Amanda Fancourt is a Lecturer on the Legal Practice Course (LPC) at the Oxford Institute of Legal Practice. This article summarises the results of her research project, “Hitting the Ground Running?”, which looks at whether graduates receive a sufficiently focussed training for future legal careers whilst studying on the Legal Practice Course.

I am always at something of a loss when a new acquaintance asks, “So, what do you do?” Should I go for the straightforward, “I am Executive Director of the American Association of Law Libraries”? Should I go for the more general, “I am the CEO of a national professional association”? Or, more general still, “I am an association executive”?

This article describes research which suggests that much more could be done to prepare Library and Information Science (LIS) graduates for a career in legal information, both in terms of greater career information availability and in greater preparation before working with legal information, such as knowledge of legal materials and ways of working. Greater promotion of this interesting and challenging information sector would ensure that LIS graduates are fully aware of law library work as a viable career path and are clear about what the work entails. Implications for CILIP, BIALL, Library Schools and university careers services are discussed.

Paper presented to the 35th BIALL Annual Study Conference in Edinburgh, June 2004 by Marianne Barber.

Since I moved on from Herbert Smith to take up the post of Librarian and Head of Information Services at the Law Society in April 2001, colleagues have often asked me about the differences in working environment. Having had time to settle in (yes, it can take that long!) I think it is time to write a few words about this new experience and about the ser-vices which we offer to solicitors and to law firm librarians.

This is the latest report analysing the results of the Society of Legal Scholars (formerly Society of Public Teachers of Law) and BIALL Survey. It has been written by Cathie Jackson, Information Specialist – Law, Cardiff University.

As Bob Dylan says, times they are a-changing. This theme was central to the weekend in the fair city of Edinburgh, hosts of the 35th Annual BIALL Conference. To be honest I was not sure what to expect from a law librarianship conference. The first manifestation of this was in packing for the event where I could not decide between a formal or a somewhat dressed down approach to my sartorial collection. I have been to conferences in other fields when at university for my first degree – namely the Classical Association Conferences and the British Association for the Advancement of Science conference. Both were pretty informal affairs (classicists having little requirement for suits generally).

Back in late 1998 I was appointed to head up the Knowledge Management and Development Team in Nat West Bank and given responsibility for devising the strategy and implementing a knowledge management capability in The New Learning Organisation, the bank's centralised learning and development function. No mean feat when supporting 60,000 staff with their training and development needs!

Joe Swimmer gives the details on the latest application from the LexisNexis suite of knowledge management tools and technology. This software is not yet available in the UK but it is hoped that it will be released shortly.

Jackie Fishleigh, Zosia Carson and Jean Lloyd were the lucky recipients of BIALL bursaries to enable them to attend the IALL Conference. The following are their accounts of different experiences they enjoyed during their trips.

Watson Wyatt is a global consulting firm focused on human capital and financial management. We specialise in four areas: employee benefits, human capital strategies, technology solutions and insurance and financial services. Supporting these is Business Services, of which the Information Centre is part. We are based in the European headquarters in Reigate, Surrey. The firm itself has more than 6,300 associates in 86 countries around the world, and in the UK we have been included in the Sunday Times Best Places to Work for the past two years. We also celebrate our 125th anniversary this year.

In September 2003, Nottingham Law School launched its innovative Postgraduate Diploma in Know-How Management for Legal Practice, the first course of its kind in the UK providing professional development and training for those engaged in knowledge management in legal organisations. Now nearing completion of a successful first year, with students from both private practice and in-house legal departments, and from a range of backgrounds in knowledge management, including librarians, professional support lawyers, heads of knowledge management, managing partners and in-house counsel, the Law School is currently in the process of recruiting intake for the second running of the course commencing in September 2004.

Kingsley Martin provides an explanation of the West km software.

It is a remarkable coincidence that we have been asked to write this article now as it is exactly ten years ago this month (November, at time of writing) that the first tentative steps that led to the development of Perspective occurred.

The word “taxonomy” is widely used these days in discussions about organising knowledge or information, especially information in electronic form such as that on the Internet. There is no generally accepted definition of what taxonomies are, though the word is usually used to refer to alphabetico-classed schemes of subject headings. These are built on fundamental principles, which have been more fully developed in their application to thesauri and classifications. By recognising that all these kinds of “controlled vocabularies” are just variations on a theme, built from the same components, it is possible to create consistent and complementary tools to provide for the different approaches which users may need.

I'm sure that I speak for the three of us who were lucky enough to attend this year's IALL conference when I say that it was one of the most intense, interesting and enjoyable of experiences. Intense because of the nature of the subject matter of the conference, interesting because it was a country which none of us had visited before and enjoyable because of the people, the social events and the weather.

In 2003 I was one of the lucky recipients to be awarded a BIALL bursary to attend the 22nd Annual Course on International Law Librarianship from the 21st to 25th September held in Cape Town, South Africa. This is my personal report of my experiences which I would like to share with LIM readers. My report will focus on four aspects:

1. Robben Island

2. Ahmed Kathrada

3. A meeting with history

4. Final impressions

For many the subject of pensions is a tedious – perhaps boring – diversion, a matter which is rarely in good focus, and surely one in which little could be said by way of information resources. In fact the world of pensions in the UK is overwhelmed with legislation, burdened with regulation, and hardly short of information resources.

Amanda McKenzie writes about how information professionals can play a role in creating and implementing an effective knowledge management strategy within a law firm and how they and professional support lawyers can work together.

This article is an extended version of my previous article “Information Literacy in a corporate environment” which was published on the FreePint website last year. http//:www.freepint.com/issues/060303.htm. The opinions in this article are solely those of the author. Feedback or discussion is welcomed.