As the new chair of the Private Law Libraries Special Interest Group (PLL SIG) of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries/Association Canadienne des Bibliotheques de Droit (CALL/ACBD) in 2016, I proposed a PLL SIG sponsored session, “Unconference Through the Fishbowl: The Changing Role of Law Librarians in the Mix of an Evolving Legal Profession”. The proposal was successful: Shaunna Mireau and I ran the fishbowl session at the conference, garnering great contributions and feedback from those who participated. After writing a play-by-play article for the TALL Quarterly I find that I have even more questions than prior to the session.Footnote ² I do not have answers to the multitude of questions I have been faced with in the writing of this article, and perhaps none of us ever will, but, the reflections of our participants and the articles read in researching the various areas of enquiry certainly provide us with plenty to ponder as we continue to evolve our profession within the ever developing wider legal profession. The vast majority of our discussion in the session focused on those in law firms, however many of the articles I found most useful were written by academic law librarians (likely due to the support for, and requirement that, academic librarians contribute research as part of their professional duties). While there are distinct differences between the academic and private environments, quite a lot can be learned.

First, I'll review what we discussed and the advice from articles that I have read since writing the TALL Quarterly article - some are your standard propositions on how to realign, collaborate, and generally promote our services to make sure that we stay in favour within our organization. Second, I'll take a step back to look at some of the conflicts and clashes of societal and internal culture that we are faced with in our profession, particularly those of us in law firms. The fit between the culture of librarians and the culture of law firms is an odd one at times (for example the spirit of professional collaboration versus a focus on ‘winning’). Beyond these general cultures, we are a female dominated profession within a historically male dominated industry. But more on that later.

In examining our tasks, roles, and especially our services as time goes on, many of us are finding that more has been piled on our plate with less resources to manage the load. This might be direct-to-client services, managing new technology, or just a broader range of traditional offerings. Something will have to go, or we will need to become much more efficient in order to manage the load. One of the keys to balance that came up repeatedly is collaboration. Technology can help with offloading tasks to automation, and practicum students can help take on important but tedious tasks that have been put off due to more immediately pressing work. But collaboration offers more in the way of visibility and that little something extra in terms of a greater win for the firm:

Part of the key here is a critical questioning of whether something is needed, valuable, or effective. Also critical is our approach: Wendy Reynolds noted at the session that personality and approach make a big difference in how effective one can be when collaborating with other departments. The ability to work as a team with those outside of your department also shows higher-ups that you are on board with collaborating for a greater firm-wide win, rather than pure self-preservation and self-focus. However, this balance of ‘winning’ for the greater team should not come at the expense of giving credit where credit is due: one of our best statements of the session was “I think the library should take credit all of the time”, as we need to make sure our work is not passed off as someone else's, especially when it comes to budget time and justifying the resources that we manage, whether informational or personnel.

Aligning to a strategic plan is a great way to show our value and claim credit within a wider collaborative team environment. It is difficult to balance an institution's sometimes drastic changing demands while trying to maintain the traditional services expected by our users. Frequently shrinking budgets, whether caused by increasing cost of online and print services, or by actual cuts to allotment of funds, do not seem to help with this situation, but they can “offer opportunities to step away from routine tasks to evaluate objectives and the systems employed to reach those objectives,”Footnote ⁴ as well as an opportunity to “make changes based on shifting needs and new technologies […and even] ‘planned abandonment’.”Footnote ⁵

Showing how we are doing exactly what is needed can help convince decision makers that we can and will fulfill their strategic plan's goals when our teams have the support and funds needed to continue their valuable work. If clients come first, then give examples of how the library's services put clients first! Not aligning ourselves to the strategic plan of our organization can be dangerous: “Libraries will marginalize themselves and be vulnerable to financial and space reductions if we do not broaden our scope and our value to our law schools. Each of us must be much more creative and align what the library does with the law school's goals.”Footnote ⁶ Even more dangerous is assuming that we are seen as an essential, valuable, and necessary service. The following statement may feel negative, but it is nevertheless quite accurate:

Success at a law firm equals winning (the case, argument, filing, transaction) plus profit. The structure of a law firm forces this attitude and we need to show (not just tell) our firms that our services will help them win and profit in the course of business.

