Law Firm Libraries
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Mark E. Estes
Holme Roberts & Owen LLP, Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.
INTRODUCTION
‘‘[A] law office library combines the student atmosphere
of research with the stimulating activity of big business.’’[1] The business is a law firm, providing legal advice
to clients. The library exists to meet the research needs of
the law firm‘s lawyers. The librarians try to anticipate
those research needs so they can: 1) help lawyers clarify
and refine their research project; and 2) provide a timely
and cost-effective solution for that research project.
Historically, the firm used the library space and library
collection to impress clients, opposing counsel, and potential hires; the leather bindings, full shelves, large
writing surfaces, and comfortable chairs suggested success
and wisdom to clients and opposing counsel. Today, the
librarian solves information problems unconstrained by a
physical library collection.
In 1956 a law librarian described her role as ‘‘to keep
happy anywhere from 35 to 125 lawyers, whose diversified interests may cover anything from having 235 U.S.
(Note: A volume from a multiple volume set of books
containing the written opinions of the U.S. Supreme
Court. Volume 235 has cases decided in 1914– 1915)
delivered at once to ascertaining all the stops on the New
York subway system and the Hudson Tubes to New
Jersey or to producing a speech delivered in the Maritime
Provinces. . . .’’[2] Forty-five years later the librarian’s
role still includes fact gathering and document retrieval
from many time zones. Law librarians use hundreds of
online sources to research legal topics unknown 40 years
ago and gather information about companies engaged
in global commerce. In addition, the librarian negotiates
contracts and license agreements with information vendors, outsources some library tasks, and creates systems
that let a less highly paid person find basic information
that once required a professional librarian.
second group of employees often request information for
the partner(s) and are the most direct users of the library.
A common problem for law firm librarians manifests itself in the law firm as: the heaviest users of the library are
often those with the least political clout or influence when
it comes to spending money on the library. The customer
base tends to be more homogenous than the clientele is in
public libraries. Customers in the law library are part of
the legal service industry—even if they are relatively new
to it. Typically, all have college educations and over half
of the customers have law degrees.
The primary customer of the law firm library is the
individual attorney seeking a solution to an information
problem. That attorney either contacts the librarian directly or through an intermediary—a secretary, a paralegal, or another attorney. These delegated reference/
research requests often pose the greatest challenge
because the messenger is not the requester and may not
have a full understanding of the problem. Often the requesting attorney is unavailable for clarification. So, the
librarian seeks to discern the intent of the attorney through
the messenger to first understand the information request
and then to complete the request within the constraints
defined by the attorney.
Often, the key decision makers in the firm seldom
use the library directly, because they are too busy working directly with key clients. They delegate research
work and receive synthesized research results in the form
of memos of law. They often do not realize the extent
to which the library supports their information needs
and can easily feel like the library does nothing for
them personally.
Some libraries provide service directly to the firm’s
clients:
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CUSTOMERS, USERS, AND OWNERS
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The law firm library serves two groups of customers: 1)
the firm’s lawyers; and 2) the employees supporting the
lawyers—paralegals, law clerks, secretaries, records center, accounting department, etc. The first group includes
partners or shareholders—the owners of the firm. The
Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science
DOI: 10.1081/E-ELIS 120008619
Copyright D 2003 by Marcel Dekker, Inc. All rights reserved.
document retrieval requests,
monitoring legislative activity,
researching case law,
finding statutes on a particular topic,
compiling a chart of state statutes on a particular topic,
doing business research on a competitor, etc.
Sometimes the request comes through the responsible
attorney and sometimes directly from the client. The
library contributes directly to serving the client and thus
building and maintaining the client relationship.
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One customer type, the summer law clerk, or summer
associate hopes to work as an associate at the firm. The
summer clerkship serves as an extended job interview—
where the firm continues to evaluate the clerk and the
clerk assesses the firm as a potential employer, rather than
a job where work is produced.
