As soon as I saw the theme of the Harrogate conference, ‘Gateways, Gatekeepers and Gatecrashers’, I wanted to contribute, although the thought of doing a session unnerved me. I was keen to talk about my gateway, LawBore, and how it had changed since I first wrote an article on it in Legal Information Management back in 2003, but I also wanted to convey how creating LawBore had changed things for me within my workplace.

How do you get two solo information professionals in two separate small island jurisdictions to give one presentation, talking as one? Especially two who had never met together until the day before they were due to give the presentation at the 2005 BIALL conference in Harrogate The way this came about neatly sums up what it is like to be an information professional in a small jurisdiction. You spend a long time on the telephone and email, you take the initiative, collaborate, share ideas and bring out the best in each other. In short, you reach out beyond your little island, because not to do so means not to operate effectively.

This article aims to give an overview of the current position of the legal portal market (primarily law firms) and to offer some predictions for the road ahead. The key areas covered will include:

[bull ] What are portals? Some basic definitions

[bull ] Why might you need a portal?

[bull ] What can you do with a portal?

[bull ] Where we are at present with portals: technologies and usage

[bull ] Key considerations for portal projects

[bull ] Future predictions for legal portals

The objective of any taxonomy deployment must be to ensure that real benefits are delivered to the organisation. But the experience of the last few years has illustrated the risk that law firm taxonomy projects do not deliver real benefits, but instead consume substantial time and effort for little tangible benefit. The classic symptom is that lawyers still continue to use the Googlestyle simple search box, with all its attendant issues, in preference to keyword searching for internal materials; and the taxonomy is ignored in practice by those whom it was supposed to benefit.

I arrived on Thursday, the day before the start of the conference, which gave me plenty of time to settle in and then meet up with my designated mentor, Jon Beaumont. He had attended the conference for the first time last year, and gave it a glowing report. It was good to start things off by sharing experiences and anecdotes of legal information work over a couple of pints.

The University of Leicester is a pre-1992 University with a Law Faculty of more than 1000 students, 900 of whom are studying on qualifying law degree programmes. The collection that they use is housed in the main University Library, just next door to the Law Faculty. A large proportion of Leicester's total student population are distance learners, mostly studying on Masters' programmes. Partly because of this, the institution is extremely interested in pursuing electronic delivery of courses and has just appointed an e-learning professor, based in the central administration and responsible for introducing a radical new e-learning strategy. Leicester, like all other universities, will be introducing top up fees from the start of the next academic year. It is in this rapidly changing and increasingly demanding educational context that this comment on the JASB guidance should be placed.

This article by Jenni Crossley and Claire Tylee examines the process of developing an online interactive guide for law students by librarians at the University of the West of England. The guide was based on material contained in the professional studies printed resource book and various multimedia applications were included to enhance the learning experience for students.

This article by Eileen Fry, Law Society Chief Examiner for Skills and Pervasives, gives an overview of the Practical Legal Research element of the Legal Practice Course, including looking at why the Law Society regard it as important, the course objectives, how it is taught and assessed, and proposals for the future. It should be read in conjunction with the article by Martin Hannibal and Alison Pope which also appears in this issue.

Martin Hannibal and Alison Pope of from Staffordshire University have written this article to explain why Practical Legal Research (PLR) skills are necessary for a trainee solicitor and how the Law Society's learning objectives for PLR are achieved and assessed on the Staffordshire Legal Practice Course (LPC). The article should be read in conjunction with the article by Eileen Fry which also appears in this issue.

This is the latest report analysing the results of the Society of Legal Scholars and BIALL Academic Law Library Survey.

On 1 October 2004 the Government introduced a new set of statutory dispute resolution procedures which apply to all employers. The new rules set out a series of basic procedural steps that an employer must follow when dealing with disciplinary hearings, dismissals and grievances. The Government's stated aim was to encourage employers and employees to resolve their disputes internally and thus reduce the number of claims being brought in the Employment Tribunal.

Paul Bartelings and Elizabeth Bok from the Het Overleg (Dutch Law Firm Librarians Foundation) explain the theories and practices they have developed in co-operation with the Holland Consulting Group to produce a tool which will help us to compare similar legal resources offered by competing legal publishers and other providers.