Information literacy in the legal workplace: Current state of lawyers' skills in Pakistan

This study investigated the current state of information literacy (IL) skills among lawyers practicing at the District Bar Association of Sargodha, Punjab, Pakistan. A cross-sectional survey using a questionnaire was conducted to collect data from 297 lawyers. The questionnaire comprised 20 statements related to information literacy along with certain demographic variables. Each lawyer was personally visited in the assigned chamber by one of the researchers to record responses. Both descriptive (frequencies, percentages, mean scores, standard deviations) and inferential statistics (Pearson correlation coefficient, t-test, and one-way analysis of variance) were applied for data analysis in SPSS. The results showed that a large majority of lawyers participating in the survey never received any formal training concerning information literacy. However, most of these lawyers perceived IL skills as important in the context of their workplace especially in conducting legal research. These lawyers were more competent in the basic IL skills and less competent in advanced IL skills. In addition, the lawyers' age, practical experience, practicing levels, computer proficiency, and English Language proficiency predicted their levels of IL skills. There was a critical need for the development of IL instruction programs for not only practicing lawyers but also for law students to improve their skills since these lawyers felt less competent with advanced levels of IL skills. It is hoped that the present study contributes to the existing body of WIL literature focusing especially on the role of IL in the context of legal work and outlining the current state of lawyers' IL skills in Pakistan as no such study has appeared so far.