Citing the Law

Today I learnt there's a great guide to citing the law called Citing the Law.

It's an online tutorial put together by Information Services staff at Cardiff University, and hosted on the Cardiff University website. The tutorial shows you how to:

• "cite cases and legislation, i.e. the ‘primary’ sources of law, in the accepted way
• refer to ‘secondary’ sources such as books, journals and government reports in your work
• cite using OSCOLA, the Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities, fourth edition."*

It's really easy to use, has clear explanations and useful tips. Sources covered are from the UK and EU. I've just learnt how to correctly cite Hansard...

*https://ilrb.cf.ac.uk/citingreferences/oscola/tutorial/index.html

UK Government Web Archive

Today I learnt how to access old, archived versions of government websites, including those that no longer exist.

The answer? The UK Government Web Archive, hosted by the National Archives. You can browse by category or choose your organisation from an A-Z list. Once you've selected your organisation, you can choose the date of the archived version of their website you'd like to view and away you go. It's really useful, especially for websites that no longer exist (e.g. Inland Revenue). And, of course, it's free.

UK Government Web Archive:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/webarchive/

For more information about the National Archive's government website archiving project:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/webarchive/information.htm

The Lawyer's database of CPD and events

Today I learnt that The Lawyer provides an online database of law events including seminars, conferences, courses and other CPD activities.

You can search it by keyword, and also filter by date, location and topic. If you set the location to "at your desk" you'll find a list of webinars or DVDs available.

Here is the link:
http://www.thelawyer.com/events

I read about this and other methods for finding legal CPD course on the Renaissance Utterances blog:
http://renaissanceutterances.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/finding-legal-cpd-courses.html

BIALL's Legal Information Literacy Statement

Today I learnt that BIALL has published its Legal Information Literacy Statement.

The Statement was devised by a Working Group comprised of law librarians from different sectors, following a period of consultation by BIALL members. It sets out legal information literacy standards, applicable to all sectors of law librarianship in the UK, that can be used when designing legal research training.
Ruth Bird, Chair of the BIALL Working Group on Legal Information Literacy explains on the BIALL website that the Statement "aims to enable law students, at both the academic and vocational stage of training, to develop comprehensive legal research skills following a five stage model. Each of the five stages is expanded into separate competency based learning outcomes. These competency based learning outcomes are derived from the legal research learning outcomes as specified by the following UK legal professional bodies – the SRA (Solicitors Regulation Authority), the BSB (Bar Standards Board) & ILEX (Institute of Legal Executives)."

The Statement can be accessed from the BIALL website:
http://www.biall.org.uk/pages/biall-legal-information-literacy-statement.html