Reading Time: 6 minutes

I’ve just gotten back from an invigorating experience discussing possible law library futures. Perhaps my senses were a bit heightened, then, as I read about the rootlessness of the Jackson County (MO) law library in Kansas City. While we need to remain vigilant about emerging issues that pose potential existential threats, sometimes we are already suffering from multiple morbidities. There are so many common themes that I thought I’d walk through them.

I think it’s fair to say that, outside of a law firm or law school environment, when you want to understand a law library operation, you look at the operational documents. In Missouri, there seems to be no statutory information about creating or running a law library. The reference I got from the AALL website after not finding anything better on my own was to a statute governing the Missouri courts. It allows for:

[surcharges deposited with the court] may be applied and expended under the direction and order of the judges of the circuit court, en banc, of any such county for the maintenance and upkeep of the law library maintained by the bar association in any such county, or such other law library in any such county as may be designated by the judges of the circuit court, en banc, of any such county; provided, that the judges of the circuit court, en banc, of any such county, and the officers of all courts of record of any such county, shall be entitled at all reasonable times to use the library to the support of which said funds are applied. Fund paid to treasurer may be designated by circuit judge – use of fund for law library …. Mo. Rev. Stat. §488.429 (1)

For better or worse, that leaves a lot of latitude. In 1975, a group of lawyers in Jackson County spun up a non-profit corporation (501(c)(3)) to provide a law library service. The articles of incorporation spell out that the library is for the bench and bar and public, and its Board would be constituted from the large bar associations and the bench. So far, so normal.

The purposes for which the corporation is organized are as follows:
     a. To establish, support, operate, and maintain a law library in one or more locations within Jackson County, Missouri, for the use of the Bar and the general public of such County and the surrounding area.

The fantastic nugget in this situation is that the Jackson County Law Library is not a government entity and so, by incorporating as a 501(c)(3), it has left a paper trail. While most government law libraries are audited for their use of public funds, this can also make them opaque. Ohio is one state that used to make law library audits publicly accessible. According to the article, the court apparently provides $377,000 in annual funding, which amounts to about 85% of total non-investment income. That is a normal percentage and is actually lower than many law libraries, who rely for all or nearly 100% of their funds from a government funding source.

From those annual IRS filings as a non-profit, we can see that it has been financially healthy for most of the last decade and, despite having no space to exist, remains financially viable.

A chart showing income and expenses for Jackson County Law Library in Missouri. The axis on the left ranges from a high of $500,000 down to zero and to a negative $500,000 in expenses. Expenses are color coded in red and constitute salaries and all other expenses. The green shows income. At the bottom, labels indicate which year between 2014 and 2021 the columns apply to.
A chart showing Jackson County Law Library income and expenses for most of the last decade. The Law Library has had net income every year except 2015.

This is the thing that I find most perplexing. This is, by all accounts, a well-funded small law library. There have been no significant income challenges. There appears to have been some staff constriction. Collection costs have been steady (which may suggest they need to have been reduced, if there has not been a change in collection strategy). But there’s no burning financial platform. So what is the problem?

Red Flags

When I read the article in the Kansas City Star, a number of themes struck me. Most of them struck me negatively. On the face of the story, the law library’s challenge is that its lease is not being renewed after being sold to a new landlord. The court has a role in this, though, as it has “begun the process of moving the library’s operatoins out of the building … and back into the downtown courthouse where electronic access to legal research resources will be provided.” But there is a path that was followed to arrive at that decision and I think we can make guesses about what that path looked like.

Law Libraries = Books

Let’s start with format-centric arguments. The lawyer is quoted as saying “[b]ooks … are basically my home” and “these materials still have value”. We don’t even have to touch on the reporter’s “old editions” and “aging journals” references.

There is no longer a good reason for the vast majority of law libraries of any context to justify their existence based on their ability to warehouse physical formats. I am definitely in the camp where some print is useful and people should be able to research with formats they prefer. But, at the end of the day, format isn’t a hill to die on.

It’s not just about people caught up on books. It’s also people averse to books. It’s still format-centric and not strategic to say, as the Law Library Board president did, that “[t]he mere concept of physical books … is just not a creature of the 2020s….”

This is decision-making by anecdote. I read physical books, therefore they are best. I only do electronic legal research, therefore books are discards. It shows a failure to understand nuanced, professional collecting of materials, matching content to individuals. Fundamentally, it shows that these lawyers lack an awareness of what lies beyond their perception and are very likely missing resources merely because they eschew a given format.

