmPilot. Google was founded in 1998.

This article by Katy Davies explores the subject of resilience and why it is so important. It offers suggestions on how to change your mind-set to be less phased by the challenges of everyday life at work and home. It is based on a presentation delivered at the BIALL Annual Conference in 2019.

This short piece makes reference to an event that was held in May 2019 at the London School of Economics. The occasion was entitled ‘Oral History Research: Illuminating the Past’. There were three speakers and the session was chaired by Professor Michael Lobban. One of the speakers that evening was Lesley Dingle and, following this introduction, her talk is featured in this issue of Legal Information Management.

For all his genius as a musician and performer, James Brown never got his head around taxes. His run-ins with the IRS were well documented, at one point leading to a jail sentence. Between recordings and countless live performances, he clearly struggled to keep abreast of his fiscal responsibilities, which begs the question: might a computational system of tax law have helped the Godfather of Soul stay in the IRS's good books?