Law has been a little slow off the mark in the UK when it comes to the world of mobile applications (apps). In an environment where students spend more time using mobile applications than they do browsing the internet, the authors were keen to take their Learnmore website to the next stage by developing an app for law students. The Learnmore website (part of the Lawbore suite of resources from City University) has received much attention for its quirky visuals, multimedia learning tools and winning marriage of librarian and student generated content. With an ultimate aim of easing the transition between A-levels and degree and making the ‘building blocks’ of legal skills more interesting. Emily and Sanmeet secured substantial funding from JISC after a call for universities to create mobile apps from existing content, teaming up with a colleague in City University's Human Computer Interaction and Design department. The app was to be designed to help students learn essential legal skills in an innovative way, employing more interaction than was possible via the web. The emphasis on video content meant an early decision to fix on iPad rather than iPhone as the tool for mobile learning. The JISC funding paid for the services of a developer to help bring their ideas to life. This paper looks at the transformation from standard wiki to mobile application; focusing on the process of developing the concept for the app and the major milestones, as well as providing an insight into the expected challenges along the way. These included: working in a multidisciplinary team, communication of ideas, recognising the differences required in design for an app as opposed to a website and managing conflicting visions. The team motto was that creating an app cannot be simply a re-skinning process; but a re-working of content to to ensure a truly effective learning resource.

In this article David Ibbetson takes a perspective from the ancient world. A number of texts of Roman law are concerned with injuries arising in the course of athletics. They are particularly concerned with blameworthy killings, and constitute some of the most fundamental texts at the historical base of modern negligence liability. Behind them there may lie questions discussed by Greek orators, where they were fitted into a rather different framework from that of the Romans.

In this article Susan Alcock examines the issues relating to outsourcing of legal information services. She reflects the many concerns felt within the industry and offers many points-of-view that have been collected from those working in the field as in-house law librarians and legal information professionals.

In this paper Steven Whittle describes recent work at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies to provide open online access to the IALS/SALS official journal Amicus Curiae and selected papers from the Institute's annual W. G. Hart Legal Workshop. It discusses some of the issues involved in a transition from print to web publication and looks at the benefits anticipated from additional web delivery.

In this article Jonathan Morgan reveals how the tradition of self-regulation in British sport has raised difficult questions for lawyers. On what basis can the decisions of governing bodies – which are clearly not organs of the state – be challenged? The Jockey Club was a regular subject of legal challenges from the mid 20th Century. An analysis of those cases illuminates the wider debate concerning the basis and extent of judicial review in English law.

There is a revolution afoot in scholarly communication and it is called, Open Access. Whilst Gregory J Gordon is a strong proponent of Open Access, he believes many people are missing the point as more does not mean better, it only means more. Open Access has had a major impact on scholarly communications by reducing the traditional barriers to research. Unfortunately, this has compounded the issues of discovery. Institutional repositories, disciplinary repositories and multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional repositories and metrics such as downloads, citations, and Eigenfactor™ Score are new tools in the scholarly researcher's kit. Familiarity and comprehension of these tools will help scholars make efficient use of the overabundance of scholarly communications. This strategic access approach will ultimately result in greater precision.

This article by Jas Breslin was, again, based on a presentation given at the BIALL Conference in Belfast in June 2012. It provides a background to the implementation of Research@mofo, a centralised enquiry service run by the library team for the benefit of the firm and its clients.

Much has been written and discussed about the outsourcing of library staff. In the following article, Dunstan Speight, Library Manager at Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP, looks at the role of in-house information teams. Although written from the perspective of the manager of a team of researchers in a City law firm, the author hopes that elements of his experience will have a relevance to other sectors and team structures.

Change, it is said, is the only constant. Whilst it cannot be avoided, the worlds of legal education and legal services have arguably enjoyed an extended period where the impact of change has been comparatively minimal. Today, these worlds face significant changes due to a combination of market and regulatory forces. True, such changes are likely to be accompanied by challenges but with these challenges come opportunities. There is no reason why Law Schools and Law students cannot help to shape these changes and benefit from them. Peter Smith, Richard Whittle and Peter Griffith discuss LawSync™, a project that seeks to enable such influence and attract such benefits at Sheffield Hallam University. See http://www.lawsync.com and http://twitter.com/lawsync for more details.

