Survey Says Librarians Like Their Jobs but Are Displeased With Vendors
Electronic research was supposed to replace books and lower costs, but it's done neither -- and librarians aren't happy about it
Alan Cohen
LawFirmInc.
August 10, 2007
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Refer to it as the library, and Sarah Nichols will quickly correct you, with just a bit of an edge in her voice. "We call it the Information Resource Center, or IRC," says Nichols, the global director of research and information resources at San Francisco's Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. "A library doesn't reflect what we do." As she talks about her "service lines" and "branding opportunities," Nichols sounds less like the stereotypical librarian -- more like the stereotypical chief operating officer.
Little wonder, then, that like a company on the rise, Orrick's IRC is not only branching out -- moving beyond legal research and into competitive intelligence and client development work -- but it's also getting the word out about these efforts. It has the new name -- which became official about a year-and-a-half ago -- and even had its IRC logo stamped on the cover of every market analysis, industry report and company profile the group churns out for Orrick's 980 lawyers. "Library" had to go, says Nichols, because "people had an incomplete idea of what we can deliver."
Call it what you will, today's law library is tightly integrated with the rest of the firm. It's vital not only for finding case law but for finding new business, too. LawFirmInc.'s sixth annual survey of law firm librarians at Am Law 200 firms reveals that they are continuing to move beyond "traditional" library work, like legal research, and into marketing and competitive intelligence, computer training and even knowledge management projects. (Ninety-five firms participated in the survey.)
Librarians say they spend just 57 percent of their time on old-line activities -- down from 62 percent in last year's survey -- which helps explain another notable finding: a drop in billable hours. While full-time library staffers billed an average of 511 hours each in 2005, they billed just 406 hours in 2006.
Yet the burgeoning responsibilities and dwindling billables aren't causing librarians to lose sleep. To the contrary, satisfaction rates remain extraordinarily high, with 87 percent of respondents happy in their jobs and just 1 percent saying that they prefer traditional librarian's work. As for all the rainmaking, "it's absolutely a good thing," says Mary Kay Jung, director of library services at Thompson Coburn in St. Louis. "We've got to keep new clients coming in."
But as the libraries take on more businesslike tasks, they are also facing more businesslike challenges. According to the survey, the average law library budget decreased 3.5 percent in 2007, coming in at $4,251,627 -- compared with $4,408,242 in 2006. And only 45 percent of firms have more full-time library employees than they did two years ago. The average law library staff size is currently 19. Cost recovery has become more difficult, too, with clients increasingly demanding that online research tools be treated as overhead. But perhaps the biggest headaches are coming from the content providers, the vendors who sell access to electronic research tools. They continue to raise licensing fees, introduce new products and market their wares aggressively -- often directly to lawyers.
So librarians are spending an increasing amount of time vetting products, training lawyers how to use them efficiently (read: without running up the tab) and haggling over contracts. "Every vendor thinks we are a cash cow," says Carolyn Ahearn, director of library services at Wiley Rein in Washington, D.C. "But clients are balking at the costs. I've gotten much more unwilling to accept the offer the vendor puts on the table. Librarians are wising up that they can negotiate."
COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE
Judging from the numbers alone, competitive intelligence work made only a small advance in 2007, taking up 9 percent of the library staff's time, compared with 7 percent in 2006. But in a dozen interviews with law firm librarians, each of whom took part in the survey, it was, by far, the topic that generated the most enthusiasm. It isn't so much the work itself but the effect it's having on the library's prominence -- and influence.
A growing number of firms now have at least one staffer whose sole job is to develop business intelligence -- to generate analyses of industries that might be ripe for legal representation, the litigation histories of prospective clients and even profiles of in-house counsel -- anything that could be helpful to an attorney making a pitch. "We'll look for a connection we may have; a law school, maybe," says Thompson Coburn's Jung.
PET PEEVE
But librarians clearly have their pet peeve: the online content providers, particularly the big two, Reed Elsevier Plc's LexisNexis and Thomson Corp.'s Westlaw. There was a time when electronic services were supposed to replace books and lower costs. They've done neither. Instead, fees continue to rise each year -- well beyond the rate of inflation, say librarians (licensing fees are typically covered by confidentiality agreements).
In response to the librarians' concerns, LexisNexis told LawFirmInc. in a statement that they "regularly have formal, structured discussions with accounts using vehicles such as customer councils and focus groups. ... [And] to help ensure that our customers pay for only the services they requested, we have an extensive process for alerting customers of charges not included in their service plan."
A spokesman for Thomson said in a statement that "the voice of the customer guides everything we do. It's fair to say there's always going to be room for improvement, and good customer feedback helps us to focus our efforts and resources on the most important issues."
The mounting costs of online research would be bad enough without a further complication: Firms are having a harder time passing the buck, literally, to their clients. Today, most firms are struggling -- and failing -- to break even in this area. "The [in-house] counsel know that [historically] books were an overhead expense, and they want to know why Westlaw and Lexis are different," says Wiley Rein's Ahearn. "So the costs are moving from client expense to firm overhead."
Recouping online charges can be tricky. Even within a single firm, "some clients will pay for it, and some won't," says a librarian who requested anonymity. "But more and more won't. Of course, the firm has to recover it in some way, so per-hour charges could be higher." That may help explain another finding in this year's survey; while the number of billable hours decreased, the library's billable-hour charge increased, from an average of $134 in 2005 to $144 in 2006.
