Welcome to the Spring 2022 issue of Legal Information Management (LIM). Another year on and by the time this issue of the journal is published the second anniversary of the national lockdowns in the UK and Ireland, due to the rise of Covid-19, will have just passed. Last year, in the spring 2021 issue, this journal published the results of a Covid-19 industry survey carried out by the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL). A year later and this issue presents an updated set of survey results. Our personal and professional lives continue to be affected by the pandemic and I suspect that for some time to come we will continue to monitor our progress towards recovery.
BIALL COVID-19 INDUSTRY SURVEY
BIALL's survey of its members in May 2020 was a way to gauge at that time what the impact was of the pandemic in relation to the legal information and law library profession. BIALL's Covid-19 ‘State of the Nation’ Survey 2021 represents an update having surveyed its members during the autumn, 2021. Once again, the survey looked at the status of physical libraries, approaches to hybrid working, BIALL's virtual activities and feedback on BIALL's support for its members during the pandemic. This new set of results is an important indicator of the state-of-play across the sector and the implications for those working in the industry. The current BIALL President, Catherine Bowl, provides an introduction and the pages that follow offer the survey results to LIM readers. The report is also available in full to BIALL members at: https://biall.org.uk/covid-follow-up-survey/
OCCASIONAL SERIES
In this occasional series Lesley Dingle returns with an account of Professor Bill Cornish's career and life following her interviews with him for Cambridge's Eminent Scholars Archive (ESA). The piece is entitled, ‘Conversations with Professor Bill Cornish: Legal History in Context, and Defining Elusive Concepts as Intellectual Property’ and provides an excellent insight into Bill's academic life and his many interests, especially those of legal history and intellectual property. Very sadly, Bill died recently in January 2022 but this interview, from 2015, allows us to celebrate his life and achievements. For those working in the IP area, Bill's book Intellectual Property: Patents, Copyright, Trade Marks and Allied Rights, published by Sweet & Maxwell, will probably be familiar. It remains a classic text for IP as a subject, it now being in its 9th edition (2019) and jointly authored by David Llewelyn (from the 5th edition onwards) and Tanya Aplin (from the 7th edition).
RECRUITING AND INTERVIEWING
This issue of LIM then offers readers two views from the commercial law firm sector in relation to recruitment and interviewing. Victoria North writes from the perspective of those who are responsible for the recruitment process in her article, ‘Recruiting for Success: Best Practices for Job Interviews’. The context for her article is the highly competitive recruitment market as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Jas Breslin then gives her thoughts on some key considerations to keep in mind when ‘you are the one asking the questions.’ Her article is entitled ‘A Hire Purpose: Skills for Interviewers’.
LEGAL INFORMATICS
Once again, the growing interest in legal informatics provides a focus towards the end of this issue – both in terms of AI (artificial intelligence) matters and IR (information retrieval) research. Firstly, Channarong Intahchomphoo and Christian Tschirhart, who have written for the journal in the recent past, have authored an article entitled ‘The Evolution of Data and Freedom of Expression and Hate Speech Concerns with Artificial Intelligence’. For the last piece in this spring issue four writers - Wouter Van Loon, Suzan Verberne, Gineke Wiggers and Gerrit-Jan Zwenne – who are all based at Leiden University in the Netherlands have combined to explain their academic research in relation to the topic of an ‘Exploration of Relevance Judgments by Legal Professionals in Information Retrieval Systems.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to record my thanks to all my colleagues on the LIM Editorial Board, and in particular to acknowledge the work of the proof-readers, as well as Katherine Read and Heather Memess who compile the current awareness section that brings to a close this spring 2021 issue. I'm also very grateful to Sinéad Curtin, in her capacity as Chair of the LIM Editorial Board, for her ongoing support. Since the previous issue of the journal one of our Board members, Joanne Whalley, stepped down; she had made an important contribution to the work of Board as one of our proof-readers for a number of the recent LIM issues. I am also very grateful to Renae Satterley. However, she has also left the Board to be replaced by her Middle Temple Library colleague, Jake Hearn. Alison Million, who has contributed articles to LIM in the past, has also joined the Board. Finally, my thanks go to our colleagues at Cambridge University Press - Craig Baxter, Production Editor for Journals and Jamie Davidson, Editor, HSS Journals.