The large law firm hires summer clerks with the
expectation of offering them jobs. The firm has already
invested significant amounts of money to find and entice
the law student to come work for the summer. A significant part of the clerk’s job during the summer involves
legal research. However, because most summer clerks
have minimal research skills, they start their summer
worrying about their ability to find the right answer.
The librarian serves as bibliographic/research instructor
and nonjudgmental resource for the frightened, stressed
clerk. This role of research consultant enables the librarian to make the firm more attractive to the clerk by
helping to improve the clerk‘s research skills. In addition, the librarian can also evaluate the overall effectiveness of the clerk and the likelihood of their success
as an associate.
SERVICES
Most libraries provide staffing during the firm’s normal
business hours, 8– 5, M– F. The global economy forces
lawyers to extend their hours and librarians change their
service hours accordingly: opening earlier and staying
open later to provide assistance during the time when most
lawyers are in their offices. Law firms with multiple offices and librarians in multiple time zones provide extended
coverage to the entire firm through telephone and e-mail.
Reference services include the traditional quick
reference and bibliographic instruction services that answer questions such as: ‘‘Do we have?’’ ‘‘Where is it?’’
‘‘How do I?’’
In research, the librarian answers the question: ‘‘Can
you find the statutes and/or the cases on the following
issue(s)?’’ ‘‘I’m meeting this person tomorrow, what can
you get me to inform me about their business?’’
Research provides an opportunity for the librarian to
add value to the basic answer by synthesizing from many
sources the solution to the lawyer‘s information problem
and by making personal/professional observations about
implications and possible interpretations of the research.
Business dossier preparation involves locating, selecting, compiling, and summarizing information about a
company. This form of research has grown in importance because law firms face intense competition for
quality clients. The dossier enables the lawyer and the
firm’s marketing professional to identify the client’s
needs that the firm can best meet. It also gives crucial
Law Firm Libraries
background information so that the lawyer can demonstrate the firm’s understanding of the unique challenges
facing a business owner.
Access to Information
The catalog
Catalogs began as a simple list of the books owned by the
firm. As the collection grew the catalog evolved, first to a
card catalog and then to an online catalog. The quality of
cataloging correlates with the resources available to the
librarian. Namely, the better funded the library the more
effective the catalog access to the material in the library’s
collection—both physical and virtual. As librarians
worked through the process of cataloging their collections, they allocated significant resources to building a
detailed inventory of their collections. This was done by
either assigning a significant portion of a staff member‘s
time to the project, or by contracting out the project to a
third-party service. Law firm library catalogs continue to
evolve to provide access to books on the library shelves,
electronic subscriptions available on-line through the
Web or in CD-ROM towers, and ‘‘free’’ resources on
the Internet.
Law librarians use Web technology to provide access
to information by building and maintaining the library
page on the firm’s Intranet or building and maintaining
the firm-wide Intranet. The Intranet includes links to
answers to commonly asked questions such as ‘‘how do
I. . .find a translation service, find a zip code, find a case.’’
It also organizes online research resources, whether fee
based or no additional costs, by the ways the library’s
customers think of them. The organization could be by
practice area, by geography, etc.
Librarians apply their skills of collecting, organizing,
and collecting externally produced information to internally created information and build knowledge management systems. Lawyers use these systems to find prior
work product to so that they can customize a solution to a
client’s problem. ‘‘Work product’’ could be a research
memorandum on a point of law, an agreement for a
purchase or sale of a company, or a response to a request
for proposal from a potential client.
Conflict Checking
Conflict checking involves searching the firm’s internal
databases for clients who might be on the other side of a
legal matter. The ethical code for lawyers precludes representing two sides in the same dispute. Further, without
specific waiver from the client, the law firm may not
represent a client in one proceeding and oppose the client
Law Firm Libraries
in another matter. Librarians build the systems to search
internal records for existing clients and external sources to
identify the corporate structures to properly name all the
affiliates of a company.