Not surprisingly, with the firms absorbing more of their online research costs, librarians are, by necessity, turning into tough negotiators. They say they're developing savvy strategies to keep the vendors -- and their spiraling prices -- under control.
The favored move: pitting LexisNexis and Westlaw against each other. Most firms still use both (though they often use one more than the other), and that, librarians say, can give them a bit of leverage when it's time to hammer out a new contract. "We've made a strategic decision to have both of our contracts come due at the same time, so we can always tell one we'll go with the other," says Thompson Coburn's Jung.
But the strategy is largely a bluff. "We can keep the price down by threatening to [drop one service], but you really have to keep your users in mind," says Trish Webster, library manager of Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn in Detroit. "These are tools that lawyers need every day to get their job done." It should come as little shock, then, that 82 percent of librarians surveyed don't plan to move to a single vendor within the next five years.
Meanwhile, the online vendors often play the same game, pitting one firm against another when negotiating contracts, the librarians say. "They'll tell us that so-and-so down the street has it; you don't want them to have information you won't, do you?" says Christine Scherzinger, director of library and research services at Duane Morris in Philadelphia.
Another emerging strategy among librarians is to meet the vendor's price, but insist that they throw in another service or two. "It's becoming known that they have some latitude," says Wiley Rein's Ahearn. "The vendors have [business] models where they need to get a certain overall price. But they can bundle products together."
Yet for all their bargaining strategies, librarians remain relatively disappointed customers. On a scale of 1 (very good) to 5 (very bad), LexisNexis scored just a 2.43 for overall satisfaction, marginally better than Westlaw at 2.51. And those numbers are down from last year (when the services scored 2.37 and 2.42, respectively).
Adding to the online headaches are pricing models and new product introductions -- not just by the big two but also by the many smaller vendors targeting the legal market -- that strain the patience, and wallets, of law firm librarians. Some vendors, for example, base licensing fees not on the number of users but on the size of the firm. Under this model, a tax resource will cost a 500-lawyer firm with a five-person tax department far more than it would a 100-lawyer firm with a five-person department. Other vendors insist on a minimum number of licenses, so a firm can find itself paying for 10 slots, but using just six.
Vendors will also introduce new products that integrate and expand parts -- but not all -- of their older services. That, too, increases frustration -- and bills.
"You can't get rid of the old stuff, because the new stuff doesn't do everything," says Catherine Hardy, firmwide library manager at Heller Ehrman in San Francisco. "But there is only so much money to go around."
Internet-friendly marketing strategies are also creating havoc for librarians. Increasingly, they say, vendors are wooing lawyers directly with targeted e-mails, free trials, even frequent-flyer-like programs that award prizes based on how much they use a service (among the swag: Starbucks gift cards). "It creates a huge interest in products that we may not need," says Duane Morris's Scherzinger.
With so many new products hitting the market, and so many older ones continually evolving, it has become difficult for the librarians to keep up -- and near impossible for the lawyers. Often, lawyers will use electronic research in unnecessary ways. For example, they may rack up usage charges for one service while the firm has already paid for a similar service.
One librarian -- who declined to be identified -- tells of a lawyer who spent $2,300 on Westlaw running one name through public record databases while the firm had already paid for the same search capability through Lexis. Complicating the problem, says this librarian: "The services will tell you there is an additional cost, but don't say what that cost is. It could be hundreds. It could be thousands."
The solution: Steer lawyers to "preferred" resources. By doing so, librarians can eliminate many of those unnecessary charges and boost lawyer efficiency. One way to do this is through training, and many librarians are ramping up their programs. "We'll show them what resources we already have, what is free and what they can do without going on Lexis and Westlaw," says Duane Morris' Scherzinger. "We'll also tell them what they need to know if they do go on, like how to avoid incurring additional fees."
Librarians are training lawyers, too, on when to hit the books. Incorporating book research with electronic tools can be cost-effective, because books have no usage fees. While many firms have eliminated their print reporters -- at least in some offices -- paper is hardly an endangered species. The survey found that 76 percent of librarians reported spending more on print products in 2006 than they did in 2005.
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
The other way to get preferred resources in front of lawyers is via technology; in particular, with knowledge management initiatives. These include Web-based portals that integrate a firm's research tools and work product on one platform.
For most of the last 10 years, knowledge management was overhyped and underdeveloped, but projects are finally gaining momentum, and librarians are playing a key role: Eighty-four percent of those surveyed say that they are actively involved in their firm's KM efforts. The work, they say, can't simply be handed over to the IT department. "It's not enough to understand the [technology]; you have to understand the content," says Alirio Gomez, director of library and information services at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in New York.
KM portals let lawyers research anytime, from anywhere -- but on the firm's terms. The "wrong tool" problem is eliminated because there is no wrong tool to choose. "We provide [lawyers] with a vetted collection of best-of-breed electronic resources," says Steve Lastres, director of library and knowledge management at New York's Debevoise & Plimpton.
While their focus may have shifted from reporters to portals, from card catalogs to competitive intelligence, make no mistake: The core of what law firm librarians do remains the same. "We're connecting users to the information they need to make decisions," says Mark Estes, director of library services at Holme Roberts & Owen in Denver. "And that's what we've always been about."
THE CHARTS
The Librarian's Expanding Role
