Here is the summer issue of Legal Information Management. Since my last editorial the UK has duly triggered Article 50 and the country finds itself embarking on a two year Brexit process to leave the European Union. During BIALL's recent annual conference in Manchester (from 8th to 10th June) the UK's general election took place and, following a close result leading to a hung Parliament, that has further added to the uncertainty in what has become a confusing and highly uncertain political picture. At the time of writing it is unclear whether the UK is heading for a ‘hard’ Brexit or a ‘soft’ Brexit. It is not even entirely clear what either option really means and how either will be negotiated and implemented. As promised in my last editorial, I hope that, in future issues of LIM, we will be able to reflect on the impact of Brexit where our own profession is concerned. Indeed, at the conference David Allen Green, of Preiskel & Co LLP, delivered the Willi Steiner Memorial Lecture for 2017 on the subject of ‘Informing the debate about Brexit’. I very much hope to be able to publish that lecture in LIM in due course. However, in this issue we begin this issue with something different, public international law.
SOURCES AND METHODS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW
Another successful socio-legal training day took place last November, again hosted by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) and, again, it was a joint venture between the Institute, the British library and Socio-legal Studies Association (SLSA). On this occasion the speakers focused on international law and in this issue of LIM we have four articles based on the presentations given at that event. I am very grateful to Hester Swift, Lesley Dingle, Jeroen Vervliet and Ruth Frendo for submitting their contributions which reflect the depth and quality of the public international collections in the libraries and archives that they represent – the IALS Library, the Squire Law Library, The Peace Palace Library and the Archives of the International Law Association, respectively. I am equally grateful to David Gee, who coordinated the training day and the speakers, for arranging these four articles to be submitted for publication in LIM. I will leave it to David's guest editorial on the next page to set the scene for this theme.
CURRENT ISSUES
Under the ‘current issues’ banner we publish a piece highlighting the results of BIALL's first Annual Law Firm Library Survey which is for the year 2015/2016. A working group was established by the Association to create and run this survey which is expected to become a regular feature year after year. In many respects this new survey mirrors the work completed each year concerning the SLS/BIALL Academic Law Library Survey which LIM often publishes in the winter issue. The article here gives an overview of the survey and summarises the results. The full survey can be accessed via the BIALL website (available to BIALL members only).
A second article in this section is authored by Hélène Russell entitled ‘Measurement of KM Projects: a Practical Guide for Librarians’. The article aims to helping law firm librarians understand whether their knowledge management projects and activities have a positive effect and whether they represent good value for money.
The final article is written by Ruth Fay, library assistant in the Law Library of Ireland, and is based around research that she conducted for her Master's thesis. She addresses the information searching behaviours of young barristers in Ireland.
CURRENT AWARENESS
We end this LIM with the current awareness section, with thanks to Katherine Read and Laura Griffiths of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies for compiling the list.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As usual, as the editor, I am very grateful for all the excellent contributions that we received. I am also grateful to our colleagues at Cambridge University Press, especially Craig Baxter, and for the support of the members of the LIM Editorial Board including the chair of the committee, Loyita Worley, and the team of proof-readers.