Giving examples of how the library has dropped or put aside tasks that do not fulfill the goals of the strategic plan is also useful, as it shows that the team is actively assessing the situation and prioritizing their work instead of wasting resources on low-value work. This is an important key to saying ‘no’ to new projects and some lofty ideas as well - if it doesn't fit into the plan, it doesn't get off the ground!

How else can we show that we align with the needs of our users, and therefore the overall organization? By getting to know them, being available, and simply asking. One possible barrier to offering our users exactly what is needed could be our own biases regarding lawyers’ needs. In the academic sphere the individual circumstances and needs are pointed out as a potential key to providing highly valued customized services that truly align with actual needs, as the lawyers are not a “monolithic entity. Different subgroups (eg. non-tenured, clinical, legal writing) are likely to be motivated by different needs and goals. It is important to recognize that, like all people, individual professors mix values, priorities, and insecurities with other combustible elements.”Footnote ⁸ In all environments, whether academic, law firms, courthouses, or others, librarians need to get to know their users, “[i]nstead of making assumptions about what users need, librarians must engage in real conversations with users and collaborate with them to solve problems.”Footnote ⁹ Therefore, “[b]y fully engaging in this process, librarians are more likely to get a better sense of the nuances of a user's situation and to identify gaps in users’ knowledge.”Footnote ¹⁰ This approach may seem obvious, but it is much easier said than done, and can often fall to the wayside in the course of our busy days.

Our need to innovate - our approach, our technology, and how we demonstrate our value within the firm - is a key part of our success. Innovation, of course, has now become the buzzword in the legal industry, but it still has meaning. It is also very difficult on a personal and institutional level. We read about innovation occurring in various industries as though it is a regular and easy occurrence. In reality it is a combination of being open-minded, having an ‘outside the box’ vision, a lot of hard work, time, and luck. As librarians we need to ask ourselves bluntly: “Can we be flexible and open-minded about ‘library work’?”Footnote ¹¹ This speaks directly to the topic of our session regarding the changing role of librarians, yet I noticed that much of our conversation focused on what we did in the past and what many of us are currently doing that is a slight variation of what was done in the past, or simply has a technological twist to it. This default of innovation equals technology is not unique to librarians, but is something we should take note of when we think about innovation in our profession:

Again, innovation is not easy, and the factors listed also point to risk-taking, something that I personally find a lot of lawyers think they enjoy, but very rarely truly embrace when it comes to big decisions and investing money within this generally conservative industry; it is aptly noted that “law firms and lawyers historically do not react well to change…the law is based on precedent.”Footnote ¹³

We should also ask ourselves: are librarians risk-takers? Or do we tend to stick with what is comfortable? As much as I dislike being stereotyped as a librarian, I find that we relish the idea of being risk-takers, activists, proud of standing up for what we believe in, and wholeheartedly embrace new technology, but most of our core services and day-to-day behaviour is still fairly subdued. We keep one hand on our traditional core of librarianship while wading into the ‘deep end’ of the new, innovative, and unconventional roles for librarians. And understandably so. It is very hard to do something totally different and let go of what is familiar, going against our nature as humans. Also, to be clear, I don't think that this is always a bad thing, because our users would likely be very thrown if we suddenly gave up on the things that they associate with our role. How often have you heard, “I didn't know librarians [are in law firms, are so stylish, had [insert colour] hair, are so outgoing, know how to code, have a graduate degree(s), etc].”

How do we move forward on this? There are many pieces of advice out there about how to ‘innovate’ our services in order to gain more visibility, show relevancy, and demonstrate value. Many of them you have heard before and many of them were brought up in our session. In fact, as I was researching for this article I noted just how common some of these pieces of advice are, yet we keep putting them forward as the things we need to do. I wonder how many of us are actually doing them, or perhaps we assume that others are not doing them, or, maybe not doing them as well as we should.

