This article by Rob Martin addresses the issue of effectively managing the searching of enterprise information systems in law firms. It discusses the relative merits of federated, enterprise and integrated search and includes a case study of the combined solution adopted by City law firm, Ashurst.

In this article Chris Wallis examines some of the recent and impending developments in technology for managing legal information – in all its various guises. He looks in some detail at the facilities offered by Microsoft Sharepoint and tries to identify its USPs.

In this article, which is a summary of his presentation at the 38th BIALL Annual Study Conference held in Sheffield in June 2007, James Mullan provides an account of how the Content Team at CMS Cameron McKenna implemented LawPort and the issues they faced from the initial pilot to completion of the project.

This article by Paul Billingham of Concept Searching and Phil Ayton of UC Logic covers the history of computerised searching aids in the context of knowledge management projects and describes conceptSearching, which is a scientific approach to trying to solve natural language searching problems using a number of techniques, not just an algorithm. They also consider federated searching and describe the Sysero information portal and a taxonomy manager application.

In this article, which closely relates to Adrian Dale's topic for the Willi Steiner Memorial Lecture, Derek Sturdy explains what ECM is. He discusses the storage, editorial and publishing processes involved in ECM. He explains the importance of workflow and considers the advantages and disadvantages of potential software solutions to manage the process.

The twenty-first century is already proving to be the real dawn of the information revolution. The internet is now officially coming of age and highly functional mobile devices are everywhere. The youth of today are permanently connected and the media world is shifting to a “born digital”, “on line first” mentality. Every part of our society is feeling the effects of this revolution and is reaping the benefits of “real time information everywhere” ... or are they? Adrian Dale, in the second Willi Steiner Memorial Lecture, suggests that the reality is that many businesses are failing to keep pace with information growth and desperately need help – the question is from whom?