Dumpling in a Hanky

Well, THAT was a busy year! And it's not going to get any quieter this year either.... So, why was it so hard? Well, last year involved these things in the library: Implementing a brand new Library Management System Getting the core library materials (textbooks and looseleafs) recatalogued (1,200+ items by the end of the year) on the new LMS Reclassifying all library materials to a new in-house classification system Setting up the subscription records for hundreds of journals and looseleafs Relocating all stock to match the new classification system, over a three floor library Driven to the Borders and back three times, to pack and relocate 40 sacks of books and law reports Setting up and stocking a new room with library materials Coping with recruiting and training three different assistants in six months* Spending a month running the library on my own Me having two different managers Managing a mid-year wholesale move of the library from the oversight of one depart...

Sadly, it looks 99% certain that yet another mid-level Scots law firm has succumbed to the pressures of the legal market, and will be entering administration, before being sold off in a pre-pack arrangement to a law firm, or firms. I have the dubious honour of being the only person who's worked for both the Scottish law firms that have gone into administration in the past two years, one of which collapsed and one of which was sold in a pre-pack deal. I think, therefore, that makes me fairly well qualified to make some predictions about what will happen next in this process, and who will suffer.* In this case, the original firm, or parts of it, is being rescued by another firm. The first thing that will happen is that the partners will soon start making their moves over to other firms that they've been negotiating with in the background. If they're lucky, they'll be able to take some of the staff in their fee-earning teams along with them. What they're almost ...

The House of Lords Constitution Committee has published its eigth report, " Scottish independence: constitutional implications of the referendum ". Within that, Sections 79 to 83 discuss the effect of a potential "Yes" vote in the upcoming referendum, with the following result: If an independent Scotland were to have its own supreme court, justices with experience of Scots law would no longer be appointed to the UK Supreme Court. However, given their UK-wide remit, serving justices with this experience should continue to sit on the Supreme Court until their scheduled date of retirement.

                                                                              Unofficial Open Access logo Last year, I sector hopped a bit, going from a law library, to the academic sector, and on to a public body. During my academic sector interlude, I was working with Open Access publications, sourcing academic materials in the appropriate formats and versions, and uploading them to the institutional repository. Now, to anyone working in academic libraries, that sentence probably needs no further explanation, as they know exactly what it relates to. However, outside the academic sector, the topic of Open Acce...

So, between Thursday 13th June and Saturday 15th June, I attended the annual BIALL conference in Glasgow, thanks to the help of a generous bursary from BIALL. Now, due to funding restrictions with my previous employer, I'd not been able to attend this event since 2008 . As this is the main professional event for the UK legal information sector, I always felt frustrated that I was missing out on being somewhere where important developments were being discussed, and that I wasn't getting to make the connections with people that I should. However, since 2008, lots of things have changed, especially in the way people who are effectively strangers to each other can communicate. Basically: Twitter happened. Now, through Twitter, I feel like I have an excellent network of contacts both within my sector and outside it, and as I restrict the amount of people I follow/allow to follow me, I feel I really know them quite well. So when I need help with anything, I can ask my contacts...

Admittedly, various legal database suppliers seem to think that English/Welsh law and Scots law are interchangeable. For example: Westlaw. It’s developed a sort of “know how” product called Insight, which should allow more in depth analysis and updates on certain points of law. This is handy, and the sort of things our users like – no wading through articles or textbooks and checking if they’re up to date or take into account recent judgments – just nice primers on specific legal points. Which would be lovely, if Westlaw could remember that not all jurisdictions are the same. When I go into the Scots Law tab on Westlaw (which should restrict my searches to only Scottish material, hence avoiding a lot of time wasting and confusion when I’m looking for something with a specific Scottish meaning), it gives me the new option of Insight within that tab. “Oh good,” I thought, “they’re actually paying some attention to their Scottish users, and putting Scottish content on!”. So I wen...

I know, I know, you're all on tenterhooks, awaiting the release of this blockbuster read ....but you're going to have to wait a little bit longer. Despite the timescale being 18 months, and the Review being launched in May, meaning that... *does quick calculation on fingers and toes*...the Review should be being released this month, it seems that due to the large volume of responses they've received, there's a whole lot more work needed than was expected. So, dampen down your excitement until early 2013, kiddies!

So, while trying to find out what the difference between a megawatt and a gigawatt is, I had a thought...how much power, in gigawatts, did it take to power the Delorean in "Back to the Future"? According to the esteemed  Doc Brown , it was 1.21 gigawatts, the power being provided by the nuclear reaction of plutonium, unwisely stolen from terrorists. According to the Scottish Government (p3), as at July 2011, Scotland had 4.2 gigawatts of installed capacity from renewable sources such as wind and wave power. We could send Marty Back to the Future three times over. And completely avoid the need for stealing plutonium from bad guys. Nice!

Scheduled to come into force on 2nd July , the new regulations for the Legal Services (Scotland) Act 2010 will move Scottish law firms one step closer to the ABS model currently in place in England and Wales . From 2 July 2012, the Scottish Government will be able to begin accepting applications from those bodies wishing to become approved regulators, presumably the Law Society and other legal professional bodies. Legislation referred to in the Scottish Government press release is linked to below: Legal Services (Scotland) Act 2010 (Ancillary Provision) Regulations 2012  (draft) Licensed Legal Services (Specification of Regulated Professions) (Scotland) Regulations 2012   (draft) Licensed Legal Services (Complaints and Compensation Arrangements) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 (SSI 2012/153)  Licensed Legal Services (Interests in Licensed Providers) (Scotland) Regulations 2012 (SSI 2012/154)  Licensed Legal Services (Maximum Penalty and Interest in respect ...

