Accreditation and Review Processes in Academic Law Libraries

Nigerian law libraries, despite the intervention of Council of Legal education, are still not endowed with every resource needed to satisfy information needs of diverse users. This is coupled with the fact that Nigerian universities are still struggling to manage insufficient funds normally received from government. Resource sharing as a means through which organisations interchange and share their meagre resources for the good of many is supposed to be a way out for Nigerian law libraries who would have to prepare their students and members of legal profession for their law program, mock and moot trials, clinical legal education or other practical education. However, it has not been documented that there is an organised resource sharing practise carried out in Nigeria among law libraries. The study investigated the practicality of resource sharing among academic law libraries bearing in mind the immense benefit it provides to education and learning. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The population consisted of 19 law librarians from Universities that attended 2017 law librarians’ conference in Nigerian Law School Abuja. Questionnaire was used to collect data. Due to the small population of law librarians, all the population was used for the survey; only 14 questionnaires were returned.  Mean and standard deviation were used with a likert point scale to determine positive (2.50 and above) and negative (2.49 and below). Research questions were analysed using frequency count, percentage, mean and standard deviation. The results revealed that there was no formal practice of resource sharing among the participating law libraries. Law librarians informally share their knowledge on personal basis with their colleagues. Law libraries are supported financially by University Libraries and other organisations; and law librarians that participated understand resource sharing despite the fact that it is not practised by their libraries. There is also no written policy on resource sharing among the libraries that participated in the survey. The study concluded that there is no application of resource sharing among academic law libraries in Nigeria. The study recommended that Council of Legal Education as the overseeing body in legal education should initiate resource sharing practice among academic law libraries as this would provide ease of access to vast academic resource and ensure constant skills development among law librarians in Nigeria.   Key words: Resource sharing, law libraries, collaboration, communities of practice, legal education.

Questions about the importance and viability of legal research and writing as a part of the law school curriculum are not novel. Confronting these questions head-on, however, is a responsibility that should be handled by law librarians. This article addresses the issue of teaching legal research in an academic law library setting. The reasons why the author has pursued an aggressive approach when dealing with legal research instruction are explored. The methods employed to carry out that legal research instruction mandate are examined. creased as legal research and writing are more and more frequently combined and taught by writing faculty.1 At the same time, the research skills of law students are on a downward spiral. Howland and Lewis document this plunge in an informative survey.2 Law librarian Donald Dunn substantiates this decline and attributes it, in part, to “the increased emphasis in law schools on legal writing,”3 in consequence of which, while “legal writing entered the expressway; legal research took the off-ramp.”4 Further, law librarians and legal research have even been pummeled by one of America's most popular authors.5 In this environment, it may seem unwise to continue to advance the argument that academic law librarians should teach legal research. Notwithstanding the obstacles that face such instruction, law librarians have an obligation to press forward in this important work.6 Legal writing instructors have not demonstrated that they have the expertise to provide this instruc-tion.7 Likewise, law faculty have demonstrated that they do not have the interest in tackling the task.8 Say two authorities on the subject: “Regular faculty members generally do not teach a research course, and when they do decide to teach one, the results are invariably disastrous. Most law faculty members cannot teach legal research because they do not understand it themselves. If compelled to teach the course, they rebel.”9 Perhaps it is time for law schools to cede the stewardship for legal research instruction to those information professionals who have been trained and are qualified to teach legal research instruction -law librarians.10 And it is time for any reticent law librarians to accept the obligation to take a more proactive approach toward teaching legal research.11

Academic law libraries face a challenging future. The cost of legal information sources continues to rise while law library budgets continue to shrink. As budgets tighten the tension between collecting print and electronic sources has come to a juncture where law libraries might need to choose one over the other. Academic law libraries are not necessarily free to make a wholesale switch from print to online. Standard 606 of the ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools must be considered before an academic law library can truly pitch the majority of its print resources. This article examines the evolution of Standard 606 and its impact on academic law libraries. There is great hope that Standard 606 has evolved to a point where academic law libraries might be free to make the hard collection choices that will help them thrive in the twenty-first century.

Chat reference has been a popular form of synchronous virtual reference used by academic libraries. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many academic law libraries have also adopted this tool to provide reference services remotely. This article examines the current usage of chat reference among academic law libraries through a survey of law library websites of all ABA-Accredited law schools. The author discusses the advantages of using chat reference, the staffing issue, and possible solutions to that. The author suggests the usage of chatbot to extend reference hours and create a more interactive and welcoming atmosphere to library website users.

Legal research is generally regarded as an essential skill for attorneys. Despite this fact,research skills of new attorneys continue to be regarded as poor by law librarians. As law schools attempt to address this deficiency, particularly by adding advanced legal research courses, academic law librarians are increasingly involved in legal research instruction. Given this, it is important to ascertain whether academic law librarians and law librarians in legal offices agree as to the most important skills and materials for new lawyers to be familiar with. This paper reports and analyzes the results of a survey conducted among academic and practitioner law librarians in the Southeastern United States and Washington, DC area regarding legal research skills and materials.

