Legal information needs of lawyers in Kenya: a case study

Otike, Japhet; Matthews, Graham

doi:10.1108/01435120010324842

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Other sources identified include colleagues, government publications, personal collections, and electronic resources. The sources used by a lawyer in Kenya for his task, as observed by Otike and Matthews (2000) in their case study included legal textbooks, statutes, local and foreign reports. Makri, Blandford, and Cox (2008) also studied information seeking behaviour of lawyers in order to inform the design of an electronic information resource and suggestions were made to improve the design of digital law libraries (LexisNexis, Butterworths and Westlaw).…”

Section: Previous Studies On Lawyers' Information Seeking Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information Sources Used by Nigerian Lawyers for Task-Related Activities

Adewale

Mansor

2014

Libri

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Studies on information seeking behaviour have shown that workers, especially professionals look for information in order to perform their work related activities. Because the legal profession is an information-intensive one, understanding the sources consulted by lawyers for their task performance is important for librarians as service providers in order to ensure effective and efficient service delivery. This study seeks to understand the sources that are consulted by lawyers for specific job-related tasks they perform. Data was gathered using questionnaires from a total of 64 lawyers in Kwara State, Nigeria. Findings show that the sources consulted by lawyers are related to the kind of tasks they perform. While human sources are mostly consulted for the performance of tasks involving interpersonal communications such as negotiations and settling disputes out of court, the advocacy task requires that they consult authorised sources such as legal publications and literatures. However, a generally low use of electronic sources (such as e-databases and e-journals) was observed among lawyers.

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Section: Previous Studies On Lawyers' Information Seeking Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information Sources Used by Nigerian Lawyers for Task-Related Activities

Adewale

Mansor

2014

Libri

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“…[18] investigates the legal information needs of the general public (citizens who are not lawyers), as well as the sources (paper-based ones) they use in order to fulfil these needs, and the role of the general and law libraries, and also of legal aid centres, on this. In [19] are investigated the legal information needs of lawyers, the main purposes they are searching legal information for, the types of information required, and also sources and ways (paper-based ones) for meeting these needs; they conclude that only large law firms have extensive legal libraries and therefore sufficient access to legal information, while this does not hold for smaller law firms: for them the only practical solution, due to the inherently large volume of legal information required is co-operation among such firms, or use of courts' legal libraries. Furthermore, there is some subsequent research focusing on the demand for electronic legal information sources.…”

Section: Legal Information Provision and Analyticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysing Legal Information Requirements for Public Policy Making

Alexopoulos

Virkar

Loutsaris

et al. 2020

Electronic Participation

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Most of the research that has been conducted in the area of legal informatics concerns its 'supply side', dealing with the development of effective systems for legal information provision. However, limited research has been conducted on the 'demand side' of legal information provision, though it is absolutely necessary to gain a good understanding of it, in order to design effective and useful systems for the provision of legal information; furthermore, this limited research is dealing with the legal information needs of the lawyers, and neglects the ones of other important groups. This paper contributes to filling this research gap. It analyses legal information requirements of a highly important for the society group: the designers of public policies. Initially we investigate current legal information sources and systems used by public policy makers, as well as their relevant search practices. Then we investigate their business needs for additional capabilities/functionalities for a better support of their policymaking activities using advanced legal analytics tools and services. Finally, we discuss the information, processing and technical requirements for the development of a legal information system providing the above advanced functionalities and services. For the above purposes, we have collected data through semi-structured interviews form 13 Greek and 7 Austrian public administrators dealing with the design of public policies, which lead to interesting and useful insights, as well as a novel set of additional advanced capabilities and functionalities that can give rise to a new generation of legal informatics.

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“…Otike and Mathew (2003) who found that majority of law students face the problems of lack of requisite information literacy skills required to effectively seek for information, most law students do not learn the basic information skills, they only end up using trial and error method of information search and this limits their capabilities in satisfying their information needs.…”

Section: Information Needs Of Law Students In Delta State Universitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Information needs of law students in Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria

Isebe¹,

Ejedafiru²,

Emo-Okpidi³

2018

Information Impact: Journal of Information and Knowledge Management

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The study investigated the issues in information needs of law students in Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria. The descriptive survey research method was used for this study. The population for the study is one thousand and twenty-nine (1,029) students with a sample size of one hundred and five (105) respondents. The data collection instrument used was the questionnaire. The findings revealed that the major information needs of law students are information on academics, information on legal issues, information on innovative ideas/exploratory knowledge, information on current research as well as information on personal growth and development. Based on these findings, conclusion was drawn; suggestions and recommendations were also given that as future lawyers, law students need information to excel in their legal profession. The study recommends that adequate information resources should be provided to law students and they should be adequately educated and trained on how to effectively seek and use them to satisfy their information needs. IntroductionOvertime, the information field has developed a deep understanding of the concepts of information need and its role in information seeking and use. The view that information needs motivates information behaviour, is an embedded assumption of the user-oriented paradigm which focuses upon what people think, do and feel when they seek information (Wilson, 2007). Dervin (2009) stated that an information need is an independent preventing an individual from moving forward in cognitive time and space. She went further to state that the person is faced with a gap that must be bridged by asking questions, creating ideas and/or obtaining resources. Such gaps do not occur in the abstract but arise out of a particular critical events and situations.Information needs could be seen as individual or group desire to locate and obtain information to satisfy a conscious or unconscious need.

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Legal information needs of lawyers in Kenya: a case study

Cited by 10 publications

References 4 publications

Information Sources Used by Nigerian Lawyers for Task-Related Activities

Information Sources Used by Nigerian Lawyers for Task-Related Activities

Analysing Legal Information Requirements for Public Policy Making

Information needs of law students in Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria

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