BIALL Handbook of Legal Information Management

Loyita Worley, Sarah Spells

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781409423966
• eBook ISBN: 9781000151916
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The second edition of this popular handbook has been thoroughly updated by the original team of experts and some new contributors, to provide current best practice guidance on the key legal information issues for every type of service. Each of the chapters is updated to reflect general changes in law libraries and their users in the past seven years. In particular, the handbook covers new information technologies, including social networking and communication. New chapters also focus on the key topics of outsourcing, and the impact of the 2007 Legal Services Act. The second edition of this valuable handbook continues to be an important professional reference tool for managers and staff of all types of legal information services, and will help them with the challenges they face in their work every day.

CHAPTER 1

LAW LIBRARIES AND THEIR USERS

JULES WINTERTON

INTRODUCTION¹

Law libraries in Britain and Ireland form a distinct and dynamic group within the information world. They are defined by their focus on the discipline and practice of law and their close connection with, and mission to serve, the various parts of the legal system, notably the Bar, the courts and the judiciary, solicitors, government, those in professional legal education and those learning the law and researching it as an academic discipline.

Law libraries are a cross-sectoral group; they have parent institutions which range across the private and public spheres but they retain a common identity through their dealings with the legal profession in its various branches and their management of legal information in its various proliferations. Many libraries serve legal institutions directly; some are collections forming part of larger libraries, such as the national libraries and those of many of the universities. They are diverse in nature and size and in the ways in which they seek to provide for their users. Their scope and number have grown enormously in recent years. They include some of the most ancient libraries and the newest information units, repositories of centuries of learning and virtual systems distilling the knowledge bases of extraordinarily successful commercial firms.

Law librarians have responsibility for the selection, acquisition, maintenance, management and delivery of information of legal relevance in convenient and speedy ways suited to the nature of the legal research of their users. In doing this they play a vital part in the administration of justice, in the support of scholarship and legal education, and in the functioning of a social system which adheres to the rule of law.

Law librarians identify themselves as a distinct group within librarianship despite the wide diversity of their libraries and have formed an active and successful professional community. The British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) and many other local, regional and topical associations successfully sponsor professional development and the promotion of standards, professional collaboration and networking, on a cross-sectoral basis. Law librarianship in the latter part of the twentieth century became and remains a desirable career path, particularly in the commercial sector, despite the recent economic downturn. Law libraries have been at the forefront of many developments in information management and are currently at the leading edge of exploring new roles for libraries and librarians in serving their constituencies.

This chapter will describe and set law libraries in Britain and Ireland in context and relate their present state and their historical development to the various branches of the legal profession and the legal systems. There is a brief comparative outline of law libraries in other countries. The chapter will also describe professional collaboration, networking and professional associations of law librarians in Britain and Ireland and internationally. A survey of the underlying directions of change and strategic drivers as they affect law libraries concludes the chapter and seeks to give some sense of the future for law libraries. This can only be a brief survey and there is a need to define a research agenda in law librarianship² to investigate present practice and inform the redefinition of our profession.

THE ROLE OF LAW LIBRARIES

The law has always been information-based and information-intensive, particularly in common law systems. As organizations seek to harness and derive value from information ever more efficiently, the net for relevant information is thrown more widely, particularly in law firms. Relevant legal information is no longer contained solely in published form or in occasional ‘unpublished’ judgments. Information may take the form of in-house documentation, expertise, and information deriving from the practice of law and from discrete legal transactions. Many types of information are now drawn into more formal information systems and become intellectual capital within these vigorous competitive environments. This is a road along which other organizations in other sectors, such as universities, are also beginning to travel.

The know how database on the law firm’s intranet and the management of intellectual assets and knowledge in other forms raise questions about the definition of law libraries and the roles of law librarians. This is a fundamental change from the situation described in the first chapters of the predecessors to this work, the two editions of the Manual of Law Librarianship (Daintree 1976, Logan 1987)³ where the description of libraries could generally be satisfied by reference to libraries in the more traditional sense which dealt for the most part with published sources of information in print acquired from outwith the organization.

The complex series of processes conveniently swept up in the term globalization in all its manifestations and ramifications is noted at several points in this chapter and is having profound effects on legal practice and legal education and therefore on legal information management (Winterton 2011).

