They say that everyone has a book in them. But how do lawyers and other legal professionals go about getting published? How does the publishing process work and what are the benefits of being published? This article by Sian O'Neill of Globe Law and Business outlines the benefits of being published and how the process works, including generating new ideas, approaching a publisher and the publishing proposal, as well as the production process and what authors can expect in terms of marketing.

In the latest in our series reviewing archived copies of Legal Information Management and The Law Librarian – as the journal was once known – LIM's co-editors leaf through the issues, and the issues, of 1984.

In the latest in our series reviewing archived copies of Legal Information Management and The Law Librarian – as the journal was once known – LIM's co-editors leaf through the issues of 1974.

In the latest in our series of articles reviewing archived issues of Legal Information Management and The Law Librarian – as the journal was once known – the LIM editors leaf through the issues of 2003.

In the third in our series of regular articles reviewing archived issues of Legal Information Management and The Law Librarian – as the journal was once known – the LIM editors leaf through the issues of 1993.

In the second in our series of regular articles reviewing archived issues of Legal Information Management and The Law Librarian – as the journal was once known – the LIM editors travel back in time to 1983.

In the first in a series of regular articles reviewing archived issues of Legal Information Management and The Law Librarian – as the journal was once known – the LIM editors examine the issues, and indeed the issues, of 1973.

Legal Information Management has reached 50 years since it was launched, under a different name, by the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL). In this article the current editor of the journal, David Wills, reviews the history of the journal from its launch in spring 1970 when it took the name The Law Librarian, and describes how it has evolved, often reflecting the changing nature of the legal information profession in those intervening years. He follows the journey as this periodical developed from small beginnings, explains how it was enhanced by successive editors, why it became necessary to change its title in 2001 and describes the move to the current publisher, Cambridge University Press in 2004. He reflects on the current status of the journal, as an electronic product while also retaining its profile in print and, finally, he draws attention to some possible challenges for the future.

In this article John Bell follows his previous LIM article which was published in December 20121 by suggesting that, despite the development towards an open access world for publically funded research, the journal as a form of publication for peer reviewed research is far from dead; indeed, it has an active role to play in the future.

This article is based on a presentation given by John Bell at the annual conference of The Society of Legal Scholars (SLS)1 held in Bristol in September 2012. His talk reflects the immediate challenges facing law schools, academic lawyers and the legal publishing industry in the light of the recent Finch Report2 and the subsequent response by the Government3 whereby it has adopted an open access policy to publicly funded research.

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.

Because the focus of most of the themed articles in this issue of LIM is vendor relations from the point of view of the customer, it seemed sensible to allow the legal publishers to present their own views of relations with their customers to the readership, via a short survey carried out by BIALL's Legal Information Group.

Rosemary Shakespeare attended the 2nd Joint ALLA/NZLLA Conference. Her interest was primarily in those sessions with a worldwide focus, rather than specifically the Australasia region and this article is about digitisation projects, with particular emphasis on the Law Library Microform Consortium's work.

In the current climate of rapid technological change, upheavals in the legal profession and global recession, Nick Holmes asks “What does the future hold for law publishing?”

Peter Lake is the Managing Director of Sweet & Maxwell, a Thomson company. As part of our feature on law librarianship and legal information in the 21st Century, we arranged to interview him to ascertain his views both on the future of legal publishing and on how Sweet & Maxwell are faring in the early part of the century.