One of the most popular pieces of advice is branding your final product and services. This does give the library considerable visibility. The report that you compiled, branded with the library logo or slogan, can make its way up to a partner who uses it to gain a big win for the firm, even if it has to go through the marketing department, an articling student, and an associate to get there. Essentially, we want to be ‘all around’, instead of being associated with just the physical space of the library. One individual notes that they:

The second most popular response to gaining visibility (in my highly unscientific mental tally) was seeing people in person. “It could be as simple as having coffee with people in practice groups or sending an article to someone related to their area of interest,”Footnote ¹⁵ additionally focusing on the fact that “[b]uilding personal relationships is just as powerful now as it was in 1988 and perhaps even more so; after all, emails are easily skimmed or deleted and busy attorneys may not have time to visit a library's website or attend library events.”Footnote ¹⁶ Often this visibility by seeing people in person is developed into the excellent idea that “we must market services, not collections; benefits, not features; and results, not processes. We must also market ourselves as the experts who help users find the right information.”Footnote ¹⁷ The library is nowhere near as valuable without the people who run it and maximize information's value for the users.

The ‘be present’ argument has even been put as plainly as: “Walking around and talking to people is underrated.”Footnote ¹⁸ Hosting social events “such as student orientations, faculty lectures, or firm parties,”Footnote ¹⁹ possibly with the idea of “hosting an event in your space that highlights the collection,”Footnote ²⁰ was also very popular in the articles I read. Unfortunately, not everyone has a physical space that they want to show off or is ideal for hosting social events, although one physical space idea with a personal connection that I enjoyed was to talk to people about “success stories” and then “adding a ‘wall of fame’ in your library where users can post their own stories of successful encounters with library staff.”Footnote ²¹

Another popular idea is to embed librarians within practice groups. The downside to embedded librarianship is that it removes librarians from their like-minded information peers, and generally works well only when the library already has high visibility within the group and total buy-in from the practice group chair and de facto leaders within the group. The culture of the firm will greatly impact the level of success for these initiatives. But with the right support and culture, embedding a librarian can be very successful and greatly increase the overall library's visibility within the group and generally within the firm as other practice groups learn of, and become jealous of, the initial group's additional service.Footnote ²²

All of this points to our relationships with our users, moving us away from (with one hand still firmly anchored to) being associated with print books and resources to the personal service that we provide and developing our brand: “the library staff could be thought of as a living brand because it is our personalized attention to information education that makes our service unique.”Footnote ²³ This living brand helps us to be seen “as intelligent, critical, active players who not only add incredible value to client service but, in fact, can even serve as profit centers for our firms.”Footnote ²⁴ It is also argued that we should apply the same research and analytical skills that we use daily for competitive intelligence, “tracking trends and monitor industry changes”, and critical thinking in order to “look to the future of our own profession for new challenges that will benefit our firms.”Footnote ²⁵

As we demonstrate that our skills are where the value lies within library services, we can also make the economic argument that utilizing these skills works as a double benefit to the lawyers. Asking a librarian to assist on a question brings back greater value due to the expert skill in using the variety of resources and technology compared to a lawyer who only uses a select few of the frequently changing resources and technology. Therefore, they save time - time that can be spent on higher dollar value income for the firm while gaining a more comprehensive answer to their legal question in the most effective manner. Our senior leaders have a balance sheet, and we need to stay on it by demonstrating that the library resources lead to higher profits rather than a cost centre. We are optimally placed to make their time more effective by doing what we do best.

Doing what we do best is also an argument for greater collaboration across departments: by doing what we do best, and allowing others to do what they do best, the overall value of the firm increases. This means that, unless you're doing a barebones design (and admittedly, it does not have to be fancy), the fantastic logo and branding materials the library comes up with is best placed with the marketing department's creative and design team, who you should be collaborating with in the course of producing reports and providing services anyway. The same argument applies to lawyers and librarians - they do the legal analysis and arguments and we navigate the wealth of information and tools to help them do so.

The trouble is that with the advent of Google, many believe that their research answer is merely a Google search away: “‘[t]he greatest challenge to law librarians is the misconception that with the growth of online resources, libraries and librarians are not needed.’”Footnote ²⁶ The role of lawyers has shifted to include a lot of what we used to do for them as our online databases begin looking and acting more and more like Google:

Some also believe that the millennial generation deserves the ‘blame’ for those who believe they can find everything themselves online, noting a “reluctance to seek the assistance of librarians […due to the] the self-reliant nature of the millennial generation.”Footnote ²⁸ However, I would argue that self-reliance is simply a human trait that most people want to feel; there's nothing quite so satisfying as being able to feel accomplished in achieving something on your own, without the help of someone else. The current online nature of our world simply makes this feeling appear to be so much more achievable and instantaneous because “[i]t is assumed that everything is available online or that Google searching leads to more efficient and effective research than using a library. As a result, ‘[p]ublic perception is at least ten years behind the reality of what we do and how we do it.’”Footnote ²⁹ We need to work very hard on this perception of what exactly it is we do and how finding quality information can be much more complex, expensive, and hidden away in databases and even print texts.

