Legal Information Needs of Lawyers of Tehran City

Abstract

Objective: Access to the right legal information at the right time is necessary for the community and for lawyers. The use of information by lawyers and attorneys is strongly influenced by their information needs. These requirements determine the type of information needed, where the information can be found, and how to access it. Lawyers use a variety of methods to access information. Legal information is the most important source for the law and legal professions, and without the right legal information, these professions do not perform well. Methodology: The purpose of this study was to determine the legal information needs of Tehran's lawyers. Legal information needs are met through the use of information resources and formal or semi-formal channels of information and services offered by libraries and information centers. This research is a survey. The statistical population includes all lawyers in Tehran whose names are registered with the Center for Justice Lawyers. From a total of 8000 statistical population, 367 individuals were selected using Krejcie and Morgan's table by random sampling. The data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire consisting of two sections: general information and special information. In order to improve the validity of the research instrument, previously tested and validated questions asked in the questionnaires of previous studies conducted in the field of information needs were used in a similar context; and Cronbach's alpha was used to determine the reliability of the questionnaire. Assessment and selection of sources and barriers to the information process were over 0.70 and acceptable. Data were analyzed using the Friedman Ranking Test and Bivariate Chi-square test in the SPSS software version 25. Findings: The results indicated that the most important reasons for seeking information for lawyers were promoting specialized knowledge, and the most important sources for meeting the legal information needs of legal entities, were attending law courses and scientific journal articles. The most important problems for lawyers were access to updated information, dissemination of legal information in different sources, the outdated nature of many sources, and the inadequate sources of law. Conclusion: The most important reason for searching information was to update specialized knowledge and then write a research paper, which shows the scientific attitude of the lawyers towards their specialized field. Books (both printed and electronic) and scientific journals were the most important information sources for meeting the information needs of lawyers. Among informal sources, the library of a legal organization or institution was the most important source of informal acquisition of information; and the Google search engine was the most common search engine used by lawyers. Also, going to the library and visiting the new library resources were the most important ways to update information after reading specialized publications. The suggestions of the study are as follows: (i) the fact that many people today use the Internet to find answers to their questions, lawyers are not an exception. One way to help them is to make legal online databases accessible and expandable; (ii) due to the diffusion of legal information in different sources, the legality of many legal information sources, and the inadequate legal information sources, one of the most important problems for lawyers in accessing information is the need to take appropriate measures; (iii) since legal libraries are one of the places of interest for lawyers to access the information, libraries or legal organizations should select law librarians as managers for courthouse libraries/court law libraries; and (iv) the findings showed that the level of French and English language of lawyers was poor.