Editor’s Note: The latest version of this article is here – https://www.llrx.com/2021/08/2021-update-to-choosing-law-librarianship-thoughts-for-people-contemplating-a-career-move/

I was fortunate to have some good advice when I was thinking about my move to law librarianship. By now, well into my career, I have many observations and opinions of my own to share with readers who are now thinking about that move.

This article began as an email response to a library paraprofessional who wondered whether it would be worthwhile to go to library school. She framed the question in monetary terms: could she double her salary in a few years if she got an MLS? Salary should certainly be a consideration for anyone pondering a career move, so I’ll talk about it below. I’ll also discuss many more factors, from how you feel about your daily work to how you are regarded in your community.

Law librarianship is a field people often come to after doing something else. I know many law librarians who went to law school and practiced law for a while before — as one colleague puts it — finding their higher calling and moving to law librarianship. Some law librarians began as library paraprofessionals then made the transition to librarianship. Some law librarians started their careers in other types of libraries — from school libraries to special libraries — and happened to land in a law library. Some law librarians were teachers, businesspeople, bus drivers, musicians, homemakers, or nearly anything else at some point. This diversity of experience enriches the profession. It also means that your reactions to the profession may vary because of the job from which you are moving.

What About the Money?

According to the American Association of Law Libraries’ Biennial Salary Survey,¹ the median salary for a law librarian in a one-person law-firm library in 2007 was $65,000 (p. S-32). The median salary for a reference/research librarian in an academic law library was $54,000 (p. S-21). The median for a director/chief librarian of a law school library was $139,000 (p. S-4).

There is considerable variation within each category. For instance, looking at reference/research librarians in law schools, someone in the 10th percentile in the West North Central region (IA, KS, MN, MO, NE, ND, SD) made $38,501 and someone in the 90th percentile in New York City made $94,677 (p. S-21).

More than Paraprofessionals …

In general, librarians are paid more than library paraprofessionals. According to the AALL Biennial Salary Survey, the median for a library clerk in a law firm was $32,900 (p. S-56) and for a library assistant/library technician was $41,100 (p. S-53). Library assistants in the 90th percentile made more than some librarians, but generally librarians are paid more than assistants.

To see the Biennial Salary Survey and study all its detail — with tables breaking down salaries by region, type of library, years of experience, and gender — check to see if your local law library acquired a copy. It is also available in the members-only section of AALLNet. Skimming the current job listings on AALLNet can also give you an idea of the job market.

Less than Lawyers …

Law librarians make less than many lawyers but more than some others, for example:

• A law school graduate who clerks for a federal judge for a year typically makes $40,714 (JSP-11).² (When I wrote the first version of this article in 1999, law clerks made more than the median for librarians in one-person libraries or reader services positions. In 10 years, librarians gained ground!)
• The median salary for 2006 law graduates was $62,000. That figure might be misleading, because most graduates were clustered either lower (between $40,000 and $50,000) or much higher (between $135,000 and $150,000). ³

Salary Envy

Your comparison group affects how you feel about salary. If you are a lawyer and compare yourself with law school classmates at big firms, then a salary of $50,000 might make you feel impoverished. On the other hand, if you compare yourself with legal services lawyers, schoolteachers, or social workers, that same $50,000 can look pretty good. Consider that in 2006, the median income for American households was $48,201.⁴.

Law librarians will generally make less money than others in their organizations. In a law firm, the highest paid people will be the attorneys; in a law school, the deans and professors; in a court, the judges. If it will bother you to go to work each day and see people who make a lot more money than you do, then consider another field.

Will You Like the Work? Will You Be Good at It?

Now that we have faced the salary issue, we reach the more interesting questions: Do you want to do what law librarians do? Will you be able to learn to do it well?

Even people who have spent considerable time in law libraries often do not have a good idea of what law librarians do. For instance, law students and lawyers see reference librarians at the reference desk, but have no idea of what they do away from the desk — let alone what catalog librarians, acquisitions librarians, and others do. A library paraprofessional might have a good idea of what the librarians she works with most closely do, but not know about other librarians in the institution or in other types of libraries.

Law librarianship is characterized by variety. There are different types of law libraries (serving law firms, government agencies, law schools, courts, corporate law departments). There are different sizes of law libraries — from a one-person library serving a law firm with thirty attorneys to the Law Library of Congress. And there are different law librarian positions (from catalog librarian to library director, from computer services librarian to rare books librarian).

Within this wealth of diversity, I offer the following generalizations about law librarians’ jobs:

Service

Librarianship is fundamentally a service profession. The staff members of a law library serve the larger organization — law school, court, agency, or law firm. If you like customer service and you enjoy coming up with ways to serve your organization better, you could have a long, happy life in the profession. On the other hand, if you do not like the idea of setting your project aside because Professor Procrastinator or Larry the Last Minute Litigator has a deadline, then you might find some parts of law librarianship vexing.

