The title of this year's meeting was "Gateways to Leadership" and as they say, it did exactly what it said on the tin. Choosing from a menu of over 80 seminars over five days was, in itself, a daunting task, although the organisers are nothing if not concerned with customer service and made every workshop available on audio tape so that eager delegates needn't miss any of them. Realistically, attendees could only make approximately three seminars a day - but even that relatively meagre selection from the itinerary allowed us to feel the full impact of the conference theme: leadership in information management. That's where the immediacy of the Americans shone through.

At the first seminar, there was little warm-up and few pleasantries: we were straight into a debate on how we are to teach advanced legal research in the working law library. Questions such as who we teach, what we teach them, when and how they are to learn advanced information management techniques were addressed, with an emphasis on sharing expertise. Our biggest challenge, it was stressed, is to ensure that decision-makers in our workplaces understand that the only way to guarantee that the legal profession remains capable of exploiting the information revolution is to harness the skills of information professionals.

This message was a recurring theme in other seminars. A debate on salaries, for example, highlighted the fact that remuneration in private US law firms does not match that found in academic institutions. Although this is changing, it's only because librarians are starting to develop a different dialogue with their senior partners, and to create understanding about the importance of their roles within the legal community. This certainly isn't a new story, and the conference went a long way to making sure that experiences of this process and the good practices that have brought it along are shared and efforts sustained.

The conference not only provided the forum to discuss how to be gateways to leadership, but also provided the actual gateways themselves. I attended an excellent seminar on XML, a system for labelling data with "meta-tags" and enabling it to be more easily sorted and processed; and heard up-to-the-minute news on future developments. We learnt the inside story regarding the extension of the Lugano conventions - which regulates transnational legal reciprocity - by one of the Attorneys who actually participates at the discussion table. I was impressed by the variety of backgrounds the panellists had.

I have already implemented skills and ideas learned at the conference. The seminar on developing effective relationships with paralegals and other non fee-earning attorneys was particularly relevant to my role as a Professional Support Lawyer Librarian. Like here, the US law firms in particular are becoming more populated with less traditional legal professionals with flexible remits; practical ideas were given to enable effective dialogue and dynamic information providing partnerships.

The US delegates were eager to get down to work and the conference pace reflected that. However the evening receptions were great fun even if they did start and end early. The band at the Westlaw Party was one of the best I have ever danced too and the Americans are certainly eager to get onto that dance floor. The guitar player had hardly tuned up and the floor was absolutely full and this was the same for all the receptions.

From start to finish, the AALL provided UK-based law librarians with an excellent grounding in how to take the lead in promoting a progressive approach to legal information provision within their work places. The US experience can teach us so much in terms of harnessing dialogue opportunities and ensuring our skills are acknowledged and valued. This was a great opportunity to discuss innovative ideas with professionals with different viewpoints and horizons. If you are stimulated by this kind of discussion and are open to new ideas I would recommend you grab the opportunity to attend future AALL Annual Meetings without hesitation.

Oh, and Philadelphia was a lovely city too.