A few years ago, a staff member at the county public library called the law library where I was working. This was a small North Carolina county with a small library system, and she was calling from one of the branch libraries—the smallest branch, as I recall. This staff member had a patron with a legal question that she couldn’t answer and wanted to know if she could send him my way.
“Sure,” I said, and hung up, thinking I would probably never hear from the patron. When you work in a law library, referrals from public libraries are uncommon, for two main reasons. First, many people who learn they have to drive to another library to tell their story to another librarian simply decide to go home and look up the answer to their question online (not always a good decision, as you will see in this book). The other reason is that many public librarians are unfamiliar with the law libraries in their own area. So, I’ll admit that I was surprised by the call I am telling you about.
While I didn’t expect the patron to show up, he did, later that same day. He looked about 60, with cotton-white hair and a weathered face, and he walked with the proto-shuffle of a lifelong day laborer. The guy—I’ll call him Dan—did not appear to be a lawyer, doctor, professor, architect, stockbroker, artist, or any of the other educated classes. I figured that he probably just wanted to expunge a criminal record (a process spelled out in the North Carolina General Statutes) or locate documents from an old court case (something he would have to go to the courthouse for), and I steeled myself for a lengthy, incoherent encounter.
Dan surprised and shamed me by being well-spoken. He had inherited his father’s house, which sat close to the highway. The Department of Transportation was preparing an offer for this property for a right-of-way, and he was going to meet with them in a few days. Dan wanted to know what questions to ask, what the offer would be based on, and what, if anything, he could do if he didn’t like the offer. I heard him toss around words like judgment and easement. To a lawyer, these are terms of art. To the public, they can be as mysterious as Anatolian hieroglyphs.
When he finished his tale, I gave him my standard reply: “That’s a huge research project.” I say this about all but the simplest requests, not to deter patrons (though some need deterring, such as the ones who want to sue the President or Donald Trump or Satan1) but to prepare them. Most legal questions are complex, and truth is a mosaic of facts, not a spectrum. Dan looked at me, undeterred. “We have computers with internet access,” I suggested, thinking he would be happy if he could sit down and bang keywords into Google. Dan, however, was doubtful: “Don’t you have books, too?”
Well, yes, but it depended on what he wanted. He had said he was interested in cases. To most people, “cases” means copies of court documents: complaint, answer, judge’s order, etc. Sometimes, what they really want to know is the amount of money paid by the loser of the case. This is called the judgment. There are books, journals, and newsletters that publish certain judgments, but these tend to be headline cases, ones where the plaintiff got, say, $10 million for having the wrong leg amputated. The average litigant needs run-of-the-mill judgments, which you can get only by visiting the courthouse where a case was tried and asking for a case by docket number. I told Dan this, and he furrowed his brow. “When I lived in Florida,” he said, “I was able to look up cases in law books.”
He was talking about case reporters, which publish the rulings of cases on appeal (see Chapter 2). Now I was beginning to look like the ignorant one. “Those books contain court of appeals cases,” I explained in a professorial tone. “They rule on procedural issues. They don’t report on judgments or settlements.” This is technically true, though every appellate ruling begins with a review of the facts at trial. Sometimes, this review mentions the monetary judgment. “Judges use the previous cases as guidelines,” I went on, “but they aren’t bound by them. They can still do what they want.”
Again, technically true, though there are exceptions. But I was beyond managing Dan’s expectations. I was even beyond rendering genuine help. Before Dan had opened his mouth, I had taken him for a rube, someone I could wow with legal jargon and a scholarly air. He had turned out to be pretty smart. Worse, he hadn’t taken my hints to go away, which was bugging me. In response to my harangue on appellate cases, he used the word precedent, and it fit into his sentence like a diamond pick in a pin-tumbler lock. So this guy knew about precedent. What else did he know? And when would this encounter be over?
At that moment, I had a revelation. Instead of using my expertise as leverage to answer Dan’s questions, I had made it a buffer between the questions and me. I had been condescending, judgmental, and, worst of all, deaf. Dan had told me plenty about what he needed, and I had responded with what I had wanted to give him: nothing. I was a lousy librarian—so far. But there was still time for an about-face, and I decided to do one.
Turning to my computer, I did a Google search for right of way laws in nc. (He had used the term right of way—that much I had heard.) This led me to the Right of Way Division of the North Carolina Department of Transportation website. The division is responsible for buying up the lands and rights of way necessary for construction and improvement of all North Carolina roads—interstate, U.S. and state routes, and secondary roadways. The Negotiations Unit, a segment of the Right of Way Division, contacts property owners affected by proposed roadways to purchase rights of way, or sometimes the whole property, if it will be needed for materials storage or environmental mitigation for a nearby project. To do this, the unit researches property records, requests appraisals or condemnations, and prepares fee simple deeds and deeds of release. Most of all, and most crucial to Dan, it negotiates personally with individual property owners.
As I was skimming the page, Dan, who couldn’t see my screen, mused, “You know, I think the people who are coming are actually from the”—pause, think, got it!—“Right of Way Division.” Okay, Dan, okay. I had had my change of heart. Would his next trick be an eminent domain argument before the Supreme Court? Getting up from my chair, I walked to the North Carolina General Statutes. Dan followed. I looked up right of way in the index but didn’t see anything useful. Then I tried the two-volume Webster’s Real Estate Law in North Carolina, again looking up right of way in the index. Still nothing. Then I had another revelation. Dan had used the word easement when he first narrated his story. Flipping to easement in the index, I saw multiple subheadings, all from Chapter 15. Bingo.