This is an important upstream fight for us, because if everything is presumably so easy to find, why do they need us? This article and the session we ran at the conference has argued for redirecting the library branding away from exclusively promoting the resources (print, databases, cases, etc.) toward the skills and abilities of librarians. At the same time, there is a general societal perception that information is easy to find yourself. In the National Survey of Australian Law Libraries one individual “described the increased online access of digital information resources as making the law librarian and the library itself ‘invisible’ to the library user.”Footnote ³⁰ Therefore we must work doubly hard to not only bring the attention to ourselves in addition to the materials, but also to convince our users that the ‘way into’ the materials is through the librarians. This is critical, because “Jordan Furlong puts it this way: ‘Lawyers tend to shrink or cut anything whose function or value they don't really understand. So if your lawyers don't clearly understand the work or readily perceive the value of your library professionals, you've got cause for concern.’”Footnote ³¹

Here is where we further dive into the conflicts and cultures of the information that I have summarized and reflected on thus far. Several times during our session I found that the firm's or organization's culture was brought up as a limiting factor in the ability to carry out an initiative, in determining the type of tasks the library services team would carry out for their lawyers, or in determining how the team might work with other departments. Collaboration can be difficult in a firm that has always operated in silos. It can also be challenging to convince a social committee to host an event within the library space when they have traditionally taken place within a practice group's favourite meeting or case room. Traditions are paramount and people often resist change.

The firm's invisible barriers between departments can also extend to professional cultural barriers. Lawyers, generally, belong to an exclusive class. They have gone to great lengths to become a member of a law society, passing strenuous examinations, and have dedicated their professional, and often personal, lives to their career. Depending on the firm culture and individual personalities, it can be very difficult to present oneself at a lawyer-only firm event or meeting and be seen as a professional colleague if you are without a JD. I personally have seen this dynamic play out at practice group events between lawyers and law clerks as well as other legal professionals. A very subtle cliquing takes place, even within the lawyers themselves. Much of this, I believe, is human nature; we seek out those who are familiar and most similar to ourselves. On the other hand, it is a barrier to true collaboration within a firm and for librarians to successfully ‘talk shop’ at firm events in an effort to further both the library team and the firm's goals. In the course of my research I came across a great explanation of the dynamic when the suggestion was made for academic law librarians to “check in with professors periodically”Footnote ³²:

This might be a daunting transformation for some librarians - demanding a response and being aggressive in doing so.

And so, we are faced with another internal barrier for many librarians seeking to market the library services and their own skills. Introvertedness. It came up in our session as well - while many of us are outgoing, the vast majority of librarians are introverts. Nonetheless, this was another frequent piece of advice at our session and in articles on gaining visibility for the library services team - be social! Force yourself to get out there and see people instead of working solely by email. Negotiate your comfort zone with yourself - show up at events and come up with a goal for each event. Talk to X number of people, stay until X time but put in a full effort to chat with people during that time, talk about X number of resources during your time at the event. Perhaps, if you watch the TV show Scandal, you sympathize with Huck who simply could not make small-talk at the White House State dinner for Bashran (a fictional country, for those not in the loop), for fear that you will start rambling about massaging an animal's heart back to life on the side of the road, only to receive the side eye from the listener who makes a quick exit from the conversation. The key to small talk is asking other people questions. Another oft noted tactic is to have an elevator pitch. Cheesy, yes, but a great starting point for those who are not natural ‘sales people’. One article advises to “[p]repare talking points about the value of the law library” or to make a “half-page list of bullet points.”Footnote ³⁴

All of the advice throughout this article is valid and can be helpful, although I cannot help but wonder why our profession seems to need a constant pep rally. Most of this information is not new - we read about many of these pieces of advice in blog posts regularly, yet it seems to be a sticking point. I wonder, do male dominated business services professions constantly brainstorm self-promotional advice? Perhaps yes, but perhaps not so often and perhaps to greater success. In the course of our session at the CALL Conference in Ottawa, there was one male librarian toward the end who spoke up and said that they “demand to ‘sit at the table’ for meetings”, and when projects that are seemingly outside of the library's responsibilities (that would greatly benefit from our skills) come up during the meeting he pipes up: “You know who would be really good at that? A librarian.” I could not help but think, how great to be able to “demand” to sit at the table without being perceived as aggressive in a negative way!