In contrast to these ongoing developments, the most dramatic single change from the corresponding chapter of the first edition of this book (Winterton 2006) is a more tangible development and derives from a defining moment in the constitutional history of the United Kingdom: the establishment of the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and its new library in a historic setting on Parliament Square in Westminster.⁴

TYPES OF LIBRARIES AND THEIR USERS⁵

Law libraries in Britain and Ireland date from medieval times and were established to serve legal institutions such as the Inns of Court and are closely tied to the development of those institutions.⁶ There were still very few law libraries by the middle of the nineteenth century and they generally served professional organizations of barristers and solicitors and were located in the capital cities.

Since the middle of the nineteenth century there has been an enormous growth in all emanations of the legal system. Dramatic reforms of the legal system and the conduct of its business affected different branches of the profession at different times during the period. There is a detailed account of the development of the legal profession in England and Wales until 1988 by Richard Abel; he has also written a study of the legal profession in the 1990s, which was a period of particularly turbulent change (Abel 1988, 2003).⁷

The amount of legislation and litigation has increased the potential sources of law dramatically and there has been a growth in legal publishing to try to satisfy an inexorable desire to access more of that law. The impact of other national and international legal regimes and proliferating transnational legal relationships have increased both the quantity and the geographical extent of relevant law. The legal profession itself has grown and the legal educational systems which offer the routes to join that profession have grown in scope and number.

These increases fuelled an expansion in the numbers of law libraries and the number of law librarians. However, since 2006, particularly in the current economic climate, the value and sustainability of libraries have increasingly been questioned and there have been losses both of jobs and opportunities (Small 2009). Private and public institutions have sought to reduce overall costs or curtail the growth in costs and there has been a considerable process of institutional merger and consolidation, especially among law firms. Law libraries are no longer considered as a uniquely vital asset which they traditionally represented. Ironically library expenditure is seen by some institutions in terms of what libraries once were rather than the diverse and progressive services which they now supply.

LIBRARIES SERVING THE BAR IN ENGLAND AND WALES

The Bar is the branch of the practising legal profession which has enjoyed, until relatively recently, the exclusive right of audience in the higher courts.⁸ This right has been conferred on their members since the sixteenth century by the four Inns of Court, independent and unincorporated bodies which developed a collegiate form: Gray’s Inn, Inner Temple, Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn.⁹ They date from medieval times when there were a larger number of Inns in existence for those lawyers and others who needed to be in London when Parliament and the courts were in session. These four had reached a predominant position by 1400 and had developed into settled academic establishments. They became the source from which almost every judge was appointed and they remain the centre of the barristers’ profession. They collectively bear responsibility for the regulation of the profession including matters of discipline, the admission of members and the required standards of legal education. In physical terms each Inn provides collegiate space in the centre of legal London near to the courts, renting out space as chambers for barristers to conduct their business, and each providing shared facilities and services including, from earliest times, a library.¹⁰

Practising barristers now number about 12,500 and a little over a third practise outside London.¹¹ In addition to advocacy, they are primarily concerned with drafting legal documents, writing opinions, advising clients and the preparation of pleadings. The Bar has traditionally been termed the senior or learned branch of the legal profession and has for generations provided the opportunity for specialization and been the source of expertise in particular areas of law.

Over the past 20 years the threat of competition to the Bar from law firms, especially those employing in-house specialists, and increased competition within a rapidly expanding Bar has led to fundamental changes within the profession and the modernization of the running of barristers’ chambers and of the Inns. This has included the establishment of libraries, managed by trained staff, within some sets of chambers, building on the personal and shared collections of basic materials located there, and an increased recognition of the importance of the Inn libraries.

The libraries of the Inns maintain some of the few great collections of books on foreign and international law in Britain and Ireland, as well as magnificent collections on English law. Their early establishment ensured that their historical collections of legal materials and manuscripts are extremely rich and, where possible, they still supplement those collections with selected materials when they become available. The scope of the early collections was far wider than law. In common with most society and profes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary
• 1 Law libraries and their users
• 2 Sources of legal information and their organization
• 3 Legal research – techniquesa and tips
• 4 Legal technologies
• 5 Financial management
• 6 Managing legal information professionals
• 7 Copyright and data protection
• 8 Knowledge management
• 9 Collection management
• 10 E-learning and virtual learning environments
• 11 Planning a training session
• 12 Making the most of social media tools
• 13 Outsourcing
• 14 The legal services act
• 15 Case studies
• References and bibliography
• Index