A job with a global law firm can involve meeting or working alongside colleagues from many different countries. In order to communicate effectively, we need to be aware of the different norms within which we work. Sara Batts, Jas Breslin and Susanna Winter, who together have many years’ experience working internationally, discuss three key areas which can help enhance our interactions with our counterparts overseas.

In this article Peter Charlish addresses the controversial issue of the use of performance enhancing drugs in sport. He looks at the legal basis for regulation via the World Anti-Doping Code and the nature of a sports participant's relationship with their governing body and the anti-doping organisations. He explains in the context of proportionality, the measures designed to combat doping in sport; the importance to the Code of the central principle of strict liability. Also, he highlights the use of non-analytical positives as a further method of detection of doping violations, whilst taking consideration of the impact of these measures on the human rights of participants.

Knowledge management is still a difficult issue within law firms. One of the potential barriers to widespread adoption of knowledge management in law firms has been cited as cultural resistance. In order to better understand this obstacle, a Delphi survey was conducted with key knowledge management experts in US and UK law firms. There were six factors that focused on elements of cultural resistance. This article, written by Elana Zeide and Jay Liebowitz, highlights the findings.

In this article, John Eaton details Canadians' passion for ice hockey and chronicles the legal struggles of Canadian women to partake in the sport on an equal basis to men. Readers interested in the law of ice hockey are referred to the authoritative work on the subject, John Barnes's The Law of Hockey (Markham: LexisNexis Canada Inc., 2010) and those who wish to read more of the story of women's ice hockey in Canada should consult Etue, Elizabeth & Williams, Megan K., On the Edge: Women Making Hockey History (Toronto: Second Story Press, 1996).

Beverley Woolfson analyses the concept of information overload: how it has evolved, and its relevance to the information professional in the commercial law firm. Using data gathered during her MSc dissertation research and combining it with current theories on the topic, the writer concludes that while the information intermediary is often vulnerable to the dangers of overload, a number of strategies can be implemented to ensure that its effects are minimised.

Librarians have an important role to play in providing guidance and assistance to their organisation on copyright compliance. This task is becoming ever more challenging as licence conditions and copyright law are refined and library users want to re-use information in a wider variety of ways. In the following article Dunstan Speight and Jennifer Darroch of Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP discuss a recent pilot project to produce more readily accessible copyright guidance. Although the examples below relate to newspaper copyright issues and are in the context of a City law firm, it is hoped that the ideas will be of more general application.

The Bodleian Law Library has only existed as an entity in its own right for less than 50 years. Yet part of the collection dates back to the days before the founding of the Bodleian Library in 1602. The rise and fall in fortunes of the teaching of law at Oxford is closely tied to the establishment of the law library. A lesser known aspect of the history includes the ties between Oxford and the United States, especially its oldest law school, William and Mary Law School. In this paper, Ruth Bird offers a brief history of the University of Oxford and then looks at the history of law teaching, before moving on to the evolution of the Law Library itself, and some links with our cousins across the pond.

William & Mary, chartered in 1693 by King William III and Queen Mary II, is the second oldest college in America. When George Wythe was appointed Professor of Law and Policy in 1779, the College opened the first American law school. This article, written by Jim Heller, traces the development of the law school and its library in four stages. The Founding Stage, from 1779 until the commencement of the Civil War in 1861, shows gradual growth for the young law program. The Stage of Decline lasted from the closing of the College in 1861 to the reinstitution of the study of law at the College in the early 1920's. The fifty-year Struggling Revival Era runs from the early 1920's through to the 1970s. The Modern Era, from 1980 to the present, shows maturation and growth of the law school and the law library.

In this article, James Mullan addresses the recent trend relating legal project management (LPM) by law firms and assesses the long term potential for this concept. In addition, he seeks to identify how those in the law library and information profession can play a significant role in its introduction and development within a firm.

Universities enter into contracts with publishers or providers of aggregated resources on behalf of university libraries to provide staff and students with access to material in electronic format for educational and research purposes. Following a brief review of twelve database provider contracts, our research demonstrates that Australian academics are potentially breaching the contractual terms and conditions of electronic resources when accessing, downloading and printing articles and other materials. They are covered for research purposes, but not for educational purposes.

This article, written by Natasha Choolhun, follows the progress of submitting a proposal to BIALL Council on the topic of devising a ‘Legal Information Literacy Toolkit’ following discussion at the 2011 BIALL conference.