Legal Research

BIALL 2011 - Newcastle

Posted on March 10, 2011
Details of the BIALL 42nd Study Conference in Newcastle are now available to view on the BIALL website. This includes the full programme which you can find here . Glancing down the programme you will find plenty to interest you. From the sequel to arguably last years most talked about session"The Integeron Model - A Year on", to the Keynote Address "Going off the Road with KM" or just the provocatively titled "Sharepoint and the Naked Law Librarian" something will grab your attention...

Long live legal blogging - in all of its many forms

Posted on February 28, 2011
Newsflash: Legal Bloggers are real people! Reflections on the #LawBlogs seminar: By Ashley Connick (GDL student at The College of Law)Ashley considers the #LawBlogs seminar he has just attended and at how strong the blawgosphere is: "One of the questions that was discussed was ?who do you blog for??...

Introducing ...

Posted on February 21, 2011
The eagle eyed may have spotted that the BIALL Blog has new authors.We introduce ourselves below...Philip CableI didn't grow up wanting to be a law librarian. However having studied Literature and Computing and worked in my University library as an undergraduate I found I had inadvertently created a perfect CV to apply for library work when I graduated...

New Public Reading Stage

Posted on February 16, 2011
Going on right now is the "Public Reading Stage" for the Protection of Freedoms Bill. In effect the Coalition Government are experimenting with crowd sourcing for laws. The Prime Minister saying that;?Our new Public Reading Stage will improve the level of debate and scrutiny of Bills by giving everyone the opportunity to go online and offer their views on any new legislation...

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BIALL Cheese & Wine Evening: A quick reminder...

Posted on February 15, 2011
Friday 18 February is the last date for anyone interested in attending the Cheese & Wine Evening. The event will be held on Friday 25 February in the Old Hall at Lincoln's Inn and costs £20 for members and £25 for non-members. Any profit will be given to the Wallace Breem Memorial Fund...

Help Obtaining Transcripts

Posted on February 13, 2011
Some things are memorable. For instance when trying to manage lawyers expectations of turnaround time - I never forget that I can only obtain an Employment Tribunal transcript by sending a cheque to the Tribunals Service in Bury St Edmunds.However for many of the other multitude of courts and tribunals my recollection is less clear...

Tweeting in Court

Posted on February 10, 2011
"Twitter has become a form of public broadcasting - as the PCC has acknowledged - and there is nothing the courts can do to stop it".So argues Joshua Rozenberg in a piece yesterday for The Guardian. His article discusses the recently launched consultation by the Judicial Office of England and Wales "A Consultation on the Use of Live, Text?Based Forms of Communications from Court for the Purposes of Fair and Accurate Reporting"...

Integreon Appoint "The End of Lawyers" Author

Posted on February 06, 2011
In a week with difficult and troubling news for the future of law libraries in the big firms the legal outsourcer Integreon has made a noteworthy appointment.Richard Susskind a Legal Technology strategist is to head a new "client advisory board".Susskind is the author of the book "The End of Lawyers" and argues that technology will reshape the law as we know it eroding and destroying the roles of many lawyers...

BIALL Quiz 2011

Posted on February 03, 2011
Yesterday evening the basement in the Penderal's Oak in central London was packed full of BIALL members for the 2011 quiz night.The evening began with the opening of the impressive buffet that was almost entirely devoured by the assembled in less than twenty minutes...

Are e-books taking over?

Posted on February 02, 2011
Amazon Kindle e-book downloads outsell paperbacks"Amazon announced that in the US since the start of the year it had sold 115 e-book downloads for every 100 paperback books, even excluding its downloads of free books.But it stressed that sales of paperback books were also growing...

City University London Scholarship and Prizes Evening - 2010 Alex McVitty Award

Posted on January 31, 2011
Clare Brown was pleased and excited to be representing BIALL on 18th January at City University London Scholarship and Prizes Evening. During the reception she met up with the recipient of the 2010 Alex McVitty Award, Sian Downes, who expressed her thanks both to BIALL and to the Awards and Bursaries Committee, for awarding her this bursary...

Preaching to the converted

Posted on January 31, 2011
Saturday the 5th February is 'Save Our Libraries Day' . Do you have a little time to spare at the weekend? If so, why not pop down to your local library and take out a book! In support of our local public library services, please spare a little time this Saturday...

Radio 2, BIALL, and the Cheese and Wine

Posted on January 28, 2011
BIALL blog readers maybe interested that the BBC Radio 2 Radcliffe and Maconie Show recently helped promote the forthcoming BIALL Cheese and Wine Evening.BIALL member Libby Whitethread emailed the show taking part in a feature asking whether people still have Cheese and Wine parties...

"The CCBE has dipped its toe into the world of Twitter..."

Posted on January 28, 2011
The Law Society Gazette looks at the initial impact of setting up a Twitter account at The Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe and the problems they encountered when trying to provide a twitter account with multilingual options for their English and French speaking followers:http://www...

New editor sought for Legal Information Management

Posted on January 07, 2011
Christine Miskin, the Editor of the Associations respected official journal, Legal Information Management is retiring and therefore BIALL is looking to recruit another Editor. Please see the attached PDF for details (please ignore application deadline as this has now been extended).

BIALL Dissertation award

Posted on December 15, 2010
The PR and Promotions Committee are delighted to announce the winner of the 2010 Dissertation Award. The Dissertation Award was first awarded in 2009 and is offered to any library school student who submits the best dissertation on a corporate or legal topic...

