This paper, by Hector MacQueen, assesses the current state of Scots law and the Scottish legal system, arguing that as a small legal system which cannot be self-contained it is inevitably in a state of crisis, from which, however, it will not be rescued by Scotland becoming independent.* Whatever happens after the referendum concerning Scottish Independence on 18 September 2014, the law is in need of active legislative reform, possibly codification, while the courts must become more positive in the attraction of business rather than, as it sometimes seems, seeking to push it away. Mere defence of the status quo will end in disablement and defeat.

David Sugarman reflects briefly on developments regarding legal biography and considers the future role and value of biography within the legal community and especially in the context of socio-legal research.

In the article Rosemary Auchmuty discusses the nature of, and the approach to, her research into the life of Gwyneth Bebb who in 1913 challenged the Law Society over their refusal to admit women to the solicitors' profession.

Accounts of the interface between law, gender and modernity have tended to stress the many ways in which women experienced the metropolis differently from men in the nineteenth century. Considerable attention has been paid to the notion of separate spheres and to the ways in which the public realm came to be closely associated with the masculine worlds of productive labour, politics, law and public service. Much art of the period draws our attention to the symbiotic relationship between representations of gender and prevailing notions of their place. Drawing on well known depictions of women onlookers in the trial in fine art, this essay by Linda Mulcahy explores the ways in which this genre contributed to the disciplining of women in the public sphere and encouraged them to go no further than the margins of the law court.

In this article Leslie J. Moran turns to objects that are often marginal to legal biography and neglected by those engaging in legal biographical projects; pictures. Drawing upon his previous and current work on judicial portraits the article outlines three biographical dimensions of these legal images. The first explores the legal biography potential of what lies within the frame of a judicial portrait. The second focuses upon the biographical dimensions of the process of portrait making. The third draws upon the now well established insight that the meaning of the object, the judicial portrait, is not generated exclusively by, or confined to, what is to be found within the frame of the picture. This provides an opportunity to consider the role of pictures as a method for use by those engaging in legal biographical projects.

This article by Mara Malagodi investigates the legacy of British constitutionalist Sir Ivor Jennings (1903–1965) in South Asia. In 1941, when Jennings moved to Sri Lanka, a new phase of prolific writing on the laws of the British Empire and Commonwealth began for him, together with a practical engagement with constitution-making experiences in decolonising nations across Asia and Africa. The archival material relating to Jennings' work on postcolonial constitutional issues forms part of the collection of Jennings' Private Papers held at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in London. This article seeks to explain why this material has until now remained so under-researched.

Rich personal and institutional archives, antiquarian manuscript collections and published resources make the British Library an obvious choice for biographical research. While these collections include material relating to high ranking legal officials, legislators, renowned legal scholars and their correspondents the article moves beyond this view of legal biographical source materials. Examples of resources from across the Library's diverse collections are presented through a particular perspective on information needs and sources in broadly socio-legal research. In contribution to the theme of methods in legal biographical research this framework is offered, together with signposts to discovery aids as a way of conceptualising the Library's resource. In doing so, various notions of the nature of legal biographical research, its subjects and its source information are considered in this article by Jonathan Sims.

Elizabeth Dawson's article outlines archival sources for legal biography held at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, focussing on primary sources of information on individuals, including the Law Society and Bar Examination results. It also summarises additional sources which provide biographical information on legal practitioners and scholars eg. the archives of The Society of Legal Scholars and the Council of Legal Education, IALS institutional archives, The Bar Council, The International Law Association and academic membership associations. The article also provides guidance to researchers on using the IALS Archive, and advice on using related external archival sources.

Susannah Rayner provides an introduction to the archive collections held at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Library which relate to legal studies, based on a presentation given at the National Socio-legal Training Day on the subject of legal biography, held at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies 15th May 2013.

Lesley Dingle describes the ESA, a digital archive based on interviews with prominent personalities associated with the Law Faculty of Cambridge University. It constitutes a unique repository of audio, textual and photographic materials, providing insights into the careers of scholars, jurists and practitioners. Motivations for the establishment of the archive in 2006 were: recording reminiscences of scholars back to WWII and its immediate aftermath; documenting developments in administration and teaching in the Faculty and colleges; archiving voices of scholars taking about their early lives, careers and published works; compiling a cross-indexed reference of personalities mentioned in interviews; and generating an awareness amongst students and younger staff of the rich heritage of the Faculty. The methodology and strategy of conducting interviews and compiling entries is briefly described. Finally, in the broader context of legal biography, it is argued that such oral histories are an essential component because they capture aspects of personality that written accounts cannot and thereby reveal traits that conventional biographies may miss. This claim is illustrated by selected examples from the archive, that currently contains twenty interviewees.

The Holy Grail for most biographical researchers is a large hoard of unpublished personal papers such as letters or diaries. In reality that quest will usually be in vain. Research must instead focus on institutional sources. Because of their long history and pervasive role in the English legal profession, the Inns of Court and their records are likely to be the starting point for many legal biographical research projects. They also very usefully illustrate what the biographical researcher is likely to gain (and unlikely to gain) from using institutional archives in general. This article, written by Guy Holborn, describes the main classes of records held in the Inns' archives and what they can yield.

In this article Wirt Soetenhorst explores a paradigm shift that is already taking place in the legal education market and that will accelerate over the next five years. This development will have consequences for all the parties that are active in the field of academic legal education: authors, institutions, libraries, students and publishers. The article analyses the current traditional business model (the sale of physical textbooks) and outlines several potential scenarios for the future of legal publishing in which publishers move into teaching and academic institutions.

The Advocates Library provides a library and information service to around 470 members of the Faculty of Advocates, the Scottish Bar. The library also acts as the national law library for Scotland, having the privilege of claiming law materials on legal deposit. The Senior Librarian, Andrea Longson (the author of this article), and the library's management group work closely with staff at the National Library of Scotland and have been involved in strategic discussions about the drafting and implementation of legal deposit legislation for over ten years.