Internet Newsletter for Lawyers
January/February 2006, by Delia Venables

Considerations for Libraries of Law Firms in Ireland - Part 2

Note from Delia - the first part of this article related only to Irish legal resources and was not circulated in printed form to UK subscribers. It can however be downloaded from n0511irishreviewpart1.pdf or (with full web address) here.
Most of Part 2, however (below) applies to all legal libraries!

How Electronic Resources Affect a Legal Library
by Jane Clavin

Impact on the Library Space

With more and more material available electronically it is harder and harder to justify keeping hard copies on shelves. Most of the case law is now available electronically although there are still some gaps in the collection. The Irish Reports, Irish Law Times and the ILRM all have case law but there is no comprehensive site that collects all judgments, both reported and unreported. Until Firstlaw and BAILII came along there was no systematic attempt to capture all material be it reported or unreported. In practice this means that prior to 1997 unreported judgments are still only available in hard copy and from a library point of view these are still looked for. The Courts Service web site has only recently been developed. In an ideal world these judgments should still be stored in hard copy within the library although, when making a case with regard to library space, this point can be hard to get across.

Legislation however is a success story. Legislation from 1922 to today is available online so the printed material can be consigned to the archive.

This library here has just undertaken a review of its hardcopy resources and is placing over half of the collection in an archive. To continue to make resources available to fee earners, much of the archived material is now being purchased electronically. To reflect our change in emphasis from paper to electronic resources, the library is to be re-branded as a Knowledge Centre rather than a Library, a distinction that I think will be lost on most users!

For the future, one significant impact on the library space will be the likely reduction in traffic through the library. At the moment, people still use the library space a lot, though for many people this may be because it remains a quiet and congenial space to work. Librarians do not want their libraries to be banished to the basement and they are becoming quite creative in thinking what added value the library space can offer. One idea is to use the library space for training and seminars. Another is to incorporate a coffee area within the library and encourage users to “drop in” and read the papers.

Supervision of Library Users

There are concerns about research material being accessed by individuals from the their own desks (and desktop computers) without supervision and not in the slightly more controlled atmosphere of the library.

• How can Library staff be confident that fee earners search correctly? In this firm all fee earners get several hours training on the various databases but this tends to take place when they start with the firm. After that, training is through seminars and on an ad hoc basis. This means that large numbers of fee earners are doing important and frequently complicated research unsupervised. There are some risks in this.

• The Google Effect. If there is one major negative impact of Google it is the perception that everything is on it and that if it is not there, then it is not available electronically. Trying to get fee earners to grasp that key databases such as Firstlaw and LexisNexis are not searched via Google is difficult and it is also important to get across to users that even now, not everything is available electronically.

• Some users are convinced they have missed something or do not trust the technology at all and insist on reproducing research on hard copy resources.

• Other users may be over confident but inexperienced and think they have everything – these are almost a greater liability than the ones who research everything twice!

Training

Training is the key to getting lawyers used to the vagaries of several systems, and possibly more importantly, to the scope and range of individual systems. I don’t imagine that this law firm is the only one to experience the frustration of setting up training sessions only for work matters to become more important and the fee earner not to show up.

To ensure the correct use of these systems, and therefore ultimately to ensure that clients have access to the quickest and most accurate information available, the importance of training and attending training sessions needs to be at the heart of the firm's information policy. A culture needs to be developed that will encourage people to see the importance or this. This culture very seldom grows of its own accord and probably has to be imposed from the “top down”. The use of CPD points has gone a long way in encouraging attendance at seminars and this firm is discussing using training etc as part of the fee earners' yearly review.

Budget

The biggest impact of the ever growing dependence on electronic resources is on the library budget. While purchasing a book is a once off transaction, at least until the next edition, purchasing an electronic resource will involve yearly outgoings. Taking into account annual increases, your library budget can increase every year but still leave you little room for new purchases.

Another significant issue is user licences. If I purchase a book as a librarian the publisher knows full well that I am not going to be the only one reading it. However if I purchase that same book through some electronic medium the size of the firm suddenly becomes important and can add considerably to the cost. This applies particularly to journals. There is also the problem of taking out a subscription for a small department only to find that the price cannot reflect the 4 fee earners in that department but is reflective of the whole firm.

Use of Electronic Resources

Finally, is all this worth it? Do solicitors use electronic resources, and are they happy with them? I can only comment on my experiences within this firm, but, perhaps predictably, each new wave of apprentices brings with it a fresh enthusiasm and technological competence. This has lead to the development of a two tier technology skill set. The new apprentices are confident about using any technology (for competency see above) whilst the older users are more likely to ask Knowledge Centre staff to do searches for them.

Jane Clavin is Knowledge Services Manager in A&L Goodbody, Dublin, www.algoodbody.ie, one of Ireland's largest and most prestigious firms.

Email jclavin@algoodbody.ie

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