Interlibrary loan
As a way to provide access to materials not in their library—whether not owned or not on the shelf, law firm
librarians built interlibrary loan (ILL) systems as soon as
there were two librarians in the same city. These systems
function more informally than academic and public systems. Law firm librarians use phone calls and e-mails to
expedite requests that must be filled within hours, not
days or weeks.
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complete a designated number of CLE hours within a
specified time. Librarians organize events, teach courses,
and maintain systems to track the credits earned and
needed. Tracking CLE becomes an element of knowledge
management systems when librarians track the subject
matter of what was taken and by whom so that others can
consult with the attendee.
Training includes the overview orientation to the library, it’s collection, and services. Training can also
include the traditional bibliographic instruction of how
to use available information. These sessions may be in
small groups, but most often they’re one-on-one,
provided just in time, when the lawyer needs the training. New technologies expand the just-in-time training; enabling librarians to develop self-paced computerbased instruction.
Current Awareness
Current awareness services include paper based services:
clipping articles from newspapers, routing newsletters,
routing photocopied tables of contents of periodicals,
maintaining a vertical file of continuing legal education
opportunities, and electronic based services: subscriptions
to electronic newsletters, and creation of customized
electronic newsletters that are either e-mailed or posted on
the firm’s Intranet.
The physical routing of material uses route slips.
Generally the priority on the route lists is by seniority in
the firm. But, in some libraries it is adjusted to reflect
need to know, political clout, or circulated in straight
alphabetical order. The alphabetical approach includes a
periodic reversal of the list or randomizing it so that
everyone is reminded of the need to promptly read the
current-awareness material. This system saves subscription costs by sharing a subscription but increases lost
opportunity costs when important information is delayed
when one of the individuals doesn’t promptly read their
mail. In that instance a person further down the list may
not get the weekly item for many months.
IMPACT ON OTHER UNITS WITHIN THE FIRM
The library’s research resources and skills aid the marketing department by finding the information for responding to requests for proposal. Current awareness
services include alerting the human resources department
to new developments; the accounting department for currency exchange rates and accounting standards; and the
facilities department with comparisons on equipment,
space allocation in other industries; and new standards for
office equipment.
HOW DOES THE LIBRARY ACHIEVE THE
ORGANIZATION’S GOALS?
The library achieves the firm’s goals by first understanding the goals of the firm; second by aligning the library
activities with the firm’s goals. Typically that means
encouraging cost-effective research and applying ongoing and rigorous cost-control efforts—only buying
information that is likely to be used and canceling and
discarding that which is not used.
Cite Checking
Cite checking validates citations in a brief or memo by
looking up each cited source and comparing the proposition for which it is used or any quotations against the
original source, and confirming that the case or statute
hasn’t been overturned or superseded.
Continuing Legal Education
Provider, Credit Tracker
Continuing legal education (CLE), is mandatory in 41
states. To keep their licenses active lawyers must
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
Four recent developments impact law firm libraries. First,
the information explosion and the Internet, have increased
the on-line availability of more cases, more statutes, more
regulations, more news sources, and different search
engines. These developments make clients wonder why, if
everything is available for free on the Internet, why
should they have to pay extra for information. Clients
often are not aware that online sources are purchased by
the firm.
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The second factor is the growth of branch, or other
offices. In the 1980s and 1990s law firms expanded their
markets by opening offices in other cities to better serve
an existing client or to serve a developing area. With the
branch office came the need for a library and the challenges of managing remote services. Sometimes the
solution was to staff the branch library, sometimes to
depend on the central office.
Third, the changing and expanding roles of professional law firm staff impacts the law library. For example,
the office manager evolved to a firm administrator and
then to an executive director. With each change, the individual assumed greater responsibilities in governing the
law firm. That role change demands that the librarian
think and act in a more business-like manner. Librarians’
roles also evolved to greater responsibility for information
collection, organization, and reuse. About one-third of
law librarians now have nontraditional roles supervising
the records center or the conflicts checking department,
the firm intranet, continuing legal education, or knowledge management.
