Cynthia Fellows, Philip Leith and Joe Ury report on the survey responses to a usage and attitudinal project carried out in early 2012 by the British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII). There were 3,274 survey participants and their responses demonstrate substantial support for BAILII as an open access mechanism, a technically competent dissemination tool and a useful resource for lawyers and non-lawyers alike. Such positive response, we suggest, indicates that BAILII's resources are now threaded through the fabric of UK digital legal information, strengthening the ability of all citizens to access and become better informed about the laws of the land.

In 2012 London becomes the first city to host an Olympics for the third time. The contrast between the Games of 2012 and those of 1908 and 1948 could not be starker and form a background to some of the matters discussed in this short piece. Central to the discussion is the contention that the development of the body of law now known as sports law is related to the accelerated commercialisation of sport during the past century. In short, the business of modern sport is exactly that – a business; indeed, sport is now a global industry and the commodification of sport will be seen to an exaggerated effect in London throughout the summer of 2012. Accordingly, this article by Jack Anderson begins by giving an outline of the financial robustness of modern sport, epitomised by the Olympics, before presenting a brief history of the evolution of sports law. Thereafter various issues in contemporary sports law are identified and discussed. The conclusion attempts to bring all of these themes together in order to give an overview of the area as a discrete, vibrant, if still emerging, discipline of law.

In this article, Mary Lacity and Leslie Willcocks review the practice of outsourcing business and information technology services. Research finds that outsourcing can deliver value to client organisations, but that it takes a tremendous amount of detailed management by clients and providers to realise expected benefits. The proven practices that contribute to positive outsourcing outcomes can be summarised as contractual governance, relational governance, client retained capabilities, and provider capabilities. Despite outsourcing's maturity, some enduring contractual challenges remain, particularly in the areas of incentive pricing and contract adaptability.

In this article, Mark James and Guy Osborn discuss how the relationships between the various members of the Olympic Movement are governed by the Olympic Charter and the legal framework within which an edition of the Olympic Games is organised. The legal status of the Charter and its interpretation by the Court of Arbitration for Sport are examined to identify who is subject to its terms and how challenges to its requirements can be made. Finally, by using the UK legislation that has been enacted to regulate advertising and trading at London 2012, the far-reaching and sometimes unexpected reach of Olympic Law is explored.

Today, the level of access to legal information in Canada equals or surpasses that of any country. Not only do several commercial publishers compete to sell their publications but, in recent years, legislatures, many courts and tribunals have built significant repositories on the web. However, the most spectacular advance has come through the creation of CanLII. In this paper, the Daniel Poulin looks at why and how the Free Access to Law (FAL) approach came about in Canada. He sketches the principles supporting free access, but he tries also to make the business case for establishing it.

This article by John Larkin QC, Attorney General for Northern Ireland, is based on his keynote speech which he delivered at the BIALL Conference which was held in Belfast in June 2012. He discusses the ways in which serendipity can play an important part in researching law, speaks of the frontiers that stand as limitations to contemporary legal research and identifies how these limits can be overcome; and he promotes the importance of both libraries and law librarians.

Loyita Worley outlines recent developments among law firms where outsourcing has been embraced in relation to their library, information and knowledge functions and services. She defines the terms and themes of the subject – outsourcing, offshoring, nearshoring and onshoring – and offers some thoughts for the future of legal information services in the commercial sector.

Within the legal library world “outsourcing” has become a hot topic, and not necessarily a welcome one. In the last 12 months there have been several law firms making the move to outsource their Information Services, so why is this happening and what are the options? Kate Stanfield, Vice President, Knowledge and Research at Integreon examines the issues. Her article is based on a presentation given at the BIALL Conference in June 2011.

In this article Philip Chung, Andrew Mowbray, and Graham Greenleaf, the Co-Directors of the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII), explain the need for an open source search engine which can search simultaneously over legal materials in European languages and also in Asian languages, particularly those that require a ‘double byte’ representation, and the difficulties this task presents. A solution is proposed; the ‘u16a’ modifications to AustLII's open source search engine (Sino) which is used by many legal information institutes. Two implementations of the Sino u16A approach, on the Hong Kong Legal Information Institute (HKLII), for English and Chinese, and on the Asian Legal Information Institute (AsianLII), for multiple Asian languages, are described. The implementations have been successful, though many challenges (discussed briefly) remain before this approach will provide a full multi-lingual search facility.

This paper is drawn from a presentation, by John Morison, that was made to a plenary session of the 43rd BIALL Annual Study Conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland 2012. The presentation introduced the audience to a research study, recently funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, entitled “What Makes an ‘Important Case’? A Study of the Creation, Transmission and Validation of Legal Knowledge”, and being carried out with Professor Gordon Anthony. The presentation to BIALL also attempted to engage the audience of legal information specialists with the specifics of the project and enlist their help in understanding how an important aspect of legal practice actually works. This paper has the same objective, and, additionally, it reports on some of the initial findings of the research which aims to develop a comprehensive sociology of legal knowledge.

In this article Simon Boyes traces the development of the discipline of sports law as represented and effected by the literature in the field. The article identifies different aspects of sports law and the various levels and locations within which it operates and identifies the leading academic and practitioner works associated with each. The article also considers the major developments in the field and the way in which they have shaped the sports law literature.

This article is broadly based upon a presentation given by Gordon Anthony, which was given at the annual conference of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians on 15 June 2012 in Belfast. Its purpose is to outline some of the ways in which public law in Northern Ireland is unique within the wider setting of the UK. Although it is true that the law of Northern Ireland shares much in common with principle and practice elsewhere in the UK, there are some notable differences that are attributable to the fact that Northern Ireland has its own court system and legal and political history. The article thus examines some of the differences that exist at the constitutional level and which can be associated with, most famously, the Belfast Agreement 1998. It also summaries some of the differences that can be found at the level of legal citation, for instance of case law and statute law for the jurisdiction.

The Olympic Games are the world's most recognised international sporting event alongside the FIFA World Cup. Started in ancient Greece, the Olympic Games were revived in modern times in 1896 and occur every four years. This article, by Esther Cho, discusses how to research the structure and legal aspects of the Olympic Movement. It also encompasses the general array of international sports law resources connected to the Olympic Movement.

The market in academic monographs is problematic, and sales have been in decline for decades. Concurrently, Open Access models of publishing are being developed and open content licenses designating a ‘some rights reserved’ status for content have been employed to provide a legal framework to reflect the changing ways content is used online. In the context of these innovations, Frances Pinter and Nicholas Bown describe Knowledge Unlatched, a not-for-profit library consortium project which seeks to combine a financially viable Open Access model with the use of open content licences to create a more efficient market in scholarly books to the benefit of all stakeholders in the academic publishing ecosystem.

Edward Gill discusses the concept and issues surrounding knowledge process outsourcing and provides an insight into the business model of, and services offered by, the company, Evalueserve.