Juggling

Most law librarians I know juggle many different duties and projects.⁵ In a given week, a reference librarian might work at the reference desk, do research for a partner or professor, serve on a committee, edit a newsletter, conduct a training session, and clear a printer jam. Meanwhile a technical services librarian might catalog some books, supervise the paraprofessional who is checking in serials, negotiate a contract with a bibliographic utility, serve on a university committee, and write a policy manual.

Organizing, Organizing, Organizing

An essential feature of library work is that it involves organizing. Librarians organize materials (cataloging and classifying). They organize information (creating bibliographies, setting up brief banks, structuring an intranet site). They organize people and projects. Librarians also tend to think institutionally about policies and procedures — for example, setting up a system for assigning study carrels that will be fair to all the law students in a school or setting up a check out system for a firm library that is likely to be used by all the attorneys in a firm.

Role in Decision-Making

Most librarians are involved in setting library policy and making decisions about personnel and resources. Some people think it is rewarding to be involved in the decision-making. Others think it is awful to have to figure out how to balance a budget or decide when to discipline an employee who is not performing well. The good news is having a say, but it’s not good news for you if you don’t want to do the work of sitting in meetings, writing and reviewing proposals, and hammering out compromises.

Communicating

Like most professional work, law librarianship requires good communication — in many settings, using many media. Are you interested in leading a class or training session? Could you explain the pros and cons of subscribing to a new database to colleagues in a selection committee meeting? Would you like to write research guides or create websites? If you had to summarize research results in a memo to a law professor or a judge, would you convey professionalism and intelligence?

Professional Involvement

Librarians often belong to regional and national associations where they can be involved by serving on committees, holding office, speaking, and so on. Some professional involvement includes public service projects (for example, educating the public about law and legal research, even if you aren’t in a library that’s open to the public). At many institutions, librarians get support for this involvement (e.g., having leave time and a travel budget to attend a conference). Librarians also often write for publication. In some academic settings, librarians must publish in order to receive tenure or promotion.

Self-Education

Law librarianship and legal research are always changing, so it is important for professionals to devote substantial efforts to continuing self-education. This includes reading professional publications, monitoring discussion lists, and attending training sessions.

Job Market

Law librarianship has a national job market. As a librarian you could apply for — and might even be recruited for — jobs in other parts of the country. The good news is that you can go many places in the field. The bad news is that — depending on your city — you might need to move in order to get the sort of position you want. For example, if you want to work in an academic law library and the one law school in your city does not have any openings now, you will need to apply elsewhere. Law librarianship also has local job markets. For instance, many (perhaps most) law firm jobs are advertised and filled locally.

Status and Stereotypes

Law librarians are generally valued contributors within the organizations they serve. However, just as they do not get the biggest salaries, they do not have other markings of status: the corner office, the best parking space, and so on. Those will go to the partners, deans, and judges.

Some organizations have some ignorant, rude individuals in positions of authority who do not treat librarians (or any support staff) with the respect they deserve. They are an occupational hazard.

Changing professions can mean swapping stereotypes. Some lawyers who become librarians miss the positive stereotypes of lawyers (smart, powerful, important) and regret the negative stereotypes of librarians (dull, mousy, prim). On the other hand, it can be refreshing to lose the negative stereotypes of lawyers (greedy, argumentative, unscrupulous, arrogant) in favor of the positive stereotypes of librarians (smart, knowledgeable, helpful, committed, energetic).

Through our own conduct, we all help to shape the stereotype. The people who come to our libraries and see us in action know that librarians are accomplished, highly-trained professionals.

Find Out More About What Law Librarians Do

One way to get a sense of what law librarians do is to talk to us. We are a chatty lot and many of us are happy to talk to people who are considering the profession. Talk to the librarians at the law library you use or contact your local chapter of AALL.

AALL’s Recruitment Committee website links to many articles describing law librarians’ work here.

If you’re thinking seriously about the field, see about working part-time or volunteering in a law library to get a closer look.

What About Library School?

Some people work as law librarians without formal training in librarianship. For instance, a paralegal in a small firm might have responsibility for filing the looseleafs and pocket parts; as the firm grows, the responsibilities grow to include reference, budgeting, and other duties and the paralegal is called the firm librarian. Some law libraries hire lawyers with good research skills to work as reference librarians; on the job, they pick up knowledge about other library operations.

So a library degree is not necessary to work as a law librarian. However, it certainly opens more doors. Many job ads call for a master’s degree from an ALA-accredited library school. (Library schools are now often called Information Schools or some variant, because they train people to work in many settings besides libraries.The typical degree is still a Master’s in Library and Information Science.) Even if the degree is not strictly required, it will give you a competitive edge over applicants who lack it.

More importantly, library education can give you skills and knowledge that will make you a better librarian. While it is possible to pick up a lot through on-the-job training, self-education, and independent reading, a good graduate program will expose you to more in a shorter time. With the structure that school provides — you have to show up in class, do the reading, write papers, and produce projects — you will learn a great variety of things, from the basics of cataloging to issues of intellectual freedom, from setting up a web page to managing a department. If you aren’t already a techie, library school will help you get up to speed on databases, blogs, wikis, and other tools that are common in libraries nowadays.

