This article is based on a course on how to use Moys classification scheme,1 delivered by Helen Garner and Felicity Staveley-Taylor on behalf of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) in November 2022. The article, which is also written by Helen and Felicity, provides guidance on how to use Moys classification, explaining the features that enable the scheme to be expanded to accommodate new subject areas. The article also explains some of the features which ensure the scheme remains relevant to legal libraries today. Sections from the classification scheme, as published in the fifth edition, appear in the article text. In addition, any references to page numbers are to the fifth edition.

In this article Rachael Wild discusses the transformational difference librarians and information professionals can make by contributing to community causes in the workplace, using her own experience leading Fieldfisher's Sustainability Programme to show how they can become effective project leaders.

“I will build it and so they will come” is not an effective strategy for any business or business function, Matthew Leopold tells us, and in this article, based on his presentation at the BIALL Conference in Belfast, he expands on this, exploring the importance of marketing legal information services internally and externally. Drawing on marketing principles and insights from renowned marketing thought leaders and academic research, this paper presents a four-step framework to enhance marketing effectiveness: understanding marketing's role, capturing attention through relevance and connection, delivering impactful communications and implementing actionable campaigns. By employing these strategies, legal information professionals can effectively promote their library services, enhance their visibility and meet the evolving needs of their audience.

Taxonomies are key to creating certainty in language across the legal landscape. In this article Alice Laird and Katy Snell of Howard Kennedy examine why taxonomies are still important in the age of AI. They also discuss how they have built on their expertise on taxonomies for the benefit of their firm, and how they have become involved with a cross firm project called noslegal.

If there are any two letters that represent the zeitgeist of our profession, and indeed the world at large, they are A and I. AI, of course, stands for artificial intelligence, a subject that we've covered quite extensively in LIM, and are sure to continue to do so. One such article was in our Volume 22 Number 2 (Summer, 2022) issue and was penned by Jake Hearn, the assistant librarian at the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple and a member of the LIM Editorial Board. In this article Jordan Murphy, the Chair of the City Legal Information Group, reports from a presentation Jake gave to CLIG in April 2023 in which the views expressed in his original piece were updated and expanded.

Three academic and one law firm librarian, Susan Boyle, Virginia Conrick, Pattie Punch, and Ann O'Sullivan collaborated to create a ‘Lawyering Toolkit’. It was devised to support learners on the legal lifecycle from higher education to the corporate sphere and beyond. Arranged by skills level, it was imagineered via the online BIALL Irish Group meetings during the Covid pandemic. Learning steps were visually scaffolded in LibGuides to build a quick reference platform. This article describes how the Toolkit proof-of-concept developed through experiential reflection and shared discussion. It tracks the construction of a prototype to presentation at BIALL Conference 2022 and incorporates feedback from the conference and the BIALL Irish Group. It is envisaged that the Lawyering Toolkit will ensure a more collaborative and consistent approach to legal information literacy in the Republic of Ireland.

The BIALL Sustainability Working Group is now up and running, having received formal approval from the BIALL Council. Here Christine Baird, Information Services Officer at Pinsent Masons LLP and a member of the new group, explains how it aims to ensure that sustainability is at the heart of BIALL's agenda, both now and going into the future.

This article by Ian Hunter, which has been adapted from his BIALL Conference presentation at the Belfast Europa Hotel, examines increasing the visibility of law firm library and information services in terms of what should be done and what should not be done. Or, as Ian puts it: “Is saying yes to everything really the right thing to do?”

In this article, which expands on a lightning talk that was delivered at the BIALL Conference 2023, Lauren Cummings discusses how she developed and delivered a commercial awareness workshop to third-year students at Goldsmiths, University of London. She then reflects on how employability training relates to information skills and how developing these skills can help students from less advantaged backgrounds achieve their career goals. Lauren also discusses how employability work might fit into the role of the academic law librarian.

Fiona Fogden has spent much of her career in law firm libraries, but she has recently taken on the role of Knowledge & Information Service Manager at RICS – the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. So, who better to give LIM an overview of the RICS Knowledge & Information service, describe what the collections contain, and also tell us how the service would be of interest to legal information professionals.

In this article John Franssen, Head of Research at Travers Smith LLP, gives an overview of what private equity is (including a brief glossary of some key terms), how private equity invests, the type of work lawyers in private practice are involved in and some of the key resources that they need and that are available. This article will also highlight the growing importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and sustainability investment for private equity managers.

With another highly successful BIALL Annual Conference behind us, LIM co-editors Jas and Mike Breslin – the latter a first-time attendee this year, the former a veteran of 18 conferences – explain why this really is an unmissable event.

Recruitment within the legal information sector has been challenging in recent years, in both the UK and the US, with a market that has been heavily skewed in favour of applicants. Which is why the City Legal Information Group (CLIG) hosted a virtual conference in late February to look at the current state of the recruitment market, the best ways to hire the very best people, and also the methods individuals might employ to find work in the sector themselves. Here Caroline Asbjornsen, a researcher at Watson Farley & Williams LLP and a member of the CLIG committee, talks us through what turned out to be a fascinating discussion.

In this paper, Barry Vickery returns to his legal information background and interviews Sam Lloyd, a Director at CRO Info, who has worked with Companies House for over 40 years and is one of the UK regulated agents authorised to complete verification checks on beneficial owners of overseas entities. Here they discuss the newly incorporated Register of Overseas Entities (ROE), share its brief history to date, the reasons for its introduction, and the challenges and benefits of creating and maintaining it.

Kanban is a framework that is commonly used in the technology sector and other industries to help teams work more effectively, but it has not been widely adopted in LIS contexts. As many of us continue to adapt to hybrid workplaces, kanban could prove to be a useful tool for organising work and communicating. In this article Laura Griffiths and Alice Tyson of the IALS Library explain how Kanban boards work and offer a case study of how a Kanban board was used in a recent project at the IALS Library. The article also discusses the wider value of kanban to the LIS sector.

In this article Emma Sullivan and Sandra Smythe go through the presentation they gave at the BIALL conference entitled “Apprenticeship pathways into the library, information and knowledge profession”. Emma and Sandra co-Chair the CILIP Trailblazer group, which is currently developing a Level 7 Library, Information and Knowledge Professional Apprenticeship Standard. Here they discuss how and why they became involved with the group and why the apprenticeship route is so important for the profession, both for employees and employers. (For more background to the CILIP apprenticeship schemes see page 140 of the Autumn 2023 issue of LIM.)

Legal information professionals can play a vital role when it comes to patents, whether that's through undertaking research to assist in infringement cases or by assisting in providing due diligence information by conducting searches to identify a company's patent portfolio. But those doing patent research need to know how to identify patents, how to determine their status and how to investigate the litigation history of patents. Niamh Hanratty, of Bird & Bird, explains how all this is done.

Financing work is an important source of revenue for many law firms, so it's no surprise that the finance practice group is often one of the largest in a City firm. But what is finance and what do finance lawyers do? Ian Hunter, Content & Research Manager (EMEA) at Shearman & Sterling (London) LLP, gives LIM the benefit of his wide experience in the sector.