WILLI STEINER

The Willi Steiner Memorial Lecture was established to commemorate the memory of WAFP Steiner LLM(London), MA(Cantab), FLA, of Gray's Inn, Barrister-in-Law and eminent law librarian of national and international standing. Willi Steiner was a significant figure in the law library profession and also within the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL). He was formerly librarian of two great law libraries, the Squire Law Library at the University of Cambridge (1959–1968) and the library of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London (1968–1982).

Figure 1:

Willi Steiner.

Willi Steiner was a founder member of BIALL, having chaired its inaugural meeting and was a member of the Executive Committee from 1969–1975. He chaired several committees: on Cataloguing and Classification from 1974–1980; on Crown Court Libraries from 1972–1976; and on Law Library Provision from 1976–1977. He was responsible for BIALL's tenth annual conference in Cambridge in 1979 which was hosted at Sidney Sussex College. Willi contributed the chapter on foreign law to BIALL's Manual of Law Librarianship edited by Betty Moys which became the leading work for the profession when it was published in 1976. He also became BIALL's first Honorary President to be invited from amongst the membership and served from 1985–1988. Life membership was conferred on him for outstanding and distinguished service to the Association and the profession.

Amongst the many professional achievements during his career, Willi Steiner was editor of the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals, an active member of both the Society of Public Teachers of Law and the International Association of Law Libraries, a Council member of the United Kingdom National Committee of Comparative Law and was consultant, and subsequently a visiting professor, at the European University Institute (EUI) in Fiesole. He created two classifications schemes during his career, one for the EUI and the other for the Squire Law Library; where the latter is concerned, the classification scheme remains in use to this day.

THE MEMORIAL LECTURE SERIES

Throughout his career Willi Steiner was devoted to law librarianship and worked to build ever closer links between librarianship and the legal profession. This series of memorial lectures relates to topics closely aligned with his role and interests in law and librarianship.

Given that Willi was a founder member of BIALL, it was fitting that the latest in the series, the seventh of these lectures, coincided with the fiftieth year since BIALL was established. On this occasion it was the President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, the Rt Hon the Baroness Hale of Richmond DBE, who delivered the lecture.

The lectures given in this series to date have been:

2005:

European Civil Code Movement and the Common Frame of Reference of the EU

Hugh Beale

2007:

The Architecture of an Information Revolution

Adrian Dale

2011:

Why Study Law? The Relevance of Legal Information to the Law Student, Researcher and Practitioner

Graham Virgo

2013:

Invincible or Just a Flesh Wound? The Holy Grail of Scots Law

Hector MacQueen

2015:

Commercial and Regulatory Evolution of Legal Services: Implications for the Information  Professional

Stephen Mayson

2017:

Brexit and Access to Legal Information

David Allen Green

2019:

The Changing Legal Landscape

Brenda Hale