I applaud the writer of the DEI and De-Credentialization blog post for calling on law librarians as a profession to be critical as we evolve to be a more inclusive and impactful profession. The author expressed salient concerns about what eliminating the J.D.-requirement in certain situations might mean for the future of our profession. In this response, it is my goal to provide some context for the innovations we’ve made to the Fellowship, to challenge some premises that are leading to the fear of professional degradation, and to provide some normative suggestions to ensure that what the author fears will not come to fruition.
The Arizona Law Library Fellowship
The Arizona Law Library Fellowship eliminated its J.D. requirement for fellows to address the pipeline issue in law librarianship as a whole – not just in academia. And it was done before the “shortage” that we now encounter. It is one part of many changes and innovations being implemented along with new dual degree pathways, formal mentorship, and expanded librarianship skill training avenues (such as empirical studies). “Formerly a top program for training academic law librarians who hold a J.D.,” we are a top program for training law librarians for all facets of the profession.
In her article History of the University of Washington Law Librarianship Program, Laura Goldsmith notes that Penny Hazelton and Bob Berring both saw law firm librarianship as a growing area in the profession. According to the article, UW was considering accepting library students without law degrees, as “such students add balance and perspective to the classes.” We currently have our first fellows without law degrees, and I could not agree more with that statement.
I am currently training one in data science and geospatial analytical skillsets because, during their time in a law firm, they received cellular location data (geospatial data) as part of a case they worked on. No one in the firm had the skills to truly leverage this information. A 2020 article in Legaltech news stated that “[g]eospatial data visualization is an untapped resource for most law firms.” I am extremely excited to share my knowledge and train a future law librarian with this rare and needed skillset.
As the RIP-SIS blog post describes, the UW program is pursuing a different strategy by creating a path for second career librarians. This is fabulous as it means that our programs continue to complement each other—serving the profession in different ways and giving future librarians the ability to choose the path best suited for them.
ARGUMENT 1: Lack of a J.D. Limits Opportunities
Not having a J.D. will prevent new law librarians from taking jobs where one is required, such as at institutions where a terminal degree is required to teach. However, the loss of certain opportunities is not sufficient to justify retaining our J.D. requirement. By dropping our requirement and broadening our focus, we are building paths to so many more jobs than those which are lost to the fellows without law degrees.
Of 3178 individual members to AALL, 1259 are at law firms, 1318 at law schools, and 347 in federal and state government positions. According to the 2021 AALL state of the profession survey, 72.8% (~162/222) of academic law library respondents, 18.5% (~42/229 tot) of Firm and Corporate Librarians, and 44.7% (~38/86 tot) of government librarians have J.D.s. We are opening up our fellowship to law librarians who might want to fill the range of positions in academic librarianship that do not require a law degree as well as the sea of positions in other subfields of the profession.
I would also like to address the concern of one commenter about whether we inform our prospective students about the limited opportunities. We do. We have deep conversations before they join the fellowship and regularly as they move through the fellowship. We had one candidate decide the fellowship was not for them following our discussion about their potential avenues. We also have a fellow joining the program without a J.D. who always aspired to be a law librarian but not in academia. Since she does not have a J.D. she was ecstatic to learn about the opportunity to participate in our Fellowship since a J.D. is not required.
ARGUMENT 2: A J.D. is Required to Teach Legal Research
I recognize that certain institutions must require the J.D., as their positions are on a tenure-track or tenure-adjacent track that requires a terminal degree. This fact of bureaucracy does not mean that the J.D. is a necessary condition to teach legal research. Many law librarians in fields outside of academia teach legal research skills to lawyers and patrons.
It might be said that teaching a full legal research course requires a higher skillset than teaching one-off sessions. I would agree. Are those skills ones that are taught in law school? I would argue they are not. However, they are taught in the curriculum of Arizona Law Fellows program; Teaching Legal Research is a required course.
As noted in the blog post, there are highly qualified individuals that could substitute experience for the J.D. These might be individuals from other paths or paraprofessionals inside the library to move up, ensuring retention of highly valuable teammates. However, if we maintain that a J.D. is a requirement for all teaching positions, these individuals would not be able to apply and join these teams. If you claim you are willing to hire a person who is the exception, then you prefer the J.D., you don’t require it; and job postings should indicate as much.
Additionally, some job postings require a J.D. or the foreign equivalent. This is perfectly appropriate and helps open the pool to colleagues who are educated outside the United States. The vast majority of legal education outside the U.S. is at the undergraduate level. Thus, the foreign equivalent that we are willing to accept is most often a B.A. in Law equivalent. If we are willing to accept a foreign undergraduate law degree as the J.D. equivalent, we should be just as excited about a U.S. undergraduate law degree, which provides a superb foundation in the U.S. legal system.
