7 Pages Posted: 31 Jan 2015 Last revised: 24 May 2017

Date Written: January 27, 2015

Abstract

Academic law libraries are in the midst of radical change, probably more so than at any time in the past 100 years. Two factors are converging that make business as usual no longer viable for academic law libraries: transition of legal resources from print to digital formats and economic changes in legal education. Best Practices for Legal Education did not address the role of law libraries in the delivery of legal education. The changes facing law schools suggest the time is now to articulate how libraries can best contribute to the endeavor. How can best practices for law libraries be reconstructed to allocate resources and expertise to support the education mission?

This section of the forthcoming book Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World (Lexis 2015) briefly surveys the current state of affairs and sketches emerging best practices for the future.

Law schools and the libraries within them need to retain their focus on their traditional goals while investigating new ways to achieve them. Law school libraries will continue to excel at serving the faculty and students as their needs evolve. With agility, a service orientation, and a judicious use of limited resources, libraries will remain central to law schools and the education mission for the foreseeable future.

The content of this SSRN posting is material that was published in the book Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World, Maranville, et al., Lexis Nexis 2015. The content has been posted on SSRN with the express permission of Lexis Nexis and of Carolina Academic Press, publisher of the book as of January 1, 2016.