The rise of empirical methods has had a polarising effect on legal studies in Europe. On the one hand, quantitative empiricists have frequently dismissed traditional doctrinal scholarship as unscientific and its insights as unreliable. On the other hand, many doctrinal scholars are apprehensive about the perceived displacement of domain expertise from legal research caused by the empirical turn. To bridge the gap between the two camps and address their respective concerns, we propose a wider adoption of expert coding as a methodology for legal research. Expert coding is a method for systematic parsing and representation of phenomena such as legal principles in a structured form, using researchers’ subject matter expertise. To facilitate the uptake of expert coding, we provide a step-by-step guide that addresses not only the coding process but also fundamental prerequisites such as conceptualisation, operationalisation and document selection. We argue that this methodological framework leverages legal scholars’ expertise in a more impactful way than traditional doctrinal analyses. We illustrate each step and methodological principle with examples from European Union law.

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.

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.

While every law librarian should be able to find a case, tracking one from claim form to judgment is another thing entirely. Here Anneli Sarkanen outlines why and when this might need to be done, the various sources that are available and the methods that are used

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.

In the past decade, the provision of open access to legal information has experienced unprecedented improvement. One of the recent additions to the open-access regime is the introduction of Legal Information Institutes (LIIs) that provide access to important information contained in government gazettes, reports, judicial decisions, and statutory instruments. As important as LIIs are for enhancing legal research, a perusal of the relevant literature reveals that there is generally a dearth about LIIs.

Against this background, this article examines the LIIs’ contribution to legal information to determine how to strengthen LIIs in terms of their content and viability.

Public Information Online (PIO) is an online service from Dandy Booksellers Ltd offering a wide range of official documents going back, in many cases, more than a century. PIO is safeguarding the accessibility to historic government decisions which have changed the face of our constitution. Here Donna Ravenhill, Managing Director of Dandy Booksellers, takes LIM through the origins and history of PIO, explains how you can make the most of its facilities, and outlines its plans for the future.

We have all heard horror stories of ChatGPT making information professionals redundant and taking over the world, but just how proficient is it at good old legal research? Greg Bennett, a law librarian at BPP, invested in the premium version of the package to put it to the test.

Legal information professionals can play a vital role when it comes to patents, whether that's through undertaking research to assist in infringement cases or by assisting in providing due diligence information by conducting searches to identify a company's patent portfolio. But those doing patent research need to know how to identify patents, how to determine their status and how to investigate the litigation history of patents. Niamh Hanratty, of Bird & Bird, explains how all this is done.

The LexisLibrary and LexisPSL legal content platforms are well known to legal information professionals and lawyers in the UK. The release of the Lexis+ UK service seamlessly brings together these resources on one platform for the first time, allowing the researcher to search and retrieve relevant and connected content through one search interface. David Algie, the Lexis+ Product Marketing Manager at LexisNexis, talks LIM readers through this innovative and ‘feature rich’ new product.

Financing work is an important source of revenue for many law firms, so it's no surprise that the finance practice group is often one of the largest in a City firm. But what is finance and what do finance lawyers do? Ian Hunter, Content & Research Manager (EMEA) at Shearman & Sterling (London) LLP, gives LIM the benefit of his wide experience in the sector.

Three academic and one law firm librarian, Susan Boyle, Virginia Conrick, Pattie Punch, and Ann O'Sullivan collaborated to create a ‘Lawyering Toolkit’. It was devised to support learners on the legal lifecycle from higher education to the corporate sphere and beyond. Arranged by skills level, it was imagineered via the online BIALL Irish Group meetings during the Covid pandemic. Learning steps were visually scaffolded in LibGuides to build a quick reference platform. This article describes how the Toolkit proof-of-concept developed through experiential reflection and shared discussion. It tracks the construction of a prototype to presentation at BIALL Conference 2022 and incorporates feedback from the conference and the BIALL Irish Group. It is envisaged that the Lawyering Toolkit will ensure a more collaborative and consistent approach to legal information literacy in the Republic of Ireland.

Based on a presentation given at the BIALL Annual Conference in July 2022, this article by Paul Magrath provides an overview of how technology including artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming legal practice and the conduct of litigation, followed by more detailed consideration by way of a case study of ICLR's development of its AI-driven search tool, Case Genie. The article examines the problems that it was designed to solve, particularly the legal researcher's anxiety over ‘unknown unknowns’, and the options for further development of the technology and its application in other areas.

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.

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.

The impact of the Covid 19 lockdown of Western countries has had extensive coverage, but for other countries, like Myanmar, little information has been shared in the Western media. Yet the impact on everyday activities there has been just as great, including closure of workplaces and universities, the wearing of masks, and restrictions on travellers from outside Myanmar. When a planned programme of face-to-face legal research teaching in May 2020 could not be offered, another means had to be found to deliver a course which had been successfully introduced the previous year. In this article Ruth Bird outlines how the course went ahead even though she was in lockdown in Melbourne, while her colleagues and participants were locked down in Yangon.

This article is designed for law librarians based outside the United States. The paper, written by Marcia Zubrow, provides basic information about the United States legal system and its sources. This background foundation to the article is important in understanding how to effectively use the two major U.S. databases, Lexis and Westlaw. The author describes the contents of the two databases within the context of the background information. Search techniques, including advance searching strategies, are described.