The BIALL annual law firm survey was launched in October 2016. The aim was to understand standard practice across the law firm library sector and to benchmark certain aspects of a library's service against other firms, providing a year-on-year comparison of how the profession is changing. This is an overview of how the survey came about and a summary of the key findings from the first year's results. It was written by the Working Group members. The full survey results can be found on the BIALL website1.