The COVID-19 pandemic has heavily impacted Australian universities and their libraries but has been felt most strongly by students and staff who are already marginalised. This article, written by Kay Tucker and Becky Batagol, draws upon both published literature and the authors’ own experiences as a librarian and academic employed at Monash University, Australia's largest university. Important lessons from the pandemic for universities and university libraries at times of crisis and disaster include: actively recognising and responding to structural inequalities amongst students and staff; organising services so that all can participate to their fullest ability; providing students with opportunities for social connection, enhanced digital capabilities, safe and inclusive spaces and accessible materials; as well as flexible employment practices.

In this article David Wills, the Librarian of the Squire Law Library, offers a brief description of the extraordinary range of architecture at the University of Cambridge with particular reference to the David Williams Building, designed by the world-renowned architects Foster + Partners. He suggests that, in the context of the Squire Law Library, which occupies the top three floors of the David Williams Building, the building has truly come of age; he looks at some of the features and challenges of its modern design; and notes that the building looks set to play a major part in the education and research activity of legal scholars and university students into the distant future. This article is a personal reflection based on the author's experience of using and working in the building for some 26 years since it was constructed and opened in the mid-1990s.

In this article Sara Berry provides an account of some of the history relating to the Advocates Library in Edinburgh. She explains how the Advocates Library played a key role in the Scottish Enlightenment and acted as Scotland's national library up to the foundation of the National Library of Scotland in 1925. The article also looks at the library's integral role in supporting Faculty Members and the Scottish justice system through history to modern day. The last section looks at some of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on Members, library staff and working practices.

In this article James Hamilton, Research Principal at the Society of Writers to HM Signet in Edinburgh, describes the history of the Signet Library as it approaches its 300th anniversary. He writes about some of the changes that have taken place over those three centuries and he also mentions some of the challenges for the library as the nature of the legal profession has altered, not least those presented recently by the Covid-19 pandemic.

This article, by SarahLouise McDonald, is an examination of the history and recent refurbishment of the Law Library located at the Old College campus at the University of Edinburgh. This article describes notable incidents in the history of the School of Law, and explores how these have combined to create a multifaceted identity for the Law Library. The author considers the challenges which library staff have faced during the latest upgrade to facilities and how this has affected daily operations. Finally, the effect of recent global events on the library's approach to service delivery is discussed, and opportunities for positive growth are identified amongst a complex landscape of resource purchasing and access.

This article by Jennifer Findlay describes the history and the current library service and research support provided for the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS). The library team manage resources across all the SCTS sites in Scotland. This account looks at the history of the SCTS, the current library service and the future.

In this article Christine Wilcox describes the library of the Society of Solicitors in the Supreme Courts of Scotland, otherwise known as the SSC Society. She looks at the history of the library, its work and how the library has evolved. She also describes how things have changed in the last few decades and, most recently, what the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have been on the service.

As the concept of a ‘practice-ready’ attorney continues to grow in both law firms and law schools, law school libraries are meeting this need by offering programming related to legal technology. In this article, a law librarian from the United States, Janet Kearney, discusses their successes and failures in creating and maintaining legal technology programming, a first step in a larger conversation on practice-ready law graduates. The article is based on a June 2021 presentation given at the annual conference of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians.

This article by Clare Brown is based on a presentation given at the BIALL Online Annual Conference in June 2021. It takes the form of a case study that illustrates how library and information professionals can control the flow of information so as to avoid users being overwhelmed by news.

This article explores how and why LawCare came into being. LawCare is the only charity dedicated to promoting and supporting good mental health and wellbeing across the legal community in the UK. The charity started in 1997 to help solicitors with alcohol problems, but has developed over the years and now supports all legal professionals in the UK, Channel Islands and Isle of Man with any mental health and wellbeing issues. This article by Mary Jackson is based on a presentation she gave at the BIALL Online Annual Conference held in June 2021.

This article presents useful clues for British law librarians and legal researchers conducting research on American laws and legal systems. It focuses on general guidelines and key sticking points the author, Erin Gow, found when transitioning between legal research in the American and British jurisdictions. Key skills introduced include the ability to: differentiate between federal and state legal jurisdictions in the US; recognize key differences in American legal terminology and construct searches using American terms; analyze and select key American legal resources for different types of research questions; and identify American standards of legal citation. This article is based on the presentation that the author gave at the BIALL Online Annual Conference in June 2021.

Goldsmiths, University of London, started teaching LLBs in Law in 2019/2020. Greg Bennett was hired in 2018 to be the subject librarian for law, and to stock the library before teaching commenced. In this article, based on his presentation at the BIALL Online Annual Conference in June 2021, the author will discuss his decision-making and selection processes regarding his choices about what to include, and what not to include in the collection.

The Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals is an essential tool for locating credible secondary sources on foreign, comparative, and international law topics in multiple languages. This article, by Kristen Rowlett, gives a brief overview of the history of the Index. Then, the article explores the Index's search functionally and the importance of the humans behind the Index. Finally, the article previews future enhancements for the Index.

In recent years, the legal informatics area has slowly begun to develop as artificial intelligence and its related techniques and technologies expand their reach in the field of law. The legal, computational and data science communities are collaborating to build computational and data-driven innovative legal models to improve and advance all aspects of the existing legal system with the effective use of modern computer technologies such as machine learning, deep learning and natural language processing. In this research paper, the authors - Sugam Sharma, Samia Gamoura, Deva Prasad and Arti Aneja - explore these important factors with the potential to transform the existing approach to jurisprudence into a smart and intelligent legal system utilising automation. Such a justice system could be envisioned, in the near future which would be faster, fairer and economically more feasible, even for the highly marginalized, underprivileged and poor societies in the world.