The fourth factor is the increasing number of law firm
mergers involving firms that each have librarians. While
the merger increases the resources available for information problem solving it also may create overlapping skill
sets in the library staff and displace some of the staff.
PRINCIPAL CONCEPTS—ALTERNATIVE
INTERPRETATIONS
In the law firm, significant numbers of the library’s
customers are the partners or shareholders who own the
firm—and the library. The law firm, while it exists to
serve clients, must also make a profit by providing quality
client services in cost-effective manners to clients who
will pay their bills. The traditional law firm bill includes
an hourly rate and disbursements, money the firm spent
while doing the client’s work, e.g., court filing fees, long
distance charges, etc. Hourly rates are calculated using the
costs of having the firm open, using factors such as rent,
utilities, salaries, benefits, etc. The two biggest factors are
how much profit the partners want for a given level of
work and what they think the market will bear. In recent
years, clients have been asking for predictable pricing.
Predictable pricing is where the client knows in advance
what the work will cost.
In each of these two billing models the librarian
contributes to the firm’s bottom line by promoting the
most cost-effective research possible. Most law firm
librarians record the time they spend on reference and
research projects. The record accounts for time to be
billed to the client or charged to the overhead costs of
servicing a client.
Law Firm Libraries
Time
Law firm work is always driven by deadlines: court filing
deadlines, contract acceptance deadlines, etc. The Internet
has compressed time and magnified it’s importance.
Clients work in multiple time zones around the world.
The firm itself may have offices in multiple time zones.
When communication went at the speed of the mail, the
client did not expect an immediate answer by return mail.
While there was never enough time to research every
possible nuance, there was time to reflect on the advice to
be provided. Now, with clients expecting a call back from
someone with 30 minutes and an answer within hours
instead of days, time is in even shorter supply. The
successful law firm uses the skills of law librarians to get
higher quality answers faster and cheaper than lawyers
themselves can supply.
Technology
Law firm libraries were one of the first departments in the
firm to apply technology. The first application was
accounting to crunch numbers for billing clients. While
the accounting department used technology, the library, as
an early user of technology, played a key part in introducing technology to the rest of the firm. The library
first had stand-alone terminals for online research. Later,
libraries used spreadsheets to manage budgets, word
processors to summarize research results, and database
programs to manage serials and create online catalogs.
Now, the desktops include word processing, spreadsheets,
Internet browsers, and access to CD-ROMs, dial-up
subscription databases, and time-entry programs.
Budgeting and Planning
For many years libraries operated without budgets or
forecasted spending. They spent as much as they wanted
or needed. As law firms continued to become more
business-like, librarians adopted budgeting techniques to
track and forecast their expenditures. The budgeting and
planning reflect the business acumen of law firm management and the pressures facing law firms’ profitability.
Over 55% of law firm library budgets goes to electronic
resources.[3] Almost 90% of the print budget is spent on
keeping the library current and up-to-date. Some firms
treat flat-priced on-line research contracts as part of
overhead; others try to recover the cost through chargebacks to clients. Sometimes the income from chargebacks is treated as an offset to the library budget and other
times it goes in a separate category.
As part of for-profit organizations, librarians must
address tax and accounting issues like sales tax, property
tax, and capitalizing versus expensing items. Then, if
Law Firm Libraries
items are capitalized, tracking the depreciation. For
multilocation libraries, sales and property taxes can mean
that taxes are paid on the item when it’s shipped to one
location for processing and then taxed again as personal
property at the ultimate location.