ARGUMENT 3: De-Credentialization will Degrade the Profession
There has been an ongoing conversation as to the need for law librarians to have a J.D. Back in 2008, Mary Wisner pondered the need for a J.D. Overall, she discusses the benefits she believes a J.D. provided, while acknowledging “the law degree is not the only way to acquire the skills, knowledge, or whatever else it takes to do [the] job.” She concludes that the foundation of good relationships, J.D. or not, is “reliable, competent services and professional interactions.”
When Mary wrote that article, fewer than one-third of law librarians had law degrees. While we are unclear exactly where our number stands now, only 45% of respondents to the 2021 State of the Profession Survey had law degrees.1 Mary noted that a J.D. was required when she was hired, but they had listed the J.D. as preferred in job postings in recent years.
The author of the original blog post offers no evidence to support their argument that removing requirements will “lead to the permanent degradation of law librarian status and security, as well as the further deflation of salaries.” It is a slippery slope fallacy. There are so very many things that must happen between making the J.D. preferred instead of required and the degradation of the profession.
Similarly, if having some librarians without J.D.s will “lead to the permanent degradation of [academic] law librarian status and security, as well as the further deflation of salaries,”[2] as one commenter notes, then there are other issues at play beyond the degree. Following are some issues and suggestions for how we might face them.
First, the law school leadership may have the same problem that we face internally, which is believing the J.D. is the only way to demonstrate a certain level of competence. I call on the directors in those situations to advocate for why the librarian’s experience is a sufficient substitute for the degree. The library team, experts in their field, all felt sufficiently confident in this person’s abilities to hire them despite the lack of degree. For example, one of my colleagues, Marcelo Rodriguez, has no J.D. There is not a person in the administration or the library that doubts the value he brings to the team as he has a wealth of experience that makes him far more qualified to teach legal research than any law school graduate.
Second, the law school library may have a visibility problem. If the only way we can show that we are worth the money spent on our salaries is that everyone has the same degrees as faculty who are paid far more than we are, we are not sufficient advocates of our profession. Law schools generally suffer from issues of stratifying professors based on domain (doctrinal v. clinical v. skills, etc). We must be skilled advocates and rhetoricians that can argue cogently about the value we provide to the law school with or without a J.D..
Lastly, law school libraries are changing, as are the positions in the library. Not all academic law librarians teach. Increasingly, faculty support is requiring a more complex set of data science skills. To say that hiring a data law librarian to your staff that does not have a J.D. would devalue the rest of the teaching team is absurd. The Harvard Law Library restructured after deep discussions with staff and created departments focused on instruction and other focused on other forms of library work, like faculty service. It is not a stretch to imagine these different positions requiring different education. The University of Virginia has a whole unit within its law library, the Legal Data Lab, dedicated to supporting the empirical work of its faculty. These colleagues don’t necessarily have J.D.s or MLISs.
Additionally, if we truly value the J.D., many schools provide tuition assistance. We can invest in our academic law librarians by providing them alternative career trajectories that begin in positions that do not require a J.D. but allow them to pursue their J.D. if they desire to grow into that branch of the profession. As an example, colleagues and UNC and Yale have supported full-time librarians in getting their J.D. I must emphatically note that committed leaders will need to allow flexible work arrangements and provide mentorship throughout the studies.
ARGUMENT 4: De-Credentialization will Benefit White Men
I agree that such a change could create an environment where biased hiring is further able to proceed. I do not believe, however, that this is a necessary result of the change. Diversity in our profession is a wicked problem, meaning that solving it will likely take multifaceted and well-conceived approaches.
I also believe that there is a straw man fallacy in the argument against de-credentialization. The argument is not to remove the requirement for a J.D. such that our standards drop to a lower level of skill and knowledge. The call is to consider deeply what it is that you believe having a J.D. signifies about the one that holds it and add those requirements explicitly to the job posting.
The blog post correctly states that white men are more likely to apply for a position for which they are underqualified. Women are unlikely to apply if they see they do not meet the qualifications, and, according to an HBR survey, this is because 78% of women surveyed believed “the job qualifications are real requirements.”. Linked-In’s Gender-Insights Report finds additional discrepancy in men and women behavior finding women are 26% less likely to ask for a referral.
The HBR article suggests that women need better information about how hiring processes really work. I could see a parallel argument being made for women regarding referrals. I think this puts too much onus on the marginalized individual.
Reworking job postings is one of the first steps in increasing the diversity of your job pool. Gendered adjectives and requirements that are actually just preferences all reduce the chances individuals from historically underrepresented groups will apply to your job posting.
The blog’s author says, “people of color, especially women and LGBTQ+ people of color, will feel the pressure to continue to obtain expensive educational credentials to prove to majority-white hiring committees that they are qualified.” I agree that this pressure may exist if the requirement is dropped. This does not mean that we should keep the requirement. As noted above, underqualified men would still apply.
On the contrary, it means that such change must be combined with additional steps to ensure that the change leads not to simply giving us a diverse pool of applicants but also that our hiring process is inclusive and reduces bias.