It’s all change at the moment in Englandshire law firms, and what happens in England no longer stays in England . Alternative Business Structures (ABS) are all the rage, and after a gradual run up period where firms could register interest in the conversion to ABS status (with mainly personal injury firms (PI) and smaller firms doing so, some large businesses such as BT and the Co-operative group being an exception), now they’re actually real – the first three groups to be approved as ABS’ were announced on the 28th March 2012 . Mid tier and larger firms in England seems to be adopting a “wait and see approach”, watching how the smaller, more adaptable firms (and also therefore possibly those who are more hungry for a cash-injection) fare before committing themselves to any tie-ups with investors. The existing large bodies like the Co-operative Group are big enough, and well funded enough to push on and expand their existing legal services in their own direction. The react...

You may well have seen my grumpy-day post earlier on advocacy and activism, so Thing 16 is going to be a meandering thing around some of those points. I still don't feel comfortable with telling people how fabulous libraries are, just because I'm a librarian. I have no more expertise on whether a local public library is useful for anyone than I do about the local Council gym - I don't use either one, so I'm not going to tell anyone that they should be using either one of them, as I am not informed or knowledgeable. Nor do I have any motivation to use either service myself - they just do not have anything to offer me. I don't keep this blog in order to show my employers what work I'm doing. In fact, keeping a blog when working in a special library can be quite difficult, and I very rarely refer to specifics of the the work I do on the blog, unless it's to illustrate a wider principle, I am very careful not to refer to anyone or anything that goes on in my...

Last night, through nefarious means*, I was invited to the launch of a series of short films on the Session Cases , by the Scottish Council of Law Reporting. The Session Cases are the most authoritative series of law reports in Scotland, and they are created and published by SCLR . The videos are 5-6 minute segments, available on a dedicated YouTube channel, which outline the history and effects of the Session Cases on Scots law, how the Session Cases developed, how they are put together and by who, and how they are used in court. The video clips themselves are well produced, high quality films, with interviews and commentary from everyone who uses the Session Cases, from the judges and Advocates who write, review, edit and use them in court, to the Advocates Library staff who maintain the collections of Session Cases for the Advocates, and the Session Papers that support them. Definitely a useful resource for law students, law tutors, those who have to source Sess...

Methinks the Scottish Government have got themselves a bit mixed up here. , with this "Bid to secure Euro millions" thing In order to "secure Euro millions", you need to buy a Euromillions ticket.  And, of course, there's no guarantee they'd be a winner...it's a lottery, after all....

Runrig isn't just a " Scottish Celtic rock " band.* *Dumpling did actually know this before, but she regularly forgets. Dumpling thinks it's some form of self preservation against terrifying music.

There is a little part of me that hopes that, after appointment to this post , the new job holder is taken aside for a private moment, when they are quietly presented with a shiny, star shaped badge, and told to keep it safe....

The mock trial, something more commonly seen in University law schools, is popping up in Scotlands primary schools , with real court practitioners involved. I like this. I know that, as an adult, the day I went into a court when I went for jury duty was the first time I'd ever been in a working court, despite having worked in the Scottish Courts complex in Edinburgh for years (we're not counting the time when lots of staff in the court complex downed tools and shuffled in to watch Jack McConnell being sworn in as First Minister) . I didn't know what the court would look like: I was surprised by how modern it was (not like the ones I'd looked through the door windows of at the court complex) . I had a vague idea of who would/should be there, but nothing more than that. I don't work with criminal law, so had only the vaguest of ideas about how things worked in such cases. Question - has anyone reading this ever visited a court, unless required to for jury duty? ...

Today, I learned that Scots no longer lay boys down on stones that mark boundaries and whip them, in order for them to be sufficiently traumatised by the event that they will memorise the position of the stones for the rest of their lives. It appears that the development of fencing in the eighteenth century is wonderful in many, many ways. And generations of boys must be truly grateful for this.

What judges like best This news from America  about the online version of court opinions being the "official" version reminded me of a situation we have here in Scotland, although in this case it's about acceptable electronic versions for submission to the court. Technically, there's no reason that Judges and Sheriffs won't accept an electronic version of a case report - Practice Note 2 of 2004  authorises the use of an electronic case report when it is: "reported in a series of reports by means of a copy of a reproduction of the opinion in electronic  form that has been authorised by the publisher of the relevant series, provided that the report is presented to the court in an easily legible form and that the advocate presenting the report is satisfied that it has been reproduced in an accurate form from the data source." What this should mean is that the electronic version of a case report should be perfectly acceptable to the court, unless some...

You know that game, 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon , when you can use Kevin Bacon to link almost anyone in Hollywood in 6 steps or less? Yes? Well, it's got almost nothing to do with this post, but I like the idea of it :) Anyhoo, what was it I was going to blog about...oh yes - the problem of what degree is most useful in a legal information environment. See, I knew there was some reason I'd been thinking of degrees! Y'see, Robert Gordon University have done something rather spiffing: they've launched a distance learning Law LLB , woo-hoo! Studying is part-time as standard, and can be accelerated to full time from 2012. Now...this is kinda tempting, because as a librarian in law firm, I'm similar to many librarians in this and other specialist areas: I don't have a degree in the subject I work in. Everything I've learned, I've either been taught by my previous or current boss (both infinitely patient in relation to daft questions), or picked up through doing ...

I imagine the first entry on the How To Be A Sheriff checklist would be this: 1: Remember to turn up for court when you're meant to. Therefore, this sheriff is really gonna be in the Bad Books with the Scottish Court Service...