The American Association of Law libraries, Annual Meeting & Conference (AALL) brought several harbingers of good news on the job market for law librarians and knowledge management professionals.
I don’t need to remind anybody that the “death of the law librarian” has been repeatedly predicted over the past 20 years. Many law firm administrators and legal tech writers mistakenly believed that as print libraries shrank and morphed into digital resources, there would be no need for information professionals. Of course, this prediction made no sense to me because law firms are in an information business and their clients’ interests live and die by the quality of the legal, business, trade, legislative and scientific information at their fingertips. Law librarians’ information management skills were never tethered to print, and became even more important in a digital world which introduced new challenges related to information, quality, as well as the increasing volume, velocity and variability of unstructured data. Library and KM Directors upscaled their staffs and seized the opportunity to generate strategic business and legal insights through the integration of internal and external data. Zach Warren, eTechnology & Innovation Insights, Thomson Reuters Institute, provided a fascinating overview of a recent Thomson Reuters Staffing Survey which reported a remarkable spike in the demand for library and KM professionals.
Before I dive into that I want to highlight another surprising development.
The CIA wants you!
I have been going to AALL meetings for about 40 years and I can’t ever remember a time when any employer set up a booth in the exhibit area of the conference in order to recruit law librarians. Even more stunning was the nature of this employer – The Central Intelligence Agency! Now the CIA knows a lot about research and it is really a testament to the special skill set offered by librarians that they came to the Conference to track down the real experts. The recruiting literature states that the CIA has created its first new directorate in 50 years. The Directorate of Digital Innovation. The DDI is looking to fill its team with “forward thinking digitally savvy professionals…’shapers’ and ‘connectors’ who will lead, inspire and turn ideas into action.”
The Thomsons Reuters Staffing Survey – Demand for Librarians and KM Professionals has Spiked
Thomson Reuters sponsored a day long preconference workshop “Unleashing Innovation: A Rollercoaster Ride to Implement, Plan and uind your GenAI Toolkit” in conjunction with the AALL Annual Conference & Meeting. Zach Warren, of the Thomson Reuters Institute delivered some pretty stunning data on the increased demand for law librarians and knowledge professionals.
Thomson Reuters Institute’s “Staffing Ratio Survey” reports that in the past year, there have been some major shifts in law firm staffing trends. In the recent past there have been several consistent trends, including declines in the ratio of total support staff to lawyers. According to the report, “law firms, on average, had 81 support staff full-time equivalents (FTEs) for every 1 lawyer in 2023, compared to 95 support staff FTEs for every 1 lawyer in 2017.” From 2017 to 2022, the ratio of support staff to lawyers of several support staff function areas were in decline. Library and research roles had declined on average 2.3% each year from 2017 to 2022. The trend was confirmed in an additional metric cost per lawyer, which measures the total compensation of each functional area or department and divides that by the number of lawyers at a firm, showing the cost of that specific function area, per lawyer.
Support staff costs per lawyer have increased very consistently while the ratio of support-staff-to-lawyers has declined. This illustrated that law firms are increasing investment in higher paid staff with more specialized expertise. During the same period law firms have been reducing Full Time Equivalent (FTE) headcount with lower-level skills.
The survey indicates that “Since 2017, library & research roles have largely followed the overall trend seen among total support staff, as one of the four major function areas experiencing declines in the ratio of staff-to-lawyer headcount.”
In 2023 library and research staff ratios broke with the overall trend and spiked upwards. Library and Research staff roles grew by 5.3% in terms of their ratio to lawyer headcount (FTEs per lawyer). Library & Research management roles increased by 19.1% and knowledge Management roles increased by 31.8% in their cost per lawyer. The cost per lawyer for all library and KM staff increased by 12.9%,
This dramatically exceeded growth in all other functional areas. Warren underscored that it was rare for the TR Institute to report a staff ratio reversal of this kind in prior years. In other words, a decline once started, has rarely reversed. The only dramatic decline in library staffing was for library clerks which saw a FTEs-per-lawyer ratio decline in 2023.
Warren provided additional insights into library job growth between 2022 and 2023 based on market segment. The cost per lawyer for law library and KM staff in the overall market increased almost 13%. In ALM 100 law firms, there was a 6.9% increase; in ALM 200 firms there was a 15.2% increase; and in midsize firms there was a spectacular increase of 19.7%!
What are the drivers of the resurgence of Librarians and KM professional staffing?
The TR staffing report identifies changes in the mix of functional roles within the department. The report breaks down staff into four broad categories: legal research, library & research management, knowledge management, and library clerks.
In 2023 there was a small decline in legal research staff FTEs but a dramatic increase in knowledge management and library and research management roles. Reductions as a proportion of total library & research FTEs and library clerks was also noted. Knowledge management increased 26.3% FTEs-per-lawyer, and 31.8% cost-per-lawyer. Knowledge management roles now represent 18.2% of total library & research FTEs, up from 14.3% in the previous year.
The Report states that “Overall, no other function area saw a greater shift in role proportions than library & research, meaning that, in some way, this function area clearly has undergone the greatest shake up over the last year compared to any other function area.” However, the report cautions that they do not expect this level of annual growth to continue every year.
“That being said, the changes in direction and the magnitude of cost increases within knowledge management and library & research management roles are significant. These changes in 2023 echo the broader support staff trend that has law firms investing in roles that are highly specialized and not easily automatable. Instead, we believe that firms will continue to focus on hiring specialized roles that can utilize advanced knowledge management and research management systems.”
The report rightly notes that “the growth in knowledge management and library & research management roles is in preparation for increased use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools. As firms get their data in order, they start to gather and clean the training data that they will soon be using with AI workflows. The elevated cost-per-lawyer growth that comes from these advancements is already evident as firms’ research tools require a more sophisticated set of skills to fully be utilized.”
How can Librarians and Knowledge Managers ride the transformative waves caused by Generative AI, which are heading towards law firms?
Warren also reviewed some possible scenarios regarding the impact of Generative AI on the legal profession. TR’s strategy group has developed a scenarios of three overlapping waves which are likely to hit the legal profession. These scenarios predict that there will be a dramatic transformation of the legal profession within the next 10 years.
“Wave One” is defined as the optimized law firm. There will be pressure from corporate clients to use AI, but efficiency gains will focus on support staff and there will be a gradual reduction in the headcount for associates and paralegals.
“Wave Two” predicts an industry in flux. This will bring deeper reengineering in law firms resulting in a lower lawyer headcount. GC’s will in-source work from law firms and Alternative Legal Service Providers. Large firms will productize routine work. AI will give smaller firms an opportunity to compete up-market.
“Wave Three” is the “Robo lawyer” stage of evolution. There will be a complete overhaul in law firm service delivery and pricing models and niche data will become law firm differentiators. There will be an explosion of self-service law and entrants.
My Take on the Future
If we look at the core skills of law librarians and knowledge managers, these skills align well with the ongoing transformation of the legal profession. Streamlining, productizing and creating self service offerings for clients will still rely on the strengths of information professionals including: Information quality control, information design and usability, user experience and training.
The Robo lawyer phase, if it comes, will have far reaching effects across both legal and business support staffing in law firms and information professionals will have to continue to adapt and provide strategic insights which will help their firms navigate the oncoming waves of change.