The move for de-credentialization is one that calls on us to be clearer about job requirements and honest with ourselves and others about what we are searching for. If applicants can get hired into a position without all listed required qualifications, then those qualifications should never have been required. As we review applications, we need to explicate exactly what we mean by obtuse descriptions like “good fit” and “team-player.” It does not mean we should avoid evolving. Rather it means that our innovations should not be superficial and without deep consideration, consultation, and preparation.
Reducing Barriers
As I mentioned, our diversity pipeline is a wicked problem, which means addressing it will require a multifaceted approach that is conscious of emerging trends, responsive to feedback, and adaptive in the face of barriers. It will require change at all stages in the pipeline, from recruitment through retention. The conversation around de-credentialization should not be seen as a single lever solution to the problem but should be combined with other efforts.
Adria Kimbrough spoke at one of the Diversity Dialogues about Dillard’s multiple award-winning pipeline program. According to her, successful pipeline programs require:
- Early & rigorous intervention
- Strong mentorship connections
- Partnerships across the pipeline
Early & Rigorous Intervention
We have developed our multiple degree pathways help us intervene early on in a student’s academic career by building on efforts at the University to address the barriers faced by historically underrepresented groups. For example, our BA in Law + MA LIS allows us to prepare law librarians who possess the necessary legal skills without the added debt of a law degree. Such a program also allows us to connect with prospective students early, providing mentorship as they prepare for graduate studies and the fellowship.
A major early barrier for entering our profession is the financial cost of multiple degrees. Law school graduates borrow an average of $84,600. The library degree can leave students with an average of $72,800 in debt.
As Itunu Sofidiya says in her article Student Loan Relief and the Value of Black Student Life, “student loan debt disproportionately affects students traditionally from underrepresented backgrounds in the legal community, especially Black students.” Not requiring a J.D. significantly reduces the student loan debt of new law librarians by more than half on average.
Our program is the only law librarianship program with full tuition remission. Academic law librarianship is not the only section of our profession needing more diverse librarians. Keeping the J.D. requirement for our fellowship gatekeeps access to this benefit.
Additionally, our University has the Native Scholars Grant, which means that any students members of 22 federally recognized Arizona tribes can have their BA fully paid for and the fellowship pays for graduate degree.
Strong Mentorship Connections
We have revamped our program in the past year to provide each fellow with a formal mentor in the library.
Since taking over as Director, I have expanded this to provide fellows with an alumni mentor during their second year in the fellowship. These mentorships are critical to addressing knowledge gaps, supporting professional development, and expanding career opportunities.
It is a future goal of mine to develop fundraising method that would allow us to guarantee fellows a trip to AALL during the summer between their junior and senior years. This will further expand their awareness of different facets of the profession as well as allow them to create additional weak ties that can facilitate their career growth. According to one study, it is these weak ties—“the more infrequent, arm’s length relationships with acquaintances”—that are most beneficials in the job search.
Partnerships Across the Pipeline
Our BA in Law program has a Lawtina Mentoring Program. While this program is currently focused on preparing student for law school, we are working to partner with them to highlight law librarianship as another path available to them. We are already partnering with the Knowledge River Program at the iSchool to encourage students to consider law librarianship.
It is a future goal of mine to connect with Carla Wale and discuss ways we might collaborate in our efforts to train the best law librarians. I recently had a law student who was interested in law librarianship. We had a deep discussion about all the options available, and I believe she has decided to go to the UW program. I expressed that she will always have me as a resource, as I fully support her making the decision that best suits her goals. Our best future is one filled with productive, collaborative partnerships that address all aspects of the pipeline.
Conclusion
Ultimately, what eliminating the J.D. does for us is ask us to see the person beyond the paper as well as the profession beyond our bubble. We must ask ourselves what it is that makes the J.D. a valuable asset besides its use as an expensive pass to the respect and acceptance of the legal profession.
The legal profession itself is reevaluating the need for a J.D. for some legal work. Three of the recommendations from the Supreme Court of Arizona’s Task Force on the Delivery of Legal Services were about expanding the delivery of legal services beyond barred attorneys. Next month, in fact, our Law Library Fellows will be teaching two hours of legal research to Arizona’s Legal Paraprofessionals, a program that grew out of the Licensed Legal Advocate Pilot program developed by the Innovation for Justice Program here at UA and the implementation of which was one of those suggestions. If the legal profession at large can change its outlook on the J.D. then so too can we.
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1 According to the 2021 AALL state of the profession survey, 72.8% (~162/222) of academic law library, 18.5% (~42/229 tot) of Firm and Corporate Library and 44.7% (~38/86 tot) of government library respondents had J.D.s. The 45% comes from dividing the sum of individuals in each library reporting they have a J.D. by the sum of total respondents in each library. I recognize that the limited response rate means that the numbers might be subject to response bias and other issues that make it impossible to report the number as representative of the likely state of the profession at large. However, it is the best number available.
2 I added academic because that is the implied subset of the profession addressed in the post and the comment.