It goes without saying that few things are more important to information professionals than data, all the more so when that data relates to their own profession. Which is why this third edition of BIALL's Law Firm Survey is so welcome, providing, as it does, data on a range of different information departments working in the library space, while also drawing comparisons from the results of earlier surveys. Here Catherine Bowl and Diane Miller explain the process of compiling the survey, its findings, and the interesting trends it has highlighted.

In this article Michael Maher writes about the declining print needs for law libraries within UK law firms in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The article begins by looking at the initial financial impact Covid-19 had across UK law firms. The second part of the article covers how home-working patterns have become the preferable option to working in the office. Finally, the author takes a change management approach, addressing what information professionals need to do to best manage and embed the change so as to continue to play a key part of the future, post-pandemic, law firm business.

The second BIALL Law Firm Library Survey was launched in December 2019. The aim of the survey is to understand standard practice across the law firm library sector and to allow firms to benchmark certain aspects of the library's service against industry averages. This article contains a summary of the results with comparisons, where possible, to results from the previous survey (2015/16). The full survey results can be found on the BIALL website.

This article by Ann-Christin Karlén Gramming, Elisabeth Ejemyr and Elin Thunell is based on a presentation delivered at the BIALL Annual Conference in 2019. It focuses on promoting library services through an e-learning system called ‘Nano-learning’. It is an innovative way of promoting the library and its services in a new and engaging manner. It combats information overdose (usually followed by a rapid forgetting curve) by relying on spaced repetition. The system also comes with useful analytics and reporting tools, making it easy to measure and showcase ROI (return on investment) to partners.

This article, written by Samuel Wiggins, examines current trends within commercial law firm libraries, and considers how those trends might continue over the next five to ten years. Areas considered include legal technology, the future of the library space, the role of the professional body, training, and the relationship between traditional librarianship and knowledge management.

In this article Dunstan Speight, President of BIALL 2018–2019, provides a short overview of current challenges and opportunities facing the profession. In addition to trends affecting all types of law libraries, the article discusses some of the main issues facing the three main types of information service: academic, law firm and chambers, and professional bodies. The article concludes with a discussion of how core skills and experience are still relevant in the fast-changing world of legal information.

The McCann FitzGerald library provides a library and information service to one of Ireland's premier law firms. As Megan Guthrie explains, it was decided to reclassify the library collection using the Moys Classification Scheme for Legal Materials1 to enhance and improve the flow of the collection. It also provided an opportunity to conduct a stocktake of library material. The project was broken down into three main steps: assigning a Moys number, relabelling the physical material and updating the library management system. There were a number of challenges including the need to modify or add to the Moys numbers and finding the optimal process for relabelling and accounting for the material. It was necessary to adapt the initial plan throughout the project to account for any obstacles or restrictions that were encountered.

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.

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.

The BIALL annual law firm survey was launched in October 2016. The aim was to understand standard practice across the law firm library sector and to benchmark certain aspects of a library's service against other firms, providing a year-on-year comparison of how the profession is changing. This is an overview of how the survey came about and a summary of the key findings from the first year's results. It was written by the Working Group members. The full survey results can be found on the BIALL website1.

The concepts of agile working, the emergence of the entreployee and generational issues: are these concepts game changers or just gimmicks? Jackie Fishleigh examines new ways of office working in the commercial and information environments. Her thoughts are informed and inspired in part by her attendance at the London Law Expo, Europe's largest senior legal management conference and exhibition, which took place on 13th October 2015.

Loyita Worley discusses the need for librarians to promote library services more avidly within their organisations. She argues that providing a high quality information service to clients is not necessarily sufficient and that librarians need to give considerably more effort to promoting and branding their services, in the way that other teams in law firms already do. She looks at why librarians should brand, how they should do this and what they should brand. The perspective of the user is also taken into account and the importance of building trust and confidence with clients is identified as a key feature in the approach to branding and promotion.

The amount of physical space available is a vital issue for virtually all law libraries. In this article, Dunstan Speight, Library Manager at City law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP, presents the issues involved in reducing and retaining library materials, to help library managers present a sound business case for maintaining the collection they need. Dunstan's experience is that of a law firm librarian, but it is hoped that much of what follows will also be relevant to librarians in other sectors.

This article by Allie Lustigman gives recommendations for creating a knowledge business strategy. The steps outlined are based upon the premise of using a strategy to review the information service and formulate a clear plan for the future function, particularly in terms of expanding the service; however, they can be applied to differing types of strategies. The article looks at various methods in which a review can be carried out and then outlines the strategy document itself, summarising the different sections that make up the document. Additionally, this article looks into the uses and benefits of creating a business strategy for the information professional.

Mark Pexton, of Herbert Smith Freehills LLP, provides a report on the findings of a survey into the use of Collection Development Policies (CDPs) and related collection development issues in law firm libraries. The survey was conducted during September 2014 and during the course of this article he provides an analysis of the benefits and difficulties of creating and implementing a CDP.

In this paper Samuel Wiggins uses the results of a survey undertaken by the author in 2011 as a way to contemplate both current and future issues for the legal information sector. The survey results act as a point of reflection for four key areas challenging the profession; relationships between lawyers and librarians, changing budgets, the nature of enquiries, and job roles. The article concludes by reminding the reader of the importance of reflection on their work, as well as highlighting areas where law librarians might strengthen their position within their firm.

Faced with a fragmentation of publishers' portfolios in Germany, the librarian Martina Kuth was interviewed about the challenges to grant a user-oriented library collection in a large commercial law firm like CMS Hasche Sigle.

In this article Margarethe Sannino shares some information on how legal research works in an international law firm with several offices. The focus is on German law and legal materials. A short introduction to German law is followed by an outline of German research resources in general and then, further on, there are two parts describing specific approaches to research from Margarethe's daily work; research on company/corporate law requests as well as research on legislative acts.

This article written by Jasmin Hollingum was adapted from her coursework that she submitted as part of an MSc in Library and Information Studies. It posits that whilst collection development policies (CDPs) are in widespread use in academic institutions, they are currently under-used in law firms. It considers what benefits a written CDP could deliver to a law firm library and identifies the problems that firm librarians face when developing such policies. Finally it seeks to establish ways in which they might be overcome.

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.