This article is written by Clare Cowling, Director, Legal Records at Risk Project, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London. Her article explores the hypothesis that modern private sector legal records are more at risk of loss than their historical equivalents. There are many reasons for this, but one factor, detailed in this article, appears to be the indifference or reluctance of legal practitioners themselves. The LRAR project seeks to allay any concerns practitioners may have about confidentiality and to raise their awareness of the potential commercial and historic value of their legal records. It will do this by a combination of case studies, interviews with stakeholders and investigations into the current information management and archiving practices of institutions specialised to law. In so doing it will provide guidance and advice on the more cost-effective management and preservation of legal records so that the history of change to non-governmental legal services in the UK over the past century will be accurately documented.

This article represents a summary of the parallel session that Barry Vickery presented to delegates at the 2019 BIALL Annual Conference in Bournemouth. There, his presentation was entitled: ‘A glance at the past and a glimpse of the future – How to learn from the past to make better decisions in the future’. As BIALL was celebrating its 50th anniversary, Barry took the opportunity to look back at the last fifty years to highlight people and companies that had made good decisions and those that had made bad ones. He went on to explore different decision-making techniques that we could all utilise to help us to make more informed decisions in our daily life.

The internet and the World Wide Web (www) has allowed the free flow of information across countries. Peter Martin and Tom Bruce from Cornell Law School pioneered the development of the ‘Free Access to Law Movement’ around the world. The Australian Legal Information Institute and various other Legal Information Institutes (LIIs) were established by adopting the Montreal Declaration at the Law via Internet Conference held in 2002. As a member of the United Nations, India adopted the UNESCO policy guidelines for the development and promotion of governmental public domain information. In India, the National Informatics Centre has played a leading role in supporting the maintenance and dissemination of Indian government public information that is useful for legal education, research and practice. This paper by Priya Rai, and Akash, gives a brief informative overview of the ‘free access to law movement’ resources pertaining to India. These resources have been categorised for easier understanding: parliamentary resources, legislative resources, case laws, law reform reports, international treaties and legal scholarship and journals. The article also provides an overview of the Legal Information Institute of India extending its contribution to disseminating Indian legal information.

This checklist should be read in conjunction with the authors' article at page 20 of this issue, and includes points to consider which have come out of their experiences in delivering training.

This is an edited version of an article by A.R. Hewitt which first appeared in The Indexer in Autumn 1963 and was re-published in The indexer in 2014. The editor of LIM felt that the article deserved a wider audience and is grateful to The Indexer for allowing it to be reproduced here*. Although contemporary indexers do not have to trouble themselves with the layout of index cards, much of the advice contained in it is still applicable a half-century later. It is concerned with English law, but again, many of the principles apply to indexing works on legal subjects for other jurisdictions.

This article, by Mercedes Robba and Mariana Lavalle, deals with the civil right to reproduction and procreative liberty aroused by the Argentinian legislation and Court's decisions, in the light of the new concept of family in the country. This contribution focuses exclusively on the barriers to equal access to reproductive health in Argentina, taking into account infertility, infecundity and childlessness, according to the right to raise a family in conditions of equality and freedom.

Paper presented by Gerry Power at the 37th BIALL Annual Study Conference in Brighton, June 2006, outlining the importance of lifelong learning; discussing the work of some prominent writers and suggesting how to surmount barriers to learning.

Technology is transforming the way legal work is being delivered. It is influencing what law firms, clients and legal departments are expecting of their employees and what employees are expecting of their employers. It is reshaping legal education and careers; lawyers are becoming legal knowledge engineers, information professionals and knowledge managers are working closer than ever with IT teams. In this article, Ann Hemming and James Wilkinson will be considering lawyers’ training and BIALL members’ role in the landscape being reshaped by legal technology.

Greg Rose outlines the main publishers of construction contracts used under English law. He then looks at sources for obtaining the contracts, both hard copy and electronic versions, and advises us on how to keep them up-to-date.

Ruth Ward explains how open access to legislation in Africa is a much more recent development than in the developed world. Several recently launched projects are well underway, and are contributing towards promoting justice and the rule of law in Africa. Access to legislation facilitates great transparency and access to the law for the promotion of trade and investment; and supports the resulting economic development on the continent. Several different approaches to establishing projects which deliver reliable consolidated access to legislation are illustrated, and show that successful projects can be established and maintained on modest budgets by very small teams.

This article by Gareth Ryan, Law and Official Publications Librarian, describes the history of the library, outlines the courses offered by the law school and details the collections and services offered by the law library.

Legal information management is crucial for Chinese Lawyers who practice law in non-litigation and litigation legal areas. Li Zheng, Attorney at Law from PRC, provides a brief overview of the legal procedure, at a practical level, from the point of view of a Chinese lawyer.

Carl Clayton, Director, SINTO - the information partnership, writes that there is no shortage of legal information, yet for some people it can still be difficult to get access to the legal information they may need as citizens. Libraries in the Sheffield area have a strong history of co-operation but this cannot remove all the barriers.

This article is aimed at anyone who is responsible for recruiting staff and discusses how to prepare for a successful job interview. It is written in the context of a competitive recruitment market caused by the increased workload in law firms since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The author, Victoria North, is a senior information professional with many years of experience of building successful teams. She shares some of the best practices she has learnt during her career.

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.

Wolters Kluwer is a global provider of professional information, software solutions, and services for customers in more than 180 countries. It employs approximately 19,000 people worldwide and has annual revenues of €4.6 billion of which 89% are derived from digital products and services. The company's roots can be traced back to the nineteenth century and to the merger of four entrepreneurial, family-run Dutch publishing houses: Wolters, Noordhoff, Samsom, and Kluwer. Throughout its 184-year history, Wolters Kluwer has adapted to a significant amount of environmental, cultural, and technological change, not the least of which was digitalization. It expanded internationally through numerous acquisitions and moved deeper into data and analytics. The company's four operational divisions - Health, Tax & Accounting, Governance Risk & Compliance and Legal & Regulatory - now aim together to achieve goals under a strategy entitled Accelerating Our Value. Those goals are three-fold: to grow expert solutions, to advance deep domain expertise and to drive operational agility. Today Wolters Kluwer is a data-driven, highly customer-experience-focused organization that continues to apply advanced technologies to complex problems. The author, David Bartolone, VP and General Manager, for the International Group within Wolters Kluwer's Legal and Regulatory, U.S. unit, describes Wolters Kluwer's history as well as the current organizational structure, and vision for the future. In addition, he draws upon his recent experience to describe Wolters Kluwer's international legal business.

Alison Johnson reviews Eversheds' approach to delivering legal research training and the development of an effective training module which was first delivered in 2002 and has recently had its first cohort moving into qualification and the workplace as fully trained lawyers.

The purpose of this article, by Stephanie Biggs of Kirkland & Ellis International LLP, is to give an introduction to private equity. The article provides a brief overview of the industry, then looks in more detail at the two key processes in which private equity lawyers are involved: fundraising and doing deals. The author also looks at the resources available for researching private equity and provides a glossary of commonly used terms.

This list of sources for arbitration law has been compiled by Michelle Celik to accompany the article by Nigel Broadbent on alternative dispute resolution.