Gail Boelens discusses how library and research training is delivered in a large Australian law firm. She also considers some of the challenges involved, including dealing with multiple jurisdictions, databases using different operating platforms and having adequate resources to develop and deliver training.

In medieval England ‘forest’ did not have the same meaning as it does today but defined large areas of land governed by severe forest laws which Magna Carta had failed to temper. Instead, these were addressed two years later in the Charter of the Forest 1217 which, although a companion charter to the 1217 Magna Carta reissue, remains relatively unknown. This article by Alison Million explores the Charter of the Forest; its history, impact and legacy and considers why and to what extent its memory has been lost in time. It explains how the Charter of the Forest, and the pen of an unwitting scribe, contributed towards the name Magna Carta; a name which has just seen its octocentenial anniversary.

Smart contracts, which were once theorised, are now somewhat realised, thanks to recent developments in distributed ledger technology. Yet, these self-executing agreements written in code are not a panacea to businesses’ and individuals’ contracting woes. It is argued that smart contracts worsen existing power asymmetries between contracting parties, thus, fallbacks must be provided for.

Tony Simmonds describes the various initiatives undertaken, and the lessons learned by the information staff at the College of Law's multiple sites, in relation to social networking including blogging, wikis, and social bookmarking.

The aim of this article, written by Martin Vorberg, is to portray the approach to information logistics at a private law school in Hamburg, Germany which is a largely self-sufficient, coordinated library system, with occasional use of local libraries and supra-regional delivery services. The article describes the management of a main library and more than twenty branch libraries in the context of some challenging times and in relation to hybrid collections and the uses of electronic media.

Susannah Rayner provides an introduction to the archive collections held at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Library which relate to legal studies, based on a presentation given at the National Socio-legal Training Day on the subject of legal biography, held at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies 15th May 2013.

In this article Terry McDonald provides an introduction to the Library of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) with particular emphasis on the legal resources available to students and visiting readers. She outlines the history and the current nature of the library and the University's School of Law before turn attention to the law collections, the legal deposit status, the role of library and its law subject specialists, particularly in the context of supporting the teaching objectives of the Law School.

In this second of a series of two articles, Daniel Bates considers some of the most popular online platforms which are available to host and promote audio and video content for purposes including knowledge-sharing, teaching, research dissemination, and profile-building.

This article has been written by Harpreet K. Dhillon, with contributions from colleagues at Gray's Inn Library, Inner Temple Library, Middle Temple Library and Lincoln's Inn's Library. During the course of the article, Harpreet looks at the way the four of Inns of Court libraries support barristers, though will use the term members interchangeably throughout. The Inns have their own histories, and the libraries function in their own unique ways, so the focus of this article are those key services provided by all the libraries and their relevance to the continuing work of Inn members. The article has been written using anecdotal evidence and contributions from all the library teams, concluding that the Inn libraries play a crucial and ongoing role in supporting the work of barristers, a role that evolves and will continue to do so alongside the legal profession's demands.

In this short article Professor Fiona Cownie provides a brief note to accompany Elizabeth Dawson's guide to the archival sources at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London.

Gerry Power was invited to go to the University of Jos in April 2006 to present workshops to the Law Faculty and other interested legal professionals on using the internet for legal research. He writes about his experiences in dealing with running online workshops whilst coping with electricity shortages and the incredible experience of Nigeria!

English justice was once as accessible as the air we breathe. The early Anglo-Saxons settled disputes effortlessly by bundling claimants into lakes and adjudicating by virtue of whether God intervened to rescue them from sinking.

This article follows an initiative to create a Knowledge Database in SharePoint from inception to roll out. Written by Allie Lustigman and Amy Hanley, the Knowledge and Information Team at Charles Taylor, this article explores how certain customisations to SharePoint 2010's out of-the-box capabilities can be successfully applied to a knowledge repository on a limited timescale and budget.

In the United Kingdom the electoral roll or register is one of the most fundamental resources for accessing information about adult UK residents. Apart from the register itself, third parties have traditionally made use of the raw name and address data to provide members of the public or certain professions access to derived databases, data sets or re-packaged raw data.

Whilst preparing for my talk at the BIALL Conference and bearing in mind the session during which I was speaking, it struck me how many things had changed since I started out in law librarianship. The foremost of these is definitely the development of information technology, which has had an immediate and prolonged impact on how we provide services to our users in both law firms and in academic libraries. This is something of which we are all aware – the shift from paper, firstly to CD Rom, then online and latterly to internet based services.

Conor McCabe outlines the role of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the way that the library provides support and the impact of budget cuts on the service.

Bailey Solutions is a leading provider of library management software to the legal sector. Penny Bailey, Managing Director of Bailey Solutions, traces the history of the company from before its incorporation in the 1990s to the current year. The company has experienced both economic recessions and up turns. Penny will discuss what helps Bailey Solutions to survive and the lasting values that she attributes to its success.

This article by Niamh Burns, Senior Manager for Library & Member Support Services at the Bar of Northern Ireland, provides a brief overview of the history of the Bar of Northern Ireland and an explanation of the Bar Library model and the services it provides. She provides an insight into some of the current issues facing the barrister profession in Northern Ireland, then focuses on what the Bar of Northern Ireland's Library & Information Service is doing to support members of the Bar Library in meeting some of their challenges.

This was the decade of the IT office revolution which would have a profound impact on working practices within law firms, including the library. The first, and arguably biggest, change was the creation of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991. The first law firm website was set up in 1994, and by the end of the decade virtually all law firms were using this as the key way to present their offerings. The first text message was sent in 1992. In 1994 Amazon was founded, as a source for buying books! By 1996 we were able to organize our contacts and diaries on a PalmPilot. Google was founded in 1998.