This article examines tenure requirements currently in use in academic law libraries in the United States. It is one of two articles examining the effect of tenure opportunities on rank-and-file academic law librarians, their law libraries, and the profession of law librarianship. Its intended audience is library directors and other leaders within the profession of academic law librarianship. article reports data gathered in an August 2009 survey of law libraries that currently provide tenure or continuous appointment opportunities for academic law librarians. To provide context, this article revisits faculty status and how it can naturally lead to law librarians having opportunities to attain tenured status. article also considers the ideal of tenured status - what benefits are gained by the tenure system and what is meant by the concept of academic freedom which underpins justification of tenure generally. It identifies various tenure tracks for librarians and the standards for performance under which law librarians are currently reviewed, promoted to progressively higher rank, and awarded tenure. Finally, it recommends that library directors and other leaders within the profession make a concerted effort to encourage law libraries to employ more uniform and consistently rigorous standards for assessing law librarian performance for tenure or continuous appointment, and to develop more robust programs for encouraging librarian scholarship. Failing to do so can only weaken arguments that law librarians should continue to hold faculty status, and be able to attain tenured status, well into the future. An earlier draft of this article entitled, The Need for More Uniform and Consistently Rigorous Standards for Assessing Law Librarian Performance in Tenure and Continuous Appointment Policies, received the American Association of Law Libraries' LexisNexis® Call for Papers, Open Division award for 2010. A companion piece, “Challenges Associated with Providing Tenure and Continuous Appointment Opportunities for Academic Law Librarians,” may be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1490113.

(2019) 27(2) Australian Law Librarian 61The academic law library has long been designated the ‘heart’ of the law school. This concept, introduced by Christopher C. Langdell, Harvard Law School’s first dean, is evidenced by the central role that the Library has played in the provision of legal education, traditionally because of the nature of law itself, as information. A recent history of the Monash University Law School acknowledges that ‘a law library is an essential ingredient of a law school’ and notes that David Derham, in planning the building, designed it around the law library as the ‘working heart of the law school’. For over 50 years, the Monash Law Library has provided comprehensive collections of primary and secondary sources, essential to scholars and legal practitioners in training. Developments in technology and in the priorities of the University and the legal industry have resulted in changes to the way we develop and manage our collections, including the reduced size of the physical collection. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the Library remains the ‘heart’ of the Law School. (Introduction)

This article concerns the history and continued importance of course reserve systems in academic law libraries. By examining the development of law library reserve systems and the current obstacles to their operation, this article argues that academic law librarians must prioritize reserves as a core part of their instructional support mission. Part I provides context for modern reserve systems by sketching their evolution within U.S. legal education, from the apprenticeship model of the early republic to the late 19th-century reforms (like the case method and casebook) that gave law libraries an expanded mission. Part II explores the cost, copyright, and pedagogical challenges that make designing modern reserve systems increasingly difficult and yet vital for equitable student support. Part III concludes with two modest proposals for best practices that could positively impact course reserve systems going forward.

1 - What is law librarianship?

Academic law library staff work in task specific teams to accomplish law library initiatives and further the library’s mission. Targeted team interventions serve to improve team cognition, behavior, and attitudes by developing the core teamwork competencies and mediating mechanisms. Academic law library work in task determined teams. The author argues that law library team leaders should implement targeted team development interventions to enhance team effectiveness and performance, and law libraries should incorporate team interventions into routine librarianship.

6 - IT practices in academic law libraries

Academic law libraries are generally considered a welcoming environment for law students, faculty, scholars, or attorneys engaging in legal research or study. However, the inverse is true when it comes to patrons who wish to or need to use the law library alongside their children. While law schools across the nation are implementing innovative strategies to promote diversity and inclusivity, in part, by incorporating the needs of parents attending these institutions, law libraries have yet to emulate or initiate independently many of these same family-centric approaches to increase inclusivity for law students and improved access to justice for other patrons within the library environment. A financially feasible way for academic law libraries to meet these objectives involves the creation of family-friendly spaces that are specifically designed to provide appropriate areas for patrons to research with their accompanying children.

Academic law libraries are obligated to protect library patron privacy in accordance with professional standards, such as the AALL Ethical Principles, as well as all applicable laws. Because controlled digital lending enables patrons geographically distant from the law library to access library resources, the privacy laws of many jurisdictions can apply. Two laws requiring special consideration are FERPA and the GDPR, and noncompliance with them carries both financial and reputational risk for a law school. Academic law libraries that implement controlled digital lending can mitigate associated privacy risks by incorporating privacy compliance into the design phase of the initiative. The design team should include members with both legal and technical privacy expertise to ensure the program complies with all applicable state, federal, and foreign privacy laws and is designed with privacy in mind, employing data minimization and process automation to reduce operational privacy risk.

At the 2013 CALI Conference on Law School Computing, Professor James Milles, professor and former library director of the SUNY Buffalo Law School, presented his draft paper positing that academic law libraries are doomed. The author presented his contrasting viewpoints in the same session. This paper is based on his presentation and has been updated to account for adoption of the revised law school accreditation standards approved by the ABA Council on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar in 2014. While the author agrees with the underlying observations set out by Professor Milles, he envisions a scenario where law libraries, and more importantly librarians, remain an essential part of law school life.

The vision of the administration under Goodluck Jonathan is packaged in Transformation Agenda which is aimed at holistic overhaul of every segment of national life. Members of the legal profession have a critical role to play towards the success of the transformation agenda. However, a lawyer can only be as good as the system of legal education that produced him; hence the need to revive and reposition the legal education framework. The paper discussed the responsibility of academic law libraries in the shaping of legal practitioners and towards the academic community. It x-rayed the challenges facing these libraries and made recommendations for improved law library services in Nigeria.