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.

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.

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.

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.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A), leveraged finance and capital markets are important markets for professional advisory firms such as investment banks, financial sector law firms and the ‘Big 4’ consultancies. While market totals are widely published in free sources, finding both sub-totals and lists of deals is more difficult and usually requires access to paid-for sources. In this article Ian Hunter considers the best paid-for and free sources and looks at the caveats in relying on them. In essence, he asks ‘why don't the sources agree?’ and provides a ‘jargon buster’ and a critique of sources in M&A, leveraged finance and capital markets.

This article details a small project undertaken by Information Skills Advisers at London South Bank University to increase student engagement in lecture theatre settings through the use of a web-based audience response system (ARS), Mentimeter. Supporting the School of Law, librarians delivered an interactive OSCOLA referencing session to a large capacity lecture theatre. A previous session was redesigned to increase student engagement and active learning utilising interactive quiz questions which students answered using mobile devices. The majority of feedback from students and staff who participated in this pilot project was positive and showed an increase in student engagement. This article is based on the presentation, ‘Have You Voted?: Teaching OSCOLA with Mentimeter’ delivered at the BIALL Annual Conference 2017. It will examine the process of adapting a lecture to include interactive content using an ARS, and will discuss the outcomes of the pilot session and explore benefits and challenges inherent in using technology of this type in a large classroom.

This paper is based on a parallel session presented at the BIALL Conference 2017 by Corryn Walker. The content focusses on a project undertaken by Manchester Metropolitan University Library during 2015/2016 to revamp their ‘Welcome and Induction’ programme. The project was coordinated by Corryn Walker and Elaine Cooke, both Deputy Library Services Managers. The article covers the background to, and motivation behind the project, its aims and objectives and the changes made to improve how the library welcomes new students to the service.

This is the latest report analysing the results of the Society of Legal Scholars and BIALL Survey. It has been written by David Gee, Deputy Librarian at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.