PHYSICAL ARRANGEMENT/SPACE
‘‘Design also communicates what activities matter. Firms
that view their primary stock in trade as their knowledge
and intellectual capacity like to show off their libraries
and configure space so that clients can see lawyers at
work.’’[4]
Constrained by the space available, librarians seek to
arrange the collection in an overall useful fashion. The
traditional configuration used broad topical areas. Cataloged and classified collections are arranged in call
number order. Some firms use satellite libraries (subsets
of the collection or duplicates of selected subject matter
titles on other floors near significant practice group
members). A centralized or consolidated collection is
easiest for the staff to maintain. Satellite libraries, because
they put the books closer to the lawyers, are easiest for the
customer. The satellite library does not encourage coming
to the central library or asking a librarian to conduct a
research project for the attorney.
Seating Type
The number of study spaces ranges widely—from one per
every 10 attorneys to one to 20 or more. Lawyers tend to
do research with several books open to different cases, or
statutes, so they can more easily compare the language in
each. This means that each study space, whether a table or
carrel, has a larger work surface than in other libraries.
Many libraries have physically downsized, making
extensive use of hybrid collections and compact shelving
to house the physical collection. Instead of built-in
carrels, they use modular furniture to permit using the
space for other functions.
COLLECTIONS
Collections range from less than 10,000 volumes to more
than 70,000 volumes. Libraries collect both external and
internal information sources. The external sources include
hard copy and electronic materials. ‘‘Hard copy’’ includes
the traditional hardbound texts, treatises, court reporters,
statutes, etc. Most of the hard copy books are supplemented with a paperbound pamphlet inserted in the back
of the book; others are looseleaf—binders with loose
pages that can be replaced with updated text. The col-
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lection also includes microforms, audio, video, CDROMs, and electronic media via Web, dial-up, or leased
line. Internal sources include memoranda of law files,
brief banks, and opinion letters written to clients.
Libraries have a core collection of the primary and
secondary materials in the jurisdiction(s) in which the
firm practices. Primary materials are the law itself: statutes, regulations, and cases. Secondary materials explain
the primary materials. Finding materials provide means to
locate the primary and secondary materials.
Libraries physically expanded in the 1980s as many
law firms moved to new space. New libraries were
designed to double the size of the collection every five
years. However, in the 1990s the collection growth rate
slowed and even began to shrink. Causes for this reversal
include: expensive real estate leases that made justifying
housing books difficult when many of the primary sources
of law are also available electronically; and the continuing
codification of American law, namely, more reliance on
statutes and regulations than on case law. This codification in turn enabled a new work, the handbook, that
compiled the most relevant statutes, regulations with
minimal commentary into one or two volumes. This
provided the perfect desk reference for the attorney to find
a quick answer while on the phone with a client.
Serials
Serials comprise about 90% of the titles in a law firm
library. Serials’ control systems range from manual ones,
such as Kardex files, through specially adapted, created
computer files as word processing documents, spreadsheets, or databases to integrated serials, circulation,
acquisition, and catalogs. Some libraries record invoice
number and amount for each item, in addition to keeping
a copy of the invoice and sending a copy of the invoice
to accounting.
The nature of law, as an ever changing discipline,
requires that the materials be updated constantly so that
the most recent information is available to the lawyers.
Publishers address this problem with different approaches
e.g., pocket parts, a pamphlet inserted in the back of the
book. The pocket part is arranged like the parent volume
and includes new law, case analysis or commentary by
chapter, and section or page number of the parent volume.
The researcher reading the main volume must check the
pocket part for newer information. When the size of the
pocket part becomes too large to go into the back of the
book it may become a free-standing supplement shelved
after the book or the publisher may recompile the
complete title into a new edition. Another approach is
looseleaf services. Binder volumes are updated by a
package with instructions of which pages to remove and
discard and which new pages to insert. Because the
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revised material is integrated into the text, the researcher
saves time. Typically, looseleaf services cost more than
pocket parts both in dollars to the publisher and in the
time to file the updates.
Many law firm librarians have stopped binding law
journals or legal periodicals. They reason that they are
less likely to lose the entire volume—one issue may be off
the shelf, but the other three issues are still on the shelf. In
addition, the pressure for space savings and cost controls
impels the decision to not bind materials that probably
will be discarded in five years or less.
