So You Want to Be a Law Librarian?

by Billy Hinshaw, former Assistant, INALJ Minnesota
previously published 12/18/13

So You Want to Be a Law Librarian?

williamhenshaw2Law librarianship is a great career avenue for those who either a) are library professionals interested in legal work, or b) are former attorneys or legal professionals seeking an alternate career.  Regardless of background, law librarians use their knowledge of legal resources and searching behavior to assist with legal work in a behind-the-scenes context.

As one can deduce, law librarianship focuses on legal research and resources, such as legally-themed monographs and journals, legal treatises (multi-volume expositions on a single area of law), case reporters (print or electronic records of case opinions), and legal databases (i.e. LexisNexis or Westlaw).  In terms of Library of Congress classification, this is anything with K as the starting letter.  Law librarians work in any number of places.  Many work in the private sector, stewarding the textual resources of a law office.  Others pursue jobs in academia as librarians at a law school, and the government also hosts a multiplicity of positions in federal, state or county law libraries.

There are pros and cons to this field of librarianship, much like any other.  As David Lat writes in the Above the Law blog, law librarians, on average, tend to make more than their public or academic counterparts.  Law librarians are also valuable resources that can facilitate the practice of an attorney, saving the attorney time, and the attorney’s client(s) money.  On the other hand, with the emergence of electronic databases and the over-saturation of the legal job market, law librarian positions are more difficult to find.  The biggest danger with law librarians (especially those who work with the general public and have attended law school) is legal advice.  Law librarians must be careful to provide access to resources, but not to tell anyone how to use it or otherwise provide assistance that can be construed as legal advice.  A library user may visit a law library and be quick to ask for advice, but librarians must remind them that they cannot provide legal advice, since such activity is against the law.

 

Finally, although many law librarian positions require or prefer a JD, others only require an MLS or MLIS, and so many library professionals who have never been to law school, but have a keen interest in the law, apply and become law librarians.  Moreover, law students and practicing attorneys in the digital age have a greater necessity to learn and utilize proper information literacy and research skills.  This is something that librarians at a law school or a law firm can help to develop and facilitate, given their advanced knowledge of information seeking behavior.  If you are interested in law librarianship, but don’t want to be a lawyer, this may be up your alley!

 

If you would like more information about law librarianship, you can visit the website for the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), where you can get more information about AALL, read the Law Library Journal, and view their joblist to get an idea of what these positions require.  If possible, conduct an informational interview with a law librarian in your community.  Also, make sure you read INALJ’s interviews with current law librarians Joe Noel, Kristen Hallows, Brian Huffman, and Leanna Simon.

 

Billy Hinshaw is a student in the MLIS program at Saint Catherine University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and is currently a class-action clerk at Nichols Kaster, PLLP in nearby Minneapolis.  After grad school, he plans to pursue work in technical services or digital librarianship, and also is an avid researcher in library history.  When neither at work or at school, Billy enjoys reading history books, listening to music, playing guitar or piano, and following most professional sports, especially the Minnesota Vikings, Minnesota Twins, Minnesota Wild, and Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

 

* Formerly titled So You Wanna Be a Law Librarian?

Naomi House

Naomi House, MLIS, is the founder and publisher of the popular webzine and jobs list INALJ.com (formerly I Need a Library Job) and former CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) of T160K.org, a crowdfunding platform focused on African patrimony, heritage and cultural projects. INALJ was founded in October 2010 with the assistance of her fellow Rutgers classmate, Elizabeth Leonard. Its social media presence has grown to include Facebook (retired in 2016), Twitter and a LinkedIn group, in addition to the interviews, articles and jobs found on INALJ. INALJ has had over 21 Million page hits and helped many, many thousands of librarians find employment! Through grassroots marketing, word of mouth and a real focus on exploring unconventional resources for job leads, INALJ grew from a subscription base of 20 friends to a website with over 500,000 visits in one month. Naomi believes that well-sourced quantity is quality in this narrow job market and INALJ reflects this with many new jobs published daily. She has also written for the 2011, 2012 and 2013 LexisNexis Government Info Pro and many other publications in the past decade. She presents whenever she can, including serving on three panels at the American Library Association's Annual Conference in Las Vegas; as breakout presenter at OCLC EMEA in Cape Town, South Africa; as a keynote speaker at the Virginia Library Association annual meeting; at the National Press Club in Washington DC; McGill University in Montreal, Canada; the University of the Emirates, Dubai, MLIS program and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Naomi was a Reference, Marketing and Acquisitions Librarian for a contractor at a federal library outside Washington, DC, and has been living and working in Budapest, Hungary and Western New York State. She spent years running her husband’s moving labor website, fixed and sold old houses and assisted her husband cooking delicious Pakistani food. She is preparing to re-enter the workforce and is job hunting. Her husband is now the co-editor of INALJ, a true support!  She has heard of spare time but hasn’t encountered it lately. She pronounces INALJ as eye-na-elle-jay. 

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