For such a small community, isolated as we are, Bermuda has a surprisingly large and well-organised collection of legal materials.

However, there are some serious shortcomings. This article highlights the major resources and pitfalls.

In any of the major countries of the Western world, lawyers working in firms of the size found in Bermuda would scarcely, if ever, have such fine collections of books and journals.

Instead they would rely upon the large publicly-provided resources of their communities: the public, court and academic libraries.

However, due to a lack of public funding for libraries in general, and specifically for the Supreme Court Library, and the absence of a major academic collection, the onus has fallen upon the private sector to provide the basic necessities for legal research.

This is not to say that the Bermuda College does not have a collection in law - indeed in the past year, with the advent of the first year programme for studies in law in connection with the University of Kent, the College has acquired some up-to-date materials.

But they lack the vast repertoire of the Inns of Court or University libraries and the trained staffing in this specialist area.

So what do we have in Bermuda? The two largest firms on the Island, Appleby Spurling & Kempe (AS&K) and Conyers Dill & Pearman (CD&P), both have fine collections suited to their practitioners.

Naamah McHarg first brought the library of AS&K together from the partners' individual collections in the early 1980s.

In 1986, the firm hired its first qualified librarian to manage the collection and to provide research skills to their growing firm.

Since 1997, the present incumbent, knowledge manager Chris Maiden, along with his staff of Oksana Kucil and Jane Kim-Cave, continue to increase the level of services provided and improve the collection, in books, journals and electronic materials.

CD&P have an excellent collection guided by James Spence, a Canadian law librarian with proven experience in some of Toronto's large firms, and his staff.

Also there is a smaller collection at Mello Jones & Martin run by Karen Skiffington, believed to be the only Bermudian law librarian.

Many of the smaller firms have good collections of books as well, but it is up to the practitioners of those firms to locate and use the materials. Only the larger firms have access to Lexis-Nexis, Quicklaw and other electronic databases, via their librarians who are skilled in their use.

The Supreme Court has a small number of texts, but the most current editions are kept in a locked office. The library is only staffed by a clerk for a portion of the day. There is a collection of law reports from the UK and Canada, as well as Halsbury's Laws , Halsbury's Statutes and Halsbury's Statutory Instruments .

The Attorney General's Chambers has a specialised collection for its own use, which contains a few series of law reports and texts not found in any of the other libraries.

Needless to say, all these libraries are considered to be private collections, and are not open to the public at large. Students are generally welcomed, provided they make appointments.

The three largest law firms' libraries are all members of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library in London, which is one of the largest and finest collections of legal works in the UK.

It provides an amazing distance service facility (at no small cost) often within the hour, which can be very useful when Bermuda's attorneys need to use the more esoteric materials of a larger collection.

The York University Law Library is another frequently-used resource for obtaining Canadian materials.

Increasingly, the Internet provides some resources that governments of other countries have deemed to be in the public's interests. Up-to-date legislation of the UK, US, Canada, Australia and European Union is readily available in this way, down to the State or Provincial level.

But what of Bermuda's own unique legal resources? There are no books on Bermuda law - none. The first stop a Bermudian barrister makes in his quest on a point of law is the collective minds of his colleagues at his firm to see if any of them have ever handled such a matter.

If they have, he consults the typed transcript of the decision of the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeal, if there is one. If not, then he examines the legislation of Bermuda to see if it is similar to English law in any way and then consults the English text for guidance.

Just locating the Bermuda legislation can be very tricky. Bermuda's legislation is printed under the auspices of the House of Assembly.

However, the printed Acts are generally not available for at least six months after their passage through the House.

Subordinate legislation is published bi-weekly in the Bermuda Sun and collected monthly into the paper-bound Official Gazette . Presently this is more than six months behind in printing.

The Revised Laws of Bermuda , a well-intentioned project, is now only current as of August 1997, which means it is three years out of date. There is no subject index to the material and there are no concrete plans at this time to provide one. Discussions to move the project into the electronic age via the Internet have not yet moved forward.

There are no law reports in Bermuda either. Bermudian barristers must again rely on their collective memory to locate a case and then retrieve it from the large binders at the Supreme Court Library by means of a hand-written index to parties, or do without.

A project begun by AS&K to computerise the index and provide subject access to the case law of Bermuda has languished for the past three years, although it may yet make a comeback.

A true system of law reporting with published cases and headnotes has yet to appear and it would almost certainly have to be funded by the private sector.

The combined legal community of Bermuda must take a hand in guiding the future of legal materials, particularly in regard to legislation and case law.

With some pressure on the Government to fund a decent law library, staffed by a qualified librarian, at the Supreme Court and to continue or revamp the Revised Laws project on a timely basis as a priority item, the situation would be dramatically improved for practitioners in the smaller firms and Government departments.

Karen Skiffington IS Manager Mello Jones & Martin N.B.

This is the exact same Law Matters supplement that ran in The Royal Gazette on 20th September, 2000. However do the printing problems that affected the quality of the print, it was pulled from the circulation and did not appear again until the 9th October, 2000.