Law Librarianship In The Twenty-first Century

Around the world, legal information managers, law librarians and other legal information specialists work in many settings: law schools, private law firms, courts, government, and public law libraries of various types. They are characterized by their expertise in working with legal information in its many forms, and by their work supporting legal professionals, scholars, or students training to become lawyers. In an ever-shrinking world and a time of unprecedented technological change, the work of legal information managers is challenging and exciting, calling on specialized knowledge and skills, regardless of where in the world they practice their profession. Their role within legal systems contributes substantially to the administration of justice and the rule of law. This International Handbook addresses the policy and strategic issues with which legal information managers and law librarians need to engage in the context of the diverse legal environments in which they work. It provides resources, analysis, and considered studies on an international basis for seasoned professionals, those about to enter the field, and anyone interested in the evolution of legal information in the twenty-first century.

law librarianship in the twenty-first century

This Article's account has important implications for the way that legal scholars, lawmakers, and lawyers think about wills. The Article's second claim is that the substantive standard of the harmless error rule--that the decedent intended a particular document to be the decedent's last will and testament--should be the only threshold that must be satisfied for a court to admit the document to probate. Widespread adoption of such an intent-based rule is preferable to one that is overly formalistic. Current formalism leads both to false positives (i.e., grant of probate to a document not intended by the decedent as the decedent's will) and false negatives (i.e., denial of probate of a document clearly intended by the decedent as the decedent's will). An intent-based rule would make more likely the valid execution of wills by poor and middle-income individuals who typically cannot or do not consult attorneys. An intent-based standard also sets the stage for widespread recognition of electronic wills, if states are able to address concerns about authentication, fraud, and safekeeping of electronic documents. Technological developments could make estate planning in the twenty-first century more accessible than ever before to people of all wealth and income levels if the legal profession is prepared to embrace new ways of executing wills.

The membership of the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries converged in Little Rock, Arkansas, for the forty-seventh annual meeting on March 31-April 2, 2005, to discover and discuss issues and the latest innovations in the legal information profession for the twenty-first century. The theme was "Big Ideas Come from Little Rock." The staff of the University of Arkansas Little Rock/Pulaski County Law Library hosted the preconference program, "Basic Legal Research for the Non-Law Librarian," which broke attendance records for outside-Texas meeting locations. Successful marketing of the preconference to the Arkansas library community, including the Arkansas Documents Consortium, resulted in thirty-one registered attendees from public, college, and university libraries.