So you want to be a Law Librarian

Posted on December 14, 2010
Ted Tjaden has written an excellent post on SLAW asking "So you want to be a Law Librarian"In the post Ted articulates the role/skills that Law Librarians working in a modern law firm will need to have. These are listed as:Specialized knowledge/skillsDealing with Information OverloadAdding valueCreating strategic partnershipsTrainingAdapt to changeFor me perhaps the most important skill is being able to adapt to change...

BIALL at Online 2010

Posted on December 06, 2010
Many thanks to everyone who stopped by the BIALL stand at Online Information in London last week. If you couldn't make it there, there are a few photos of the stand on our Flickr account.

BIALL Membership Services Survey 2010

Posted on December 02, 2010
Please complete this short survey and you could win £25 in book tokens!This survey aims to:collect BIALL members' opinions on services currently offered by the Membership Services Committeecollect BIALL members' opinions and suggestions on possible new services which could be offered by BIALLYou can find the survey form at http://www...

Join a BIALL Committee ? Your Association Needs You!

Posted on November 26, 2010
Maybe you've thought about it a dozen times ? but never quite took the plunge! You know how good it would be for networking, learning new skills and also to have some fun but you never really knew what it involved, whether it would be far too much work and also how to join...

Does it pay to hire a law firm Librarian?

Posted on November 22, 2010
"If you were designing a law firm today, would you even have a library? I think many, including me, would answer, ?Probably not.? As long as the Internet exists, information that was in a law library will be available online. So why bother, right?" Is the attention grabbing first paragraph of the rather interestingly named "Does it pay to hire a law firm Librarian?"There are plenty of comments as you can imagine in response to this article and several follow up blog posts including the following;Do Law Firms still need Librarians?Debates on the value of Law Firm LibrariansWho needs a Librarian anyway?A grain of salt and a teaspoon of sugarLibrarians add value in Law FirmsIf you read any of these blog posts you'll see that the original post by Patrick Lamb has created quite a hoo ha in the US and even though the blog posts all have a US focus the discussion can easily be applied to Law Firm Librarians in the UK.

New resources for government, legal, health and corporate libraries

Posted on November 05, 2010
BIALL members might be interested in this announcement from CILIP yesterday."CILIP has launched a selection of tools for those working in special library and information services. These tools will help demonstrate the value and impact of library and information services, assess whether they deliver good value for money and provide early identification if the service is at risk of reduction"The tools include:Resources lists that bring together selected reports and articles that demonstrate the value and impact of special library and information servicesRisk checklist to help identify whether your library and information service is a possible candidate for resource reduction Ten point guide to the key aspects of current good practice help to reflect on the key question 'Are we delivering value for money to our organisation?'This looks like a very useful list of tools/resources for anyone working in a special library.

BIALL Salary Survey results published

Posted on November 04, 2010
The 2010 Salary Survey is now available for download from the members' area of the BIALL website.Follow the links from the Publications section to the members-only archive for this year's survey and for past years too, back to 2003.Olwyn MitchellMembership Services Committee

Google Instant

Posted on October 06, 2010
A while ago Google unveiled a enhancement for web search which means you can now return results "instantly" wow fantastic you're possibly thinking...you're probably also thinking, what is this Google Instant you're talking about?Sadly even though Google Instant is available in the UK if you're not using Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer 8 you're not going to see any changes to Google so no instant results for you!Don't worry though you can read all about Google Instant on the Google Instant help pages and hope that maybe one day you'll have access to a "modern browser"If you're lucky enough to be using one of these Internet Browsers then why not have a read of the following blog posts which take a look at Google Instant in more detail...

The death of the looseleaf?

Posted on October 04, 2010
Ruth Bird BIALL Council Member and Bodleian Law Librarian has written an interesting blog post for SLAW asking whether we're about to see the death of the looseleaf? In her blog post Ruth looks at this history of looseleafs and of course the advantages for publishers of publishing and selling looseleafs to Law Libraries...

Legal Information Management highlights

Posted on October 01, 2010
The latest issue of Legal Information Management (LIM) is out and with it comes a raft of useful articles covering a wide variety of work in the legal sector.Some highlights for us from the latest issue are:Chris Holland's article on the Digital Economy Act and the implications for Libraries...

Law Libraries transformed

Posted on August 18, 2010
The BIALL Blogger really enjoyed reading the first line of a recent article on LLRX.com. So for your enjoyment here it is in full "Law libraries have evolved to become a service offered by talented professionals whose expertise can now be accessed at anytime, anywhere" High fives for us all, but what does the article "Law Libraries transformed" go on to say? The article starts by looking at how Law Libraries have developed over the last 30 years from "a place" to a service which lawyers can use from their desktop...

LIS New Professionals Network (LISNPN)

Posted on August 17, 2010
Are you new to the profession or thinking about a career in Librarianship? then you'll definitely want to have a look at this new resource which has been built by Ned Potter (Life-Share Project Officer at the Univeristy of Leeds) and author of the Wikiman blog...

One last light grilling!

Posted on August 16, 2010
In case you're thinking our ex-President could escape without one final grilling from the BIALL Blogger you were wrong. In her final "grilling" the BIALL Bloggers asks Immediate President about her experiences of being BIALL President.BB - The BIALL Conference finished just over two months ago, how do you think it went and what did you most enjoy? I really enjoyed the conference ? despite having to make 8 speeches in 3 days...

Goodbye OPSI, hello Legislation.gov.uk

Posted on July 29, 2010
Literally hot off the press OPSI and the Statute Law Database (SLD) have been replaced by a new website Legislation.gov.uk (it's going to take a while to get used to saying that)The new site promises to "bring together the legislative content currently held on the OPSI website and revised legislation from the Statute Law Database to provide a single legislation service that replaces the current services"Sadly this means that both OPSI (a long time favourite of many Law Librarians) and the SLD will shortly be decomissioned...

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