Collection Development Policies
Most collection development policies are informal and
unwritten. They generally ‘‘support the immediate information needs of the practitioners’’ in that particular
firm. Thus, one library that does extensive appellate work
may have a historical collection of proposed regulations,
extensive legislative histories, and old editions of significant treatises. Another firm will have a different collection with little historical material because of the nature
of their work.
Generally, the library seeks to have core materials to
support the practice. The largest libraries define core
materials to include multiple treatise titles on the same
subject to give alternative views of the issues. Law firm
libraries usually rely on academic and court law libraries
to maintain extensive historical collection of earlier versions of statutes, regulations, or treatises. These materials
are of interest to the legal scholar tracing the development
of the law but are seldom used by the practitioner.
Demand drives the number of copies of works held in
the collection. If a set is frequently used in a lawyer’s
office, the librarian acquires multiple copies of the title. In
recent years as space constraints and budget limitations
loomed, especially when coupled with the ability to retrieve documents from various electronic sources, the
number of duplicate copies has shrunk.
The collection is primarily legal information. However, the trend is to include more nonlegal information
because the practice of law now requires research in other
areas. In addition, the nonlegal materials help the lawyers
understand their clients better.
The reverse of acquiring, reviewing for continued
supplementation, and/or discarding also varies widely.
Decisions range from the librarian acting alone to heavy
lawyer involvement in the process. The heavy involvement can vary from lawyers physically coming to the
library to look at the materials to lawyers reviewing
compilations of the materials with notations indicating
costs and frequency of use. In other scenarios, the
librarian surveys when the renewal comes due and/or
reviews the complete subject matter at one time.
Law Firm Libraries
The retention policy varies from keeping permanently
to keeping only the most recent few years of newsletters
or law journals. Librarians, limited by space, are
cognizant of alternative sources for the information.
Citation patterns indicate the heaviest use of most
materials is within two years of publication.
CLASSIFICATION
Law libraries use many approaches to cataloging and
classification. Most generally follow the Library of
Congress classification with some local variations to
reflect the firm’s practice. For example, the Library of
Congress classification puts pension materials in the labor
area, but for many firms the pension practice focuses on
tax aspects so these materials are reclassified into the tax
area. The degree to which the collection adheres to the LC
scheme is often driven by the maturity of the library.
However, for smaller firms that have not had the
money and people to manage their resources, the collection may lack an inventory, a catalog, or a classification scheme. Books are arranged in the manner that
reflects the most vocal and important of the library
users—probably by their practice preference. Thus, if one
person takes the book off the shelf and another returns the
book—especially if some additional books have been
taken in the interim—the first book may not be reshelved
in the same relative place.
CIRCULATION SYSTEMS
Law firm libraries, unlike public or academic libraries,
can show people in the firm who has the book checked
out. This approach improves the use of the collection
because the attorney is able to find who has the book at
any hour and call or go to their office to use the book.
Circulation systems range from a notebook for the title,
date, and initials of the attorney taking the book, to small
cards and pockets with the cards completed and left in a
box at the library entrance. Another method uses
oversized cards in the book, which are to left on the
shelf in place of the book. A few of the largest libraries
now have systems with bar code readers that integrate the
circulation records with the online catalog.
Unfortunately, there is no security in a law firm
library, except within the office itself. In other words, any
time the office is open, so is the library. This means it is
easy to walk out of the library without properly signing
out the book. These ‘‘not on shelf/not signed out books’’
slow the lawyer’s response to the client. Efforts to find the
needed information for the lawyer include office searches,
contacting the likely users of the book by phone or e-mail,
Law Firm Libraries
broadcast e-mail to the entire firm, borrowing the book, or
replacing it.
