A Proactive Approach

Law Libraries

Reliance on routines to avoid mistakes is a self-evident feature of many fields of human activity. The commercial pilot preparing for take-off, the engineer designing a bridge and the insurance company introducing a new product all depend on proven methods to ensure that nothing important is forgotten and to assess the consequences of planned measures.

Legal work is somewhat atypical in the foregoing respect. Compared with many other activities, there are few descriptions of how the various segments of a legal task are to be devised in order to achieve the greatest possible certainty of result. Lawyers tend to work reactively, i.e., the focus is on solving problems that have already arisen. Efforts aimed at avoiding problems before they begin to brew – i.e., proactively – are less common. The proactive approach is not unknown in the legal sphere but as compared to many other fields of the law the perspective is not very well elaborated. Against this background this volume of Scandinavian Studies in Law presents 25 articles on various aspects of proactive approaches in law, the majority of them focusing on contracting issues. The collection is simultaneously a documentation of a conference on proactive law held in Stockholm 2005. In addition to the articles on proactive law this volume contains a presentation of major law libraries in the Scandinavian countries.