Should Law Librarians Have a Law Degree?

Let’s start with a story.

From 2006 to 2009, I worked as the public services librarian at a law school. An instructor there who taught legal research and writing wanted me to help her create a new assignment. Claudia (not her real name) planned to give all the students the same set of facts and split them into plaintiffs and defendants. Each student would write an appellate brief for their side and later argue the case before a panel of “judges” consisting of law school faculty.

The “facts” involved a student who had won a college scholarship and later had that scholarship revoked due to something the student allegedly did. Not getting the scholarship might mean not going to college, which could mean not becoming a doctor, lawyer, or other high-wage earner. In that instance, the school might have unfairly deprived a student of the chance to start a career.

The legal term for this is interference, which can be negligent (accidental) or tortious (intentional). The question for the students, then, was whether the school committed tortious interference with a business relationship by denying a student a scholarship. My job was to find actual North Carolina cases of this type that Claudia could give to the students, who would rely on them to write their briefs.

One problem: I have a degree in library science but not a law degree. Would that limit me in my research?

Take action today to support libraries!

Authorities are divided on whether having a JD actually makes you a better academic law librarian. One pro-JD argument is the empathy factor. According to Stephen Young, "law librarians who have attended law school can rightly argue that they understand the law and law students better than a law librarian who has not attended law school."

Yet Young also writes that librarians "are not in the business of applying our understanding of the law; we are using our skills to help others find and apply the law. We are librarians who work in law, not lawyers who work in libraries."

George Butterfield seconds this when he writes, “Students and faculty want good service and help with their research and they do not care what degrees the librarian has.”

In my case, it would have helped me to have one. Claudia had to review the cases I found to ensure they were appropriate for the assignment. With a JD, I would have possessed the skill to evaluate them, freeing up Claudia to do other things. She, in turn, would have bragged about the library staff to the entire faculty, a critical piece of library marketing.

A JD is an asset to a law firm librarian in the same way. It confers cachet and some expertise to make research projects a little smoother.

Send an email to your Representatives to show your support for libraries!

For public law librarians, however, the degree is of little benefit. Public patrons already ask for more help than librarians can legally (and practically) offer. If they knew a librarian had a law degree, they would be even likelier to ask for help drafting documents, interpreting statutes, and deciding case strategy. This, as I’ve written before, comes close to the unauthorized practice of law. Law firms have malpractice insurance to pay the claim when legal advice goes awry, but public law libraries carry no such insurance.

There is one other way a JD will help a law librarian: advancement.

According to the American Association of Law Libraries, about one-third of all law librarians also have a JD from an ABA-accredited law school, though fewer than 20 percent of the law librarian positions being filled require both degrees. This means that someone who possesses both degrees will often have a competitive advantage.

This is especially true in academic law libraries. Law schools are governed by the American Bar Association’s Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools. ABA Standard 603(c) states, "A director of a law library should have a law degree and a degree in library or information science and shall have a sound knowledge of and experience in library administration."

Although the standard says “should” and not “must,” and you could argue that management, unlike reference work, requires little expertise in the law, the chances of being a law school library director, or even a department head, without the JD are slim. Two reasons for this:

• All the deans and faculty have JDs and will want the library managers to have them as well, and
• Library managers almost always have tenure-track faculty appointments, for which a JD is essential.

Some universities have combined JD and MLS programs, allowing a person to earn both degrees at once. I recommend this if you are thinking of library school and you know you want to be a law librarian.

Sign the pledge to vote for libraries!

For those already in the field who want the JD, there are two options. One is to quit your job to go to law school full-time, a risky decision that I would not advise. The other is to keep working and get the degree part-time.

Understand, however, that many law schools do not have part-time programs. Why? Many legal scholars view part-time degrees, and those who earn them, as inferior. Some attorneys feel this way as well. Moreover, a part-time degree takes four or five years to complete. That is half a decade of squeezing one of the world’s most demanding graduate programs into your spare time.

Despite not having a law degree, I have been a law librarian for twenty-three years. Seven years ago, I was the only one of six finalists for the directorship of a state legislative library without a JD, and I got the job. 

Over the years, I have thought of getting the degree part-time. It would help me in my position, but not enough to justify the time and cost. With only a decade to go until retirement, the economics don’t work for me. If I were younger, who knows?

Bottom line: Get a JD if you are early in your career and it will definitely help you advance or if you simply want one badly enough. Otherwise, don’t worry about it. You can have an excellent career without one.

Visit www.everylibrary.org to learn more about our work on behalf of libraries. 

#librarymarketers: Enjoy this story? Want to use it for your library newsletter, blog, or social media? This article is published under Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International and is free to edit and use with attribution. Please cite EveryLibrary on medium.com/everylibrary.

This work by EveryLibrary is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0