Going to library school does require a commitment of finances and time. AALL offers several different types of scholarships. Scholarships are also available from other sources — check out SLA, –ALA, your state library association, and your library school.

What About Law School?

A common misconception is that all law librarians have law degrees. In fact, less than a third of AALL members do.⁶

Many academic law libraries require law degrees for reference librarians and many middle management positions. Since academic law library directors are usually members of the law school faculty, almost all of them have law degrees. A law degree is less important for other positions in academic law libraries — for example, in cataloging, acquisitions, circulation, government documents, and computer services — although some people in those positions do have law degrees.

Law firm library jobs seldom require a JD, but some law firm librarians do have law degrees. Court librarians may or may not have law degrees; several of the court library directors I know do have JDs.

A background in law can be helpful in reference and in working with the library’s parent institution. However, not everyone who has a JD is a good librarian and there are some terrific law librarians who have not been to law school (I work with some). A JD/MLS combination does increase your job options, but it is not the only way to go.⁷

Won’t Technology Make the Profession Obsolete?

I have heard of someone advising a bright young student not to go into librarianship because the field would be dead in 10 years because of technological changes. I disagree.

It’s true that more legal information is available online each day and that researchers are less dependent on a librarian handing them books. But I have observed that the proliferation of online resources makes librarians more important to their institutions, not less:

• We are engaged in training and teaching more than before. Think of the lawyers in 1960 who learned how to use a digest, an annotated code, a legal encyclopedia, and Shepard’s. Those skills would carry them through most research tasks for the next twenty years. Today a legal researcher needs to navigate a wide range of resources — LexisNexis, Westlaw, specialized online services, and (still) print — and the resources change all the time. Librarians are helping researchers evaluate, learn, and use all the tools that are now available..⁸
• Electronic resources don’t manage themselves: someone has to negotiate the licenses, monitor the billing, and make the resources available to the users — not to mention the critical role of deciding which products to subscribe to in the first place! Librarians do all that.
• When there are millions of documents available, librarians can help researchers find those that are most relevant for a given problem. Busy lawyers don’t want millions of documents: they want the ones they need.
• Librarians help their organizations stay on top of new developments by sorting through the flood of information and directing it to the people who can use it. Years ago this took the form of flipping through the Federal Register in print; now it might include setting up electronic clipping services, following blogs, and creating tailored RSS feeds.

There are more large law firms and more law schools than there were twenty years ago. Even if a new law school decides not to have many books, it still needs skilled librarians. Law firms are devoting less floor space to their libraries (they’re getting rid of long runs of regional reporters and other old standbys), but they still have librarians.

I think demographics are also on the side of new people entering the profession. We’re going to see a lot of Baby Boom librarians retiring in the next ten or fifteen years, and their libraries will need bright, capable successors to fill their shoes. (The American Association of Law Libraries has a special committee, set up for 2007-2009, on Developing Law Librarians for the Future.)

Of course I could be wrong. Predicting the future accurately is really tough. (Ask meteorologists, stock analysts, or people who bet on sporting events.) But I don’t think the profession will become obsolete so quickly that you couldn’t make your living at it for some time. And what you’d develop as a law librarian — organizational skills, knowledge of research tools and techniques, writing and speaking ability, computer skills, teamwork, flexibility, resourcefulness — would stand you in good stead in whatever career you moved to next.

Conclusion

There are opportunities for law librarians in all parts of the country, in many types of law libraries, and in different library specialties. It’s possible to make a comfortable living and have a rewarding and challenging career. If you think law librarianship might be for you, welcome!

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Footnotes

1. American Association of Law Libraries, The AALL Biennial Salary Survey & Organizational Characteristics (2007), available at http://www.aallnet.org/members/pub_salary07.asp (online version is available only to AALL members). <back to text>

2. Administrative Office of the United States Courts, Law Clerk Employment Information (visited Feb. 25, 2008). <back to text>

3. National Association for Law Placement, A Picture Worth 1,000 Words (2007) (chart from National Association for Law Placement, Jobs & J.D.’s: Employment and Salaries of New Law Graduates — Class of 2006 (2007)). <back to text>

4. Carmen DeNavas-Walt et al., U.S. Dep’t Commerce, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006, at 6 (2007). <back to text>

5. See Mary A. Hotchkiss, Managing Multiple Projects, or the Art of Juggling, AALL Spectrum, Sept. 1998, at 12-13. <back to text>

6. In 2007, 27.2% of AALL Salary Survey respondents had both an M.L.S. and a J.D., and 5.4% had a J.D. without an M.L.S. AALL Biennial Salary Survey at 10. <back to text>

7. For more on this topic, see George Butterfield, Commentary: Is a J.D. Necessary for Law Librarians?, LLRX (June 25, 2007). For more of my own musings on this topic, see Law Librarian, J.D. or Not J.D.?, 100 Law Libr. J. 185 (2008). <back to text>

8. I argued that “perfect” catalogs wouldn’t eliminate the need for librarians in The Trouble with Utopia, 93 Law Libr. J. 203 (2001), and I still find myself convincing. But that’s just me. <back to text>