I expect that not enough collection changes were made to reduce the cost of materials to bring it in line with actual usage. In 2023, the library went single-source which would have yielded a cost-savings but may have been too late. $300K a year for expenses seems like a lot for a small subscription-based, court funded library.

Audience of Elites

This is especially true when you are dealing with a legal professional audience, as this library was. Despite the sentence in their articles of incorporation, the law library does not appear to encourage public access. I cannot tell whether the public were allowed access but there is certainly not an emphasis on the access to justice for people without law degrees.

  • The Not an attorney? link on their website does not lead them to any law library resources. It is merely a set of links to other resources: government, legal aid, and so on.
  • The membership application does not have a provision for anyone who isn’t a lawyer. I would argue it also excludes people with law degrees who are not in private practice.

So, you may hate people who don’t have law degrees. I don’t. But even if you do, law libraries are a numbers game. We justify our operations based on value and revenue and other metrics. The bottom line is this: more people, more reason for the law library. If you’re involved in more law firm transactions or billable outcomes, or serving more people as a public good, or helping more people improve their bar passage, you’re more valuable.

If, on the other hand, you’re stingy with access, you don’t “spoon feed” and cause people to seek alternate information help, or otherwise place constraints on your service, you diminish your value.

More people is better. More usage is better. The Law Library’s Board president notes that “[t]he law library has had a dwindling number of members over the last decade, and with the vast majority of legla research done electronically, officials overseeing the library elected to shutter the space.”

Outer Space

Space has a cost. The benefit of a courthouse-based law library is that, usually, the court space is free to the law library. Free-standing law libraries may have more space flexibility but it comes at the expense of being a paying tenant. Law libraries that buy their own space have the additional challenges of a landlord. If something goes wrong with the property, you can’t just walk away from it.

Non-courthouse space can also be advantageous for allowing after-hours access. This can be a revenue generator as it allows lawyers to research outside of the hours they need to spend with clients or in the courthouse. But it’s often not enough revenue to justify having a private space.

It sounds like the courts were paying for this private space, so it’s no surprise they wanted to bring that to an end. It’s not clear whether the rent was part of the Law Library’s expenses or in addition to the amount provided by the court in its annual budget. If I’d been the court administrator, I would probably have wanted that money back too, given that the Law Library rented space was one block over from the space the law library is returning to.

What other options are there, though? UMKC has a law library 5 miles south of the Jackson County Law Library’s location. The benefit of the current space was proximity to the courts, both trial and appeals. But UMKC is, in some ways, a better option as it is a publicly-accessible law library. Proximity to a courthouse presumes that all legal issues involve the courts, which we know isn’t true.

Kansas City Public Library is a 9 minute walk from the courthouse too. If the court had decided to relocate the law library, one would hope that it would have also talked to the public library. As a rule, public libraries are substantially better places to put law libraries than modern courthouse because they lack the security obstacles, have longer hours, trained staff, and are already oriented towards public service and delivery of information. It even has free 1 hour parking with validation on weekdays, and entirely free parking on the weekends with validation. It’s no surprise that the public library is already holding Nolo materials, and has some other introductory titles (like Garner’s dictionary) that would be useful.

But what about this electronic access? I mean, if the lawyers have been getting free Westlaw or Lexisnexis because the County has been paying for it, I don’t have a lot of sympathy. The courts will have challenges licensing content for both judiciary and the public, whether that’s everyone or even just lawyers. Wherever they decide to base this service concept, that challenge will remain.

Different Outcomes

A rock at the bottom of a mountain may have been rolling down a long time. It’s hard to know at what point a decision like this happens and how far back circumstances might have allowed for a different outcome. Sometime between 1975 and now, the Law Library Board may have lost site of the purpose of the law library as something for both the public and the bar. Or the de-emphasizing may just have represented their inability to cope with the changes that have been happening in so many other law libraries.

It strikes me as a missed opportunity to expand public access to legal information. I realize that inter-agency cooperation is difficult, especially when it means moving money from one entity to another. But putting law libraries in courthouses is unlikely to improve long term access. Courts have space constraints as dockets expand and need chambers and courtrooms. Moving a law library back into a court space is like a death knell for a space for legal research. It will benefit the lawyers and the courts but not so much the people who can’t or aren’t willing to risk accessing the courthouse, even if they have the knowledge they need to navigate the wholly electronic resources.