Implementing the information audit

When the EUROLEX researchers, in the early phases of legal information market research in this country, asked lawyers what information they expected to find on a legal database, the answer (once the concept of a database had been explained) came back clearly: ‘everything’. EUROLEX market research and the discrimination of lawyers both improved during the five year life of that project. Yet the answer contains a salutary lesson which is greater than a mere representation of the conservative nature of lawyers faced by a question they had not previously encountered and seeking an answer that had to be in some respects, at least, correct. The answer ‘everything’ also represents our heightened expectations of all electronic information delivery methods, our over‐hyped presumption that the simple addition of a new technology will provide information values which create knowledge and solve problems without the necessity for clear definition of both the knowledge and the problems on the way.