STAFFING
Staff sizes range from one solo librarian to staffs of 20 to
50, reflecting the size of the firm, the nature of the
practice, the location of the firm, and the ability of
librarians to prove their worth to the firm’s bottom line.
On average, there is one professional librarian for each
43 attorneys.
Many law librarians work in a solo shop with little or
no clerical support. Most do not have the opportunity to
bounce ideas off a peer during the normal workday. The
solo librarian can achieve that professional interchange
through participating in the local, regional, and national
professional associations, and by regularly planned lunches with colleagues from other firms.
Positions in the law firm library include professional,
paraprofessional, technical, clerical, and administrative.
The title manager, director, supervisor, or simply librarian
indicates who is responsible for managing the library. The
title reference librarian denotes one who focuses on
providing reference and research answers. This person
may also have special expertise in one or more subjects,
e.g., tax, trademark, patents, immigration, labor, or business. Regardless of title, the actual responsibilities for
each staff member cross the traditional functional activity
lines because there is usually not enough work to keep a
single function position busy for a 40-hour week.
Librarians report to either a Library Committee, usually comprised of partners or associates, a library partner,
the firm manager, or the executive director. Increasingly, the librarian’s performance review includes how
closely aligned the library is with the firm’s business objectives.
Education
A masters in library science (MLS) is the entry-level
professional degree. A significant number of law firm
librarians also have law degrees. Law firms tend to be
practical in orientation, so demonstrated skill and experience can substitute for the MLS. With more nonlegal
research being done in the firm, an additional masters
degree in business, science, or technology can increase
the value of the librarian to the firm.
Clerical, technical, or paraprofessional positions typically require a bachelor of arts (BA) degree or, significant demonstrated experience. These nonprofessional
positions may include library network support, such as
maintaining the library’s portion of the technology
network, maintaining the firm’s intranet page, etc.
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Continuing Education
Law firm librarians find opportunities for continuing their
education in local, regional, and national programs. The
American Association of Law Libraries’ (AALL) annual
meeting typically draws one-third to one-half of the law
firm members. In addition, AALL offers workshops in
different cities. The local or regional chapters supplement
the national association. Other professional associations
offer continuing education opportunities as well: the
Association of Legal Administrators has chapters in
almost every city and also offers many telephone conference programs. The special Libraries Association and
general library associations also provide opportunities for
continuing professional education.
Finally, each of the largest legal publishers present
programs on topics related to private law firm librarians.
Experience and Skills
The AALL 2001 Salary Survey reports that on average,
librarians have held their current position over six
years.[5]
HISTORY
Lawyers rely on information—statutes passed by legislatures, written opinions from judges, and commentaries
or treatises written by scholars or practitioners. The solo
practitioner in the 1800s, as now, might have survived
with very few books. As lawyers joined together forming
law firm partnerships, their book collections grew. As the
number of lawyers in the firm increased, the book
collection grew as well. At around 50 lawyers the book
collection—and the information needs—becomes so large
and so complex the firm hires a librarian.
One of the earliest law firm librarians, Elizabeth
Finley,[6] began her career in New York in 1921. In 1961
she was the first law firm librarian to serve as president of
AALL. (Through the 2001– 2002 year a total of five law
firm librarians served as president: Jack S. Ellenberger
1976– 1977, Carolyn P. Ahearn 1991 – 1992, Mark E.
Estes 1992– 1993, Kay M. Todd 1993 –1994.)
Law firm libraries grew with the legal profession—in
1950 there were less than 60 U.S. law firms with libraries,
by 2000 there were over 1500.[7]
FUTURE
Law librarians will work more outside of traditional roles
and the physical confines of the library in the future. They
will pay greater attention to customer service by attending
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to what the customers value, not just what the customers say they want. They will translate their customers’
needs to publishers to create customized information
products. These customized information products will
enable customers, to retrieve more quality information
for themselves.
