The annual AALL (Association of Law Librarians) Conference kicked off today in Chicago. I’m a regular attendee since I find the attendees knowledgeable and savvy about tech products. Similar to the ABA TechShow whose attendees are mainly lawyers that use the products, AALL attracts law librarians who are also actual users. Users generally have a much lower tolerance for bullshit. Vendors tell me that the attendees at the AALL conference frequently ask some of the toughest questions.
AALL24
This is the 117th AALL conference (and no, I haven’t attended all of them). What’s remarkable about that is the vast changes in the profession of law librarians and the law since the first show in 1907. One can only imagine what a law librarian in a law firm was doing at the time of the first show. We have gone from pen and quill and books to paperless, the cloud, and now AI-generated materials and even research.
The demands on librarians by lawyers to harness and deal with all that change have been immense. Yet law librarians are still with us and their skill sets have morphed time and time again. Every year, librarians flock to the show in large numbers. They ask sometimes pointed questions to help them deal with the new changes that GenAI is bringing.
Today, the library is often more virtual than paper, and the person in charge of it is more of a knowledge management worker. A library is less a place than a service. Rather than managing and cataloging books, law librarians are charged with assisting lawyers with technology and using critical virtual tools.
Law librarians manage the accumulated expertise needed to solve legal problems. They are responsible for the substantive technology that drives quality and efficiency. Law librarians need to be on