Wanting to give Dan a second source, I turned to Strong’s North Carolina Index, which, despite its name, is not an index. It is instead an encyclopedia of North Carolina law. Topics are arranged alphabetically as in Grolier’s, World Book, or any encyclopedia. I showed Dan the article on easements, which, in conjunction with the Webster’s information, made him grateful, so grateful. This is what I should have done all along.
How was I able to help Dan find the information he wanted? How did I recognize the term easement, know about Webster’s and Strong’s, and give my misguided (but still accurate) explanations of judgments and appeals cases? My answers came from my 10 years’ experience in various law libraries, of course. But, what about an inexperienced person? What about a circulation desk staffer, or library school intern, or brand-new graduate? What about a long-serving public librarian who has never, for one reason or another, had much chance to deliver legal reference? In law firms or corporate legal departments, library staff may have no relevant training. At one firm, my predecessor had been a reassigned paralegal. Before her, it was a retired schoolteacher. What would these folks have done to steer Dan in the right direction?
I was in that very position in January 2001, a month after finishing my MLIS at the University of South Carolina. Throughout my final semester, I had applied for library jobs all over the country. The response? Silence. December graduation came and went, and with a family to support, I brought my job search home, applying for anything, even restaurant management, which I had done years before. One of the jobs I applied for was a litigation assistant position with a 100-plus attorney law firm with several South Carolina offices, including downtown Columbia, where I lived. I knew nothing about the law or law firms, but the newspaper description had mentioned research, which I knew I could do. I landed an interview with the firm’s human resources manager—an interview, but not the job.
A week or so later, someone else from the firm called me. She said she was the firm’s librarian—I didn’t even know law firms had libraries—and that she knew I had recently interviewed for the litigation assistant job. Would I like to interview again, this time for a library clerk position that had just become available? Why, yes, I would.
The next day, I pulled my black suit pants out of the laundry, drove downtown a second time, sat in a leather office chair that cost triple my monthly car payment, interviewed, and got the job. Just like that, I was working in a law library. And I still knew nothing about the law. Working with legal materials every day, of course, I got the hang of them after a while. That is, I could look up a case or statute, or find a specific section of a book, or do simple database searches. In-depth research, of course, took me a lot longer to master.
In her foreword to Law Librarianship in the Twenty-First Century, Vicki Gregory notes that law librarianship is an important field, with its own vocabulary and an unparalleled print heritage. It is also unique in that it has a dual goal: serving legal specialists (lawyers, paralegals, judges) as well as the public. “We are all,” Gregory says, “affected by and bound by the law.” Certain cities have dedicated public law libraries, though these are being shuttered all across the U.S. (see Chapter 10). In the rest of the country, the public, as well as solo or small-firm attorneys, has to rely on public libraries.2 Because they aren’t immersed in legal practice as I had to be, most public librarians never develop any real expertise. Collection managers don’t understand the intricacies of legal publishing, which limits their ability to develop good legal collections. Law books are dense and confounding, and reference librarians lack the skills to help people navigate them. Besides, public libraries are scared to death of the unauthorized practice of law—an unfounded fear, as I explain in Chapter 3. Academic law librarians (i.e., those who work in law schools) often have law degrees as well as library degrees. Law firm librarians occasionally have both (my boss at that first law firm didn’t; my boss at a later firm did). Public librarians, in many cases, have not had even one class in law librarianship.
Historically, library schools have ignored the discipline of law. Law librarians were just retired or nonpracticing lawyers, or they were secretaries or apprentices. Any legal expertise possessed by librarians was picked up in the field (like me) or by going to law school. When law libraries were confined to academe, this was OK. But the law is everywhere now, and more people than ever need help researching it. There aren’t enough dual-degreed librarians to go around. Law librarianship, once a detour in the study of law, is now a destination. Yet courses in law librarianship or legal reference are not even offered in some MLIS programs and are scarcely supported in others. My alma mater had such a course, but it was not offered once the whole time I was there. Later, I taught a semester of legal reference at another school. The class was small but fun, and the students seemed to enjoy it. When I offered to teach a second semester, however, the dean failed to return my calls. Repeatedly.
Self-study doesn’t provide many more options. Textbooks on legal research and writing are legion, and I discuss a few in Chapter 9. Research techniques, however, are only one tool in the law librarian’s workshop. Collection management, business development, electronic licenses, legal history, database searching—these and other skills are scattered among law librarian blogs, journals, and other literature. Deborah Panella and Ellis Mount’s Basics of Law Librarianship was the last introductory book, and it was published in 1991. Others since then have focused on a single aspect or type of law library (see Chapter 9 for a discussion of some of these).
The Accidental Law Librarian is the first comprehensive, non-scholarly book on law libraries in 20-plus years. It is not focused on academic law librarians, who, as I have noted, often have formal training in the law. Rather, like other books in Information Today, Inc.’s Accidental Librarian series, it is a resource for people thrust into the law librarian role. From legal research basics to the needs of legal information seekers, from database licensing to database use, from the history of legal publishing to the future of law libraries, The Accidental Law Librarian is the book to help public librarians build better collections and deliver accurate, worry-free service. It is the book that law firm administrators and library trustees need to read as they consider the fate of the law libraries entrusted to them. It is the book I wish I had had on my first day at that first law firm, and it is the book to help you when Dan the Day Laborer, or someone like him, shows up at your desk with all the weight of the world on his—and your—shoulders.
1. The Prince of Darkness has, in fact, been a defendant in federal court. See United States ex. rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff, 54 F.R.D. 282 (W.D. Pa. 1971).
2. In this book, I use the terms public libraries and public librarians in reference to all libraries open to the public, no matter how they are organized and funded.