CHALLENGES
A current trend in law firm recruiting is to hire more
attorneys with three to five years of experience and fewer
recent graduates. These attorneys come to the firm with
expectations of library service from their old firm that
differs from that available in their new firm. This
challenges librarians to create ways to break the habits
and expectations of these experienced new attorneys and
convert them into loyal customers.
The law firm librarian’s customers range in age from
mid-20s to 70-plus. Generally, each of these generations
has vastly different levels of comfort and skills in using
technology to solve information problems The youngest
attorneys tend to be the most comfortable with technology
while the oldest tend to the least adept with it. The
youngest technologically savvy attorney expects Web-like
searching and has poor legal research skills. The older
attorney has better research skills, but limited computer
skills. This challenges librarians to balance the demands
for hard-copy materials with the demand for desktop,
Web-based research tools. Librarians also need new
technology skills to keep up with the younger attorneys.
Time Constraints on
Getting/Using Information
The demands of clients require faster than ever turnaround times from attorneys. This challenges some tenets
of traditional collection development practices. Namely,
libraries do not need to own everything if a book can be
borrowed quickly. Attorneys often do without the
information because they can’t wait the one to two hours
required to borrow the book. Librarians must revise collection development policies and interlibrary loan procedures to provide timely access to information within
limited budgets.
Proving the Return on Investment Value
The decision makers in law firms seldom use the library.
Therefore, the librarian must build the case that money
spent on information resources earns a significant return
on investment. Librarians must track the usage of the
library resources and the time spent on reference and
research projects for clients and firm projects. These
Law Firm Libraries
firm projects include preparing the business dossiers
for business development and designing and maintaining information resource systems. The librarian must
report these statistics in a concise and meaningful
way that demonstrates that the library saves the lawyers time, makes them more productive, and the firm
more profitable.
Confidentiality
While some firms emphasize the confidentiality requirement by requiring employees to sign a confidentiality
agreement, the employee is bound by the same ethical
standards that apply to lawyers: namely, to not disclose
confidential information to people outside of the firm.
Nondisclosure includes the seemingly innocent remark
of what a client plans to do in a future transaction.
With publicly traded companies, this sort of breach
could subject the librarian to federal insider trading
laws as well.
The firm, in order to protect itself against the conflict
of interest posed by one or more attorneys or staff who
worked for another firm or company adverse to a client,
erects ethical or confidentiality walls. These ethical walls
are intended to keep the attorney from seeing any part of
the client’s file without prior clearance. The librarian, as
knowledge manager, who knows when someone has
researched a similar topic or issue, may inadvertently put
two attorneys together to talk about a research result that
could violate the ethical wall. The challenge then, is to
integrate the barriers of ethical walls into the knowledge
management system.
REFERENCES
1. Westwood, H.C. Covington & Burling 1919 – 1984, at 91
(1986) in Seer, G.; Sidford, J. The Evolution of Law Firm
Libraries: A Preliminary History. In Law Librarianship:
Historical Perspectives, Gasaway L.N., Chiorazzi, M.G.,
Eds.; Fred B. Rothman & Co. Littleton: CO. 1996; 77 – 109
at 79.
2. McDermott, B.S. Proceedings of the Golden Jubilee
Meeting, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 25 – 28, 1956;
Law Library Journal, 1956; Vol. 49, 419.
3. AALL 2001 Salary Survey; 2001; 12, Table 2.
4. Studley, J.S. Firm culture is reflected in design, space
planning. Connecticut Law Tribune May 25, 1992, 18, 30.
5. AALL 2001 Salary Survey; 2001; 16, Table 14.
6. Ellenberger, J. Memorial: Elizabeth Finley. Law Libr. J.
1980, 73, 737.
7. Seer, G.; Sidford, J. The Evolution of Law Firm Libraries: A
Preliminary History. In Law Librarianship: Historical
Perspectives; Gasaway, L.N., Chiorazzi, M.G., Eds.; Fred
B. Rothman & Co.: Littleton, CO, 1996; 77 – 109.