The quote about the librarian needing to be aggressive with professors also hits home - Simon Canick is the author, and was at the time the Associate Dean for Information Resources and Associate Professor of Law, William Mitchell College of Law, in St. Paul, Minnesota.Footnote ³⁵ The College is now part of the Hamline University School of Law, and Simon Canick moved on to the University of Maryland School of Law in 2016, where he is the Associate Dean for Law Library and Technology and Law School Professor. His confidence appears to come from a quadruple sense of privilege: an American male lawyer in a leadership position.Footnote ³⁶

As a woman, I am conflicted with this information. We should not have to justify being aggressive simply for doing our jobs effectively, yet many of us have had to do this, both internally and out loud, and I personally advocate for women being more assertive (I still agree with his advice). Yet, at the same time it stings to read this advice from our male colleague when many women I know have been chided for being “too aggressive” or “difficult” in the workplace for behaviour that is praised when it comes from a male colleague. His statement is ‘right on the money’, but is much more loaded than I expect he realizes. I am sure that many of us have also experienced imposter syndrome, a common occurrence among even the most confident and qualified women, making our feelings about carrying out the advice to be assertive with our lawyers even more mixed and fraught with some level of anxiety. Our own President of CALL acknowledges the role of (and possible cures for) imposter syndrome in her first CLLR message to colleagues.Footnote ³⁷

The most recent statistic I came across in my articles regarding the percentage of law librarians being female notes that: “like most U.S. librarians (84 percent female in 2003), most law librarians are female--about 78 percent, according to the AALL 2003 Educational Needs Assessment survey.”Footnote ³⁸ Payscale.com's page for law librarians notes that 77 percent of law librarian workers are female.Footnote ³⁹ While these are American figures, we hardly need statistics to note that “[l]ike nursing, teaching, and social work, law librarianship is a ‘pink collar’ profession--one filled mostly by women.”Footnote ⁴⁰ All we need to do is look around at our conferences to see that women clearly dominate the sphere. Nonetheless, as in other professions, surveys have found that women experience the same barriers and frustrations in the workplace, from “men being treated better than women at work [… including] special privileges, lower expectations, and faster advancement,”Footnote ⁴¹ to “male library employees who ‘get away with murder,’ as one said. ‘Murder,’ in most cases, consists of working less or working poorly.”Footnote ⁴² Perhaps part of the explanation is that law librarians are a female dominated profession operating within a traditionally male dominated industry, rife with unconscious bias toward the individuals and library teams as a whole.

I wonder then, whether we should focus less on these more indirect forms of self-promotion (logos, taglines, having events in the library, collaborating in the background, etc.) and more on the direct forms: in-person self-promotion of services and events, demanding that seat at the table in a professional manner, and factual statements of the library team's achievements laid out for decision makers come budget time. Perhaps, as one fellow female librarian puts it:

The same might be said of the departments under our charge, generally; the reason for additional budget cuts for the library over marketing, IT, or facilities might be that our female dominated department does not self-promote in the same way. Picture, for a moment, how a seasoned marketing professional pitches to decision makers why their budget should not be further cut, or even makes the argument for an increase. We talk quite a lot about how to gain visibility and demonstrate the library's value through various tactics, but less about ourselves as accomplished individuals even if we do talk about our skills: “as librarians learn how to publicize the value of their libraries, they should also pay attention to publicizing their own skills and accomplishments.”Footnote ⁴⁴

Many of the tidbits of advice in this article are not new, and I expect that a great number of readers feel that they have a number of new questions and may feel conflicted about the statements and opinions around our profession being predominantly female. I hope that this article at the very least serves to open our eyes and minds to explore new ways of thinking about collaborating, about making a critical analysis of our tasks and alignment, about what it means to be innovative, about demonstrating our value despite the increasingly superficial ease of searching, and about grappling with the external and internal cultural struggles of being librarians in a law firm, being introverts, and working in a “pink collar profession”. I leave you with one final quote from Simon Canick to further contradict previous advice, while encouraging a forward look for our future: