Law Librarians' Pay

11:58am (UK)
It Skills Pushing Up Law Librarians' Pay

By PA News Reporter


The recent growth in information technology has helped push salaries for law librarians at major firms up by nearly a third, according to a new survey.

Some of them can even command salaries of £100,000 a year – with a 30% annual bonus on top.

The expansion of knowledge management systems and techniques has also moved law librarians towards the top in their firms, as their research and associated skills have grown in importance in an increasingly competitive legal world, according to the survey, by leading law publishing firm Sweet and Maxwell.

It showed that one in five senior legal librarians among the Top 100 British law firm now reported directly to the managing partner or chief executive, or sat on their firms’ most senior management boards.

Nine out of 10 senior legal librarians had seen their responsibilities grow over the past five years, while more than six out of 10 believed their status within their firms had risen as new technology became more important to the firms’ long-term strategies and competitiveness.

Philippa Cunningham, a consultant at specialist recruitment firm TFPL, said a director of knowledge management at the biggest law firms could command a salary of £100,000 a year, with a bonus of up to 30% on top.

On average, a head librarian at law firm in the Top 100 would earn about £45,000 a year – compared with £35,000 in 2000.

The survey showed that 88% of firms questioned said that the share of internal budgets being allocated to legal libraries was rising, with the same proportion saying the increased spending was because of the introduction of new information technologies.

Almost all the firms questioned – 97% – said the increased investment had made a difference to the way they worked.

Jitendra Valera, director of Sweet and Maxwell Legal Online, said: “Knowledge management is now at the very core of law firms, and because of this, senior legal librarians are now increasingly important within their firms.

“Lawyers are increasingly dependent on their knowledge management skills.

“Increasingly lawyers base their reputation on delivering the best researched and most robust legal solutions in a timely manner to their clients – the modern legal librarians’ role is central to this.

“The old perception of legal librarians working away in small, dusty libraries, searching through volumes of legal texts is completely divorced from reality.”

Legal librarians were now responsible for managing powerful online information services and practice tools, as well as for teams of researchers and for ensuring that lawyers knew how to use the latest research tools and had all the extra information they needed for the specialisations, she added.

Pat Pritchard, national head of information services at leading law firm DLA, said: “Certainly the law library function works very differently now to that of say 10 years ago. New technology and the Internet mean that our legal and business current awareness is bang up to date.”