Internet Newsletter for Lawyers |
|---|
Leading Regional Firm: Cuff Roberts
By Kathy Jones
Cuff Roberts is a leading North West legal practice based in Liverpool and we make a substantial investment in electronic sources of information, including web based products. Sweet & Maxwell's Current Legal Information database has been utilised for some time - we find it invaluable. Lawtel has recently been added.
Having both paper and electronic versions seems the ideal solution, each having its own intrinsic merits, as discussed in earlier articles.
At present, most fee earners seem to prefer to retain the paper version in addition to electronic form. Reasons include portability, especially taking the paper copy to Court, the ability to browse, the serendipity factor, accommodating different working styles and archival use, for example, the consultation of rules as they applied at certain dates in the past. People like hard copy material, but appreciate the search facilities and functionality offered by the electronic version. The issue of space (physically) is nevertheless important as most firms are seeking to use space more efficiently, and cannot afford to carry too much in the way of books.
However, much as we would like, we cannot afford both print and electronic versions across the board, and electronic and paper products are evaluated on their individual merits. Most of our new electronic subscriptions so far have tended to be the specialised electronic services for individual practice groups, including Butterworths and Justis databases. Where these include duplicates of existing paper versions, we have usually continued with the paper versions. Interestingly, one specialist practice service to which we subscribe has taken the print and/or on-line decision out of our hands for case reports. Incomes Data Service (IDS) has recently ceased publishing its case report series in paper copy and the reports are now contained in its new Internet-based employment law service www.IDSBrief.co.uk. This service offers us improved searching and retrieval facilities over the old hard copy cases plus access to further valuable datasets.
We have not yet been able to justify purchasing dual subscriptions of the more general material we currently hold in paper format. The pricing of some of the electronic versions looks daunting when the number of potential user licences are taken into account.
To maximise the available library resources, and to save lawyers' time, we provide in-house customised current awareness alerter services. The content is drawn from scanning a wide range of sources, including Internet sites and e-mail alerting services. Some of this information is freely available and includes government information, consultation documents, statistics, legislation, case summaries, European and business information. Finding these sources can be time consuming, but I find Delia Venables' website requisite for helping me in this quest.
Unfortunately, some free services which one becomes dependent upon become subscription based by which time they have proved to be so useful it is difficult to manage without them. This is what happened with Sweet & Maxwell's Badger alerter service - an indispensable source of freely available information! I like the content and concise presentation of Badger and although disappointed when it became a subscription service, we subscribed!
Individual lawyers of course, source their own current awareness information and receive information in various formats from specialist professional groups. The free e-mail alerter services such as those provided by Butterworths and the specialist LawZONE newswires from www.lawzone.co.uk are also popular.
Echoing the views by Ruth Martin (A Local Law Society Library - see her article in the November/December 2001 issue), the ability to consult hard copy runs of reports, journals and reference material in the Liverpool Law Society library and other local libraries provides a valuable additional resource.
Continuous monitoring and evaluation of existing and potential services is ongoing in our practice in order to respond to the changing publishing marketplace, our users' interest profiles and to ensure the investment made in the library service is fully exploited.
Perhaps the movement of some publishers towards offering more competitive prices for purchasing hard copy together with Internet access may go some way towards solving the print or electronic question, especially where changes in working patterns are demanding access on and off-site.
Kathy Jones, Librarian, Cuff Roberts, Liverpool
email kathy.jones@cuffroberts.co.uk
Back to Contents.