This research investigated the anti-racist research guides of several law schools to determine whether they included pedagogical, faculty training and mental health resources for their law school populations. These issues are important to law schools that are altering their curriculum due to recent ABA-mandated changes. The findings suggest that many schools are providing material for pedagogical resources but not including mental health resources that may be helpful to law faculty, administrators, staff, and students who may need support through these changes. There is also an opportunity to improve the selection of training resources provided.

Law librarianship is a constantly evolving profession driven by the evolution of law practice, legal education, government, and law itself. Changes in these drivers are in turn influenced by factors such as technology, culture, client needs, American Bar Association Standards, bar exams, diversity and access efforts, faculty research, instructional trends, and law school rankings. Law librarians proudly keep up with these changes—and even stay ahead of them—as we impart new knowledge and skills to users of law libraries and legal information resources. As we proceed through the third decade of the twenty-first century, the legal information profession is engaged in dialogue about the perpetually shrinking pools of qualified candidates for law librarian positions. Additionally, law librarians have been lamenting for decades that the legal information profession does not accurately reflect the diversity in our communities. The literature reflects that those conversations began in earnest in the 1970s and continue today. This article addresses both compelling issues and offers concrete strategies to tackle them simultaneously, thoughtfully, and intentionally. The entire profession is invited to play a role in this effort.

Terminology matters. Law librarians use a variety of terms to describe those who use the library—from user to member, customer to patron, and others. This article examines the terms that are used and what that terminology implies about the relationship between librarian and library user. By considering the attitudes, behaviors, and connotations behind the terminology librarians use, librarians, specifically law librarians, can impact library users’ sense of inclusion and belonging.

International law suffers from a lack of diversity. The scholars who are cited by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) write the most widely used textbooks, and those who are recruited by elite organizations are predominantly Western-educated White males. International law discourse sidelines Third World perspectives. In response, Third World approaches to international law (TWAIL) scholarship centers colonialism and the Global North’s entrenchment of economic and political dominance as the raisons d’être for modern rules of international law. Legal research instructors can address the lack of diversity in international law by incorporating TWAIL scholarship and applying critical approaches to international legal research.

This article describes how academic law librarians looking to make a positive impact for racial diversity, equity, and inclusivity could explore ways to support diversification efforts of law reviews and journals. At many law schools, law reviews and journals struggle to be fully inclusive. Lack of diversity on journals contributes to inequity within the legal profession as many of the most prestigious law jobs look for journal participation as a prerequisite. Academic law librarians are well-placed to help journal student-editors implement best practices such as using evidence-based rubrics, undergoing unconscious-bias training, and actively recruiting diverse students.

Fat people are judged based on their appearance and face prejudice and discrimination in every aspect of professional life. While the library profession tends to be more welcoming than the legal profession, it still has its problems. Using autoethnographic methods, this article will explore what it means to be fat in the law library world and propose some initial thoughts on practices that individuals, libraries, and professional organizations can adopt to better welcome and support fat people in law librarianship.

Law librarians are leaders and changemakers, even if our contributions are sometimes quieter and less visible than those of other law-school faculty and administrators. We are also experts in presenting information in an easy-to-understand way. Making information accessible is so fundamental to our profession that “save the time of the reader” is one of Ranganathan’s laws. This article is about how one group of (mostly) law librarians created a practical resource for law professors on how to re-think the standard US first-year law school curriculum to be more inclusive of elements of diversity, social justice, inclusion, and equity. Drawing on the experiences of the editors, this article will show how law librarians can be, and are, important partners within the law school community for DEI work.

One segment of our diverse law school population are students who are the first in their family to attend college, and by extension, law school. What can we as librarians do to advance a more inclusive classroom experience for our first-generation students? Washburn University, as part of a Title III Strengthening Institutions Grant, provides a summer program for faculty to enhance inclusive pedagogy and curriculum related to firstgeneration students. The author was a part of the program in 2022, and this paper will address the redesign of a legal research course based on the training from the program. The discussion will include an overview of the University provided training for the redesign, the concepts utilized in the class reboot geared toward fostering inclusion for first-generation students, and an extensive analysis of the final product.

Academic institutions have been encouraging the adoption of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) themes in classrooms over the last decade, but these initiatives can often be limited to buzzwords in goal statements or ideals. This article focuses on the practical application of DEIA within the curriculum of one legal-research course. Facilitated primarily through the use of journal articles, we covered topics such as algorithmic and data bias, discriminatory treaty practices in Africa, the decolonization of comparative law, and enduring prejudices in subject headings, among others. This article outlines the planning process, reviews classroom activities and discussions, shares lessons learned, and annotates discussion materials used.

On the Books: Jim Crow and Algorithms of Existence is a text-mining project undertaken by University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill libraries to identify racially based laws passed in the state between 1865 and 1967. In the fall 2022, I used the On the Books project to teach a module in my Advanced Legal Research class on critical legal research and artificial intelligence and legal analytics. This article examines the benefits of those modules for teaching critical thinking about legal research structures and legacies of racism in the American legal system.