A Top Program for Training Law Librarians

Guest post by Teresa Miguel-Stearns

Since Cas Laskowski, my brilliant colleague and director of the fellows program, covered most of our thoughts and ideas in her post, I will not reiterate them here. I will add a few more considerations to our ongoing discussion started by the anonymous RIPS-SIS blog post.

First, I want to emphasize that the Arizona Law Fellows program and the Washington Law Librarianship programs are very different and complementary programs – they always have been. I have referred students to the Washington program when it better suits their goals, as has Cas. 

One significant difference between our programs is that Arizona Law Fellows are Graduate Assistants who work 20 hours/week in the law library, thus gaining extensive and varied practical experience for as many as two years before entering the profession. They are paid a GA salary and they receive tuition remission for their library science degree. Given the relatively low cost of living in Tucson, our goal is that Fellows incur no additional debt in obtaining their MLIS. 

The JD is preferred, but no longer required (although some legal training or experience is necessary), so that we can attract a broader range of future law librarians. Will that help us attract people from marginalized and underrepresented communities? At our Hispanic- and Native-serving institution, and with our iSchool’s Knowledge River scholars program, we hope so. Through a variety of intentional efforts and innovations, we will try. And we welcome your support. 

Second, I am not encouraging the “de-credentialing of the profession” – I’m not even sure what that means since there are no set credentials for our profession. AALL has been debating credentials since its founding in 1906 and has never been able to settle on them, understandably, since law librarian positions are so varied, even academic positions – and for all the reasons we continue to discuss today, including educational cost, time, and associated salaries. See Elizabeth Caufield’s prize-winning paper for a fascinating history of this century-long debate around law librarian credentials, as well as her thought-provoking suggestions for moving the conversation forward.

And just a side thought: There is not a required set of credentials for the legal academy, either. While the JD is typical, there are law professors without law degrees. And today, many early-career law faculty have a PhD in addition to a JD. If this decade-long trend continues, will the next generation of academic law librarians need to get a JD and a PhD to keep up with law faculty? Is that really the goal? It sounds like it if we focus solely on credentials rather than the value we add to our communities in so many additional ways. 

As a dual-degree academic law library director who practiced law for nearly a decade before pivoting to law librarianship, I fully comprehend the value of having a law degree for many of the reasons Sarah states in her post. Additionally, the JD allowed me, as a director, to become a tenured member of the law faculty so that I can, among other duties and privileges, make unpopular decisions and have difficult conversations with fellow faculty without fear of losing my position. I felt my new-found job security keenly in my transition from acting director (without faculty status) to director (with faculty status) at Yale. 

As a result, I encourage and support my colleagues, especially those who may want to become academic law library directors, to get a JD. For example, I gave a librarian-colleague a wildly non-traditional schedule during their 1L year so they could continue to work full-time as a reference and instruction librarian while fully participating in their traditional daytime 1L year at a law school up the road. 

Which leads me to my final point, that is, I am open to hiring people who are not dual-degreed when they bring additional skills, such as empirical, technological, language, or other unique skills and experience to the team – skills which are needed to partner with our faculty and students, teach unique courses, or perform unique tasks in the library. 

And if I am going to hire them (and I see other law libraries hiring non-traditional colleagues as well), wouldn’t I naturally welcome them into the Arizona Law Fellows program so they can train and learn alongside our JD students and seasoned librarians? Wouldn’t you want me to welcome them into the Arizona Law Fellows program so they enter our profession superbly prepared?

Is the practice of hiring someone without a JD de-credentialing the profession? In my opinion it is not. Rather, I view job postings with one or both degrees preferred, as the practice of trying to hire the best athlete for the team. And the Arizona Law Fellows program endeavors to produce those best athletes for our profession. We educate and train world-class law librarians from a multitude of backgrounds in all facets of law librarianship so that we all have a talented and diverse pool of colleagues for generations to come.