YOUNGSTOWN — Like many organizations, the Mahoning County Law Library has been affected by the onset of the internet about three decades ago, making access to digital information — in this case legal information needed by lawyers and others — available on their own computers.
It’s one reason the law library is renovating most of its space in the coming months, making it more conducive to quiet research or meetings with clients or other attorneys. The renovation will cost about $400,000 — all private funds generated by membership dues lawyers used to pay to be members of the now defunct Mahoning County Law Library Association.
Attorney Jay Blackstone, longtime chairman of the Mahoning County Law Library Resources Board, which runs the law library, remembers in the 1980s, when he was still in law school, doing legal research in the Law Library. It is on the fourth floor of the Mahoning County Courthouse, just as it was when the courthouse opened in 1910.
“I would go down there and do research because I was working for lawyers here in town on summer break. But it used to be that the law library was an exclusive lawyer’s club. The public wouldn’t come in there. They were intimidated, and it was so crowded back then, too, because so many in the profession were based downtown,” Blackstone said.
But since then, most lawyers have migrated to the suburbs and don’t come downtown as often, he said. The internet also has reduced the number of times lawyers are compelled to go to the law library to look through law books, he said. The Law Library still has some indispensable law books, its executive director said, but that is becoming less and less the case.
Lawyers do still have reasons to contact the Law Library — to get help in finding information on the internet, for instance — Blackstone said. Additionally, people have become less intimidated by doing their own legal research, so the public comes in more often.
Furthermore, all lawyers cannot afford to purchase the most respected and most expensive legal research tool — Westlaw — so some still rely on the law library to provide a computer equipped with Westlaw and also rely on the Law Library’s expert — Executive Director Susan McGrew — for help. Often that involves the lawyer sending McGrew an email with a question and getting an emailed reply.
McGrew said said the law library has many fewer books today than decades ago, but she showed a wall of books containing the most up-to-date Ohio Revised Code statutes. Those statutes are available online, but some lawyers check out one of those books so they can carry it with them into a courtroom, she said.
As a result of needing less space for books, the Resources Board has gone out to bid for a renovation, which will involve both of the rooms at the Law Library used by the public. The renovation will not improve the technology because it is up to date, Blackstone said. The changes will be to the rooms themselves.
The primary room where McGrew and her assistant work will see the addition of seating and workstations but fewer books. The second room, which has an open floor plan, will be changed to create three rooms with soundproofing materials. Each room will have a workstation equipped with a computer and the Westlaw software, where a person can do research or hold a private meeting involving clients or attorneys.
The space has been used for research and sometimes Zoom meetings or in-person meetings in recent years, but now the space will be more conducive for that and provide more privacy.
“I think that’s one of the needs,” Blackstone said. Meeting rooms are “not a direct law library function, but we’re making our space available to have meetings.” He said each meeting room will seat as many as 12 people. “That is part of the evolution is we need to make good use of our space,” he said.
There has been a “migrating” over the years to lawyers wanting a space to talk to clients, he said. “We have found over the years … it’s better to give them some private rooms where they don’t have to worry about anyone overhearing their conversations,” he said.
Most of the time the “second room” is used by attorneys and clients in domestic-relations cases “just because the domestic relations court is up there on the fourth floor. The lawyers are up there negotiating with the other lawyers, trying to work out a settlement. Sometimes after a court hearing they will come up to the law library and meet. After our project is complete, they will have a private room to go into,” he said.
An irony of making research/meeting rooms out of the “second room” of the law library is the way the respected architect of the courthouse, Charles F. Owsley, designed that space 116 years ago.
McGrew showed a framed copy of Owsley’s 1907 design for the fourth floor of the Courthouse, showing that Owsley drew the second room of the law library being divided into four rooms or offices. Since at least the 1970s, the room has been a mostly open space without walls.
The space was used for many years by the Mahoning County Juvenile Court until the juvenile court got its own building in the 1970s on Scott Street. Blackstone said returning the second room at the law library to the design of its architect is exciting.
“Now, (more than) 110 years later, we’re going back. And as it turns out, Charles Owsley’s original plans are going to be what we are effectuating right now,” he said. “It’s kind of an interesting evolution. It gives us a sense of pride because Charles Owsley, he is the heart and soul of that courthouse. We always feel his presence because he was such a great architect,” Blackstone said. “You have to preserve the historical aura,” Blackstone said.
Another interesting fact in the history of the law library is when it was at the pinnacle of its use in the 1960s, it had lots of books and too little room. Some books were being stored in the hallways.
“The law library actually took the (Mahoning County) county commissioners to court and said you’re required under law to give us adequate space,” Blackstone said. “In 1965, we took the county commissioners to the Supreme Court and won. The Supreme Court ordered the commissioners to provide us with more space,” he said.
It took until 1978 before the commissioners complied, after the Ohio Supreme Court found the Mahoning County commissioners in contempt, Blackstone said.
About $467,000 is available for the renovation. All of the money comes from private funds that accumulated between 1905 and 2010 from membership fees collected from attorneys of the nonprofit Law Library Association, Blackstone said. The fees were payment for being able to use the law library.
The association dissolved itself in 2010, and half of the approximately $900,000 in its endowment is available for use by the law library, Blackstone said. The reason the association dissolved is the Ohio Legislature ordered that law libraries become part of each county government in 2010 rather than have a law library board in charge.
“It’s all private money built up over many, many years,” Blackstone said of the $467,000.
Blackstone has been chairman of the Mahoning County Law Library Resources Board for 17 years. The board hires staff, for instance, but the county courts provide the funding to operate the law library, he said.
Source: https://www.vindy.com/news/local-news/2024/09/law-library-in-mahoning-opens-a-new-chapter/
