Although nowadays most courts publish decisions on the internet, substantial differences exist between European countries regarding such publication. These differences not only pertain to the extent with which judgments are published and anonymised, but also to their metadata, searchability and reusability. This article, written by Marc van Opijnen, Ginevra Peruginelli, Eleni Kefali and Monica Palmirani, contains a synthesis of a comprehensive comparative study on the publication of court decisions within all Member States of the European Union. Specific attention is paid on the legal and policy frameworks governing case law publication, actual practices, data protection issues, Open Data policies as well as the state of play regarding the implementation of the European Case Law Identifier.

The 6th Willi Steiner Memorial Lecture was delivered by David Allen Green and took place on 8 June 2017 during the Annual Conference of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) which was held in Manchester. His talk concerned libraries and public policy with particular reference to Brexit. He addressed the issues of how a debate like Brexit can be better informed and to what extent reliable legal and policy information makes any difference. In essence, he looks at how good information can help shape Brexit. This article is a later write-up from David's speaking notes. The lecture was, coincidentally, given on the same day as the general election.

The concept of placemaking has been widely utilized by public and university libraries to create spaces with library users in mind. This article by Lee F. Peoples describes how academic law libraries can employ placemaking concepts to support their parent law school's program of legal education, encourage collaborative learning, and connect students with their school's community, values and traditions. This article explains how academic law libraries can assess placemaking activities and other uses of library space and demonstrate a return on investment made into library spaces. The article concludes with some predictions for the future of assessing library space use.

European Documentation Centres (EDCs) are neutral collections of official publications of the European Union, open to the public and normally housed in academic institutions throughout the European Union (EU). EDC status entitles the host organisation to receive one copy of the most significant publications and documents of the EU. The EDC network goes back to 1963, and its primary purpose has always been the support of academic research into European integration. The decision to trigger Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union clearly raises questions about role of the EDCs in the United Kingdom after ‘Brexit’. This article is written by Margaret Watson.

This article concerns the international law collections at the library of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) in London. It is based on a talk given by Hester Swift at the training day entitled ‘Socio-Legal Sources and Methods in International Law’ which was held at IALS on 25 November 2016.

This article and the one following are derived from a joint talk given at the BIALL Annual Conference 2017, held in Manchester. The title of the conference was ‘Together or apart? Effective ways of working’ and this talk described the collaboration between Shell's Legal Librarian, Hilary Smith, and Miriam Davies, Head of Library & Information at Norton Rose Fulbright, to provide an enquiry service to Shell's legal community. The service subsequently developed to include other law firms on Shell's legal panel. Topics covered include understanding the information needs of in-house lawyers, types of queries received, why involve law firms in providing such a service, the concept of added value and its importance in the client-law firm relationship, the setting up of the service, how it works in practice, how it is being used and key take away messages. In this article Hilary Smith takes a view from the client perspective.

In this paper Lesley Dingle provides a detailed account of the historical development of the public international law collections at the Squire Law Library in Cambridge. She explains the close involvement of the academic lawyers and the librarians, past and present, in developing an important collection which reflects the significance of the subject at Cambridge's Faculty of Law. Finally, she brings things up-to-date by detailing the extent of the electronic provision which benefits the modern scholar in this discipline.

Dawn Jones discusses the findings from an in-house project looking at how agile and flexible working can be successfully adopted by legal and business professionals. It is based on information gained from speaking to those with agile and flexible working already entrenched in their businesses, external consultants who advise on this change of working habits and internal teams and individuals who are already exercising agile and flexible working (albeit in a non-formal way). It is a high level guide to start thought processes around the differences between agile and flexible working, the people, the offices and the finances.

This article and the previous one published in this issue of LIM are derived from a joint talk given at the BIALL Annual Conference 2017, which was held in Manchester. The title of the conference was ‘Together or apart? Effective ways of working’ and this talk described the collaboration between Shell's Legal Librarian, Hilary Smith, and Miriam Davies, Head of Library & Information at Norton Rose Fulbright, to provide an enquiry service to Shell's legal community. The service subsequently developed to include other law firms on Shell's legal panel. Topics covered include understanding the information needs of in-house lawyers, types of queries received, why involve law firms in providing such a service, the concept of added value and its importance in the client-law firm relationship, the setting up of the service, how it works in practice, how it is being used and key take away messages. In this article Miriam Davies takes a view from the law firm perspective.

This article, written by Lenka Geidt, gives detailed insight into Brexit projects undertaken by Middle Temple Library. The library specialises, among other areas, in European Union law. This article explains how members of the Inns of Court and librarians can benefit from these projects which focus on legislation, case law and the legal debate regarding the United Kingdom's referendum on European Union membership and Brexit.

This article by Karen Waldron describes the experiences of LexisNexis in implementing Agile as a framework in product development and across the organisation. It discusses the principles of Agile, the aims of LexisNexis of greater collaboration, quicker delivery of value to customers and continuous improvement, the main activities introduced, and the benefits experienced at LexisNexis as a result. It also discusses the applicability of Agile as a framework outside of software development, as the goals are common to most organisations, and sets out the view that incorporating simple agile activities into current working practices can have incremental and short term benefit for most teams.

Pre-2013, Shearman & Sterling employed only two full-time knowledge management (KM) professionals across the globe. As Jon Beaumont describes, there was no centralised method of storage or retrieval for knowledge and Attorneys would have to contend with searching the firm's Document Management System (DMS), SharePoint intranet, internal discussion boards or ten disparate knowledge systems for document and matter information. ‘Knowledge Center’ was launched in 2015, following two years of planning, aimed at consolidating firm systems and providing users with a single interface to access any required know-how. This article will touch upon the consolidation and migration of information, but focus predominantly on Knowledge Center itself, examining functionality, search, filtering and browse. Processes for better knowledge identification of both document and matter know-how, all of which have contributed to the success of Knowledge Center, shall also be considered.

This paper was originally presented under the title ‘The Peace Palace Library. Its collections: historic and those serving the objective of contemporary arbitration and adjudication. Its users: courts, academics and the general public’. The paper was delivered by Jeroen Vervliet at the Socio-Legal Sources and Methods in International Law workshop, held at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London on November 25th, 2016.

This article, written by Adam Woellhaf, describes the legal research training offered by Middle Temple Library to Inns of Court members. It examines the challenges of designing and delivering legal research training to practitioners, as well as offering guidance and advice to others in their own legal research training efforts. It also looks at the potential for using mobile technology in legal research instruction.