Peter Clinch, the former Law Librarian at Cardiff University, is a multiple award winner and prolific writer on all things to do with legal information research. Here he talks to LIM about how he initially worked as a town planner, his long career in law librarianship, and his views on the challenges now facing the profession.

The current BIALL President, Julie Christmas, talks to LIM Co-Editors Mike and Jas Breslin about how she became a legal information manager, how she's trying to upgrade the technology to allow the organisation to function smoothly, and why she believes that the job title ‘law librarian’ should – just perhaps – be consigned to history.

In this article Renate Ní Uigín, Librarian of the Honorable Society of King's Inns Library in Dublin, gives LIM an overview of the library's fascinating history and its collection, while also outlining the service it offers today.

The President of the Australian Law Librarians’ Association talks to LIM about her varied career, the problems facing the organisation, and why she believes we're living in a time where those working in the profession can really make a difference.

When sport gets complicated, which it tends to do these days, it's time to call on the specialists, such as sports law lawyers. But just what is sports law, what are the rules of the game, what sort of cases crop up, and what do the lawyers need in terms of resources. Lereesa Easterbrook and Said Sufi of Bird & Bird give us a fascinating – and in this Olympic year timely – insight into this burgeoning legal field.

This article by Susan Brodigan at McCann FitzGerald LLP provides an overview of Irish case law, outlining the methods used for researching Irish cases while also giving tips to those new to the profession, or to the Irish jurisdiction.

For the vast majority of us salary is one of the key reasons we work. With bills to pay and mouths to feed we want to know we are being fairly compensated for the jobs we do. One way to check this is to use the BIALL Annual Salary Survey which considers not only salaries but also working conditions and benefits, offering a comparison to similar organisations and roles. In this article Julie Christmas, Claire Mazer and the team from CB Resourcing highlight some of the findings from the 2023 survey and consider the reasons behind these.

In the following article Dunstan Speight offers a few initial thoughts on the implications for law libraries of the October 2023 cyber-attack on the British Library. While the remarks apply particularly to larger institutional libraries (such as those of professional bodies like the Inns of Court) there are lessons to be learnt for all types of library and information service.

This article by Emily Allbon introduces readers to the discipline of legal design, offering an insight into its application, its methodology, and the contexts in which it appears. There is coverage of why legal design is so pivotal for ensuring access to the law and an exploration of where it is being used: in legal practice, in academia, in public legal education and in the courts. There is also a close look at one element; that of visual contracts, and some consideration of where the legal information profession might position itself.

In this article, Sinéad Curtin, Legal Knowledge Manager in the Chief State Solicitor's Office, provides a guide to the free and subscription sources for researching Irish legislation. She explains how legislation is enacted, how to determine if it's in force and whether it's been amended. She also looks at tracking legislation, the transposition of EU directives and statutory interpretation in general. The article concludes with a list of sources for Irish legislation.

Last year Jake Hearn, Vice Chair of the LIM editorial board, created an elective module on the core components of and types of roles within the legal information profession, which was offered to postgraduate students at City, University of London, with the module being hosted at City, University of London and The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. Here Jake gives the reasons for creating the module and tells us how it all came together and how it has progressed since then.

With the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) having been introduced in 2021 the training of solicitors has changed. But what impact will its legal research assessment have on their ability to do this sort of work? Here Greg Bennett, who works at BPP in London – where in addition to being a law librarian he is also studying the LPC – gives an overview of the situation and outlines his own concerns.

Colin Hulme, head of intellectual property (IP) at Burness Paull, considers the impact of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) programmes on the observance of copyright by corporates. This article was commissioned by the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) and first appeared in the New Law Journal in 2023.

In this article Anne O'Connor and Joanna Morris of Thomson Reuters set the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 (REUL Act 2023) within its broader historical context, summarise provisions likely to be of interest to the legal information community, and explain how and why the REUL Act 2023 has given rise to legal uncertainty.

This article by Paul Magrath, Head of Product Development and Online Content at ICLR (incorporated Council of Law Reporting), provides a survey of 10 key technological developments that, over time, have contributed towards or affected our understanding of the administration of justice. Developments involving digitisation, the internet, and artificial intelligence (AI) are dealt with in greater depth, with a particular focus on recent AI developments at ICLR.