Professor Mashood Baderin of the School of Oriental and African Studies explains the basic concepts of Islamic law. He discusses its sources, including the distinction between Sharīcah and Fiqh and its methods and principles. He concludes with a discussion of the various Schools of Islamic jurisprudence.

This article by James Mullan looks at a number of different tools for gathering metrics, discusses developing information services using these tools and emphasises their importance as a management tool in recessionary times.

This article by Rebecca O'Rourke, Commissioning Editor, Humanities and Social Sciences Journals, Cambridge University Press discusses the results of the recent survey carried out by CUP on our behalf to see whether LIM is still relevant to our readers.

Law publishing in Scotland has seen something of a renaissance during the last 20 years. This article by Margaret Cherry is an overview of Scots law publishing from a Scottish perspective. It looks at the factors which influence publishing decisions, including market and economic considerations and the nature of Scots law itself. It also covers the principal publishers – both past and current – who have produced books on Scots law.

Kay Munro, Senior Assistant Librarian at Glasgow University Library, writes about the courses offered by the Faculty of Law at Glasgow, the law library's collections and the services offered to students.

Anne Coles describes the process of becoming a chartered member of CILIP and considers whether it is relevant to the corporate information sector. She concludes that the skills it encompasses are all vital.

This article by Sarah Spells from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, focuses on the sources of Islamic law and provides a simple introduction to finding and researching this area, with suggestions of useful and notable resources.

Wendy Small considers the potentially far-reaching changes in the structure of law firms in the light of the recession and advises information professionals on how they should reconsider the nature of the services they offer to ensure that they remain business critical.

This article by Gareth Ryan, Law and Official Publications Librarian, describes the history of the library, outlines the courses offered by the law school and details the collections and services offered by the law library.

Penny Bailey recounts the challenges she has met and dealt with in her unusual progression from a law librarian to running her own software company, Bailey Solutions.

As a further contribution to the Squire Law Library Eminent Scholars Archive, Lesley Dingle of the Squire Law Library has been fortunate to interview Emeritus Professor Sir Bob Hepple, an internationally-famous labour lawyer and champion of human rights. Sir Bob's career spans the historic struggle against apartheid, the introduction of anti-racist legislation in the UK, and recent observations on the relationship between labour law and globalisation.1

Following the enactment of the Civil Procedure Rules in 1999, potential litigants are expected to pursue alternative means to litigation for solving their disputes. In this article, Nigel Broadbent a Director at Lupton Fawcett LLP in Leeds clearly explains the various activities which fall within ADR, including mediation, family dispute resolution, arbitration, conciliation and adjudication.

In this article, Julie Jones looks at the past, present, and possible future of information organisation, and considers how legal research might be conducted in years to come as the internet and computer science advance. Information classification systems have historically had finite life spans and there is no reason to believe that the current crop is any different. With increasingly more information being born digital, new ways of thinking about organisation and searching methodologies are developing to handle the deluge.

This list of sources for arbitration law has been compiled by Michelle Celik to accompany the article by Nigel Broadbent on alternative dispute resolution.

Kate Stanfield has based this article on a presentation given at the 2008 Online meeting. She considers the potential role of the non-traditionally trained information professional within a law firm information service. Such roles include professional support lawyers, para-legals and business development and IT professionals.

Suzanne Wheatley, Senior Consultant at Sue Hill Recruitment, describes the processes of redundancy from different perspectives. She discusses its potential effect on the individual and offers plenty of practical advice on how to deal with it, how to prepare for a new job and how it could potentially be an opportunity for change.

This article by Craig Gerrard, Librarian, Weightmans LLP reports on plans being drawn up by the Finnish library authorities to implement a huge digital library.

In the current economic climate, many law librarians are having to deal with enquiries relating to various aspects of insolvency law with which they may not be familiar. Richard Fergusson, an insolvency specialist at Keeble Hawson in Leeds, has written an overview of the different types of insolvency and the processes involved in each.

Jules Winterton recounts his experiences attending a recent conference in the Philippines and also provides a history of the professional information organisations in the Philippines and their relationships with IALL.