2025 CanLIIDocs 1371
Annette Demers, Yemisi Dina, and Gian Medves
2025-05-07
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About the Authors
*Annette Demers, BA, LLB, MLIS, is a reference librarian at the Don and Gail Rodzik Law Library at the University of Windsor and has been an academic law librarian for over twenty years. Yemisi Dina BA, MA, LLB, MLIS, MPPAL, is Chief Law Librarian at the Osgoode Hall Law School, York University and has worked in academic law libraries for over 30 years. Gian Medves, BA, MLS, is Chief Law Librarian at the Bora Laskin Law Library at the University of Toronto and has been an academic law librarian for 35 years.
Abstract
This article is the first in a series of articles about academic law librarianship in Canada. It begins with a reminder of the complexity of legal research and details the competencies required of lawyers and legal professionals. This section transitions to the competencies of law librarians, who are charged with the task of teaching legal research skills to new lawyers and practitioners. Specialized legal research competencies are also described. Later, the article discusses the Canadian Bar Association report that precipitated the birth of law librarianship as a profession in Canada as we know it today. The article then moves on to explain how academic law library standards emerged historically to help bolster and ensure that law libraries were sufficiently resourced to be able to teach research skills to law students. It concludes with comments on the important influence that academic law librarians had on the birth of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries as a foundational professional support network. The remaining article(s) in the series will detail the findings of the 2022 survey entitled Reinvigorating Canadian Academic Law Library Standards. Introduction
Lawyers and judges do critical work in creating laws, advocating for citizens, adjudicating disputes and enforcing our democratic processes by demanding transparency and accountability from government actors. Providing comprehensive, ready access to our laws and regulations is an important pillar of democracy.
Legal research is the skill set and knowledge base that ensures that a legal professional is competent to navigate legal information to be able to do this important work.
Legal research skills are acquired by law students through a variety of law school learning opportunities.
Academic law librarians support the important research of faculty members in analyzing our legal system. We play an important role in teaching future lawyers how to do legal research. We also assist the public in navigating legal information sources necessary to participate in our justice system.
To understand the work of law librarians, one must have a fundamental understanding of the legal research process and the skills competency requirements of law school graduates.
The Complexity of Legal Research[1]
Legal research is a complex process. This complexity arises from the jurisdictions covered, the variety of sources available[2], their historical organization over time, and the research tools developed to navigate them.
Legal research requires the ability to review a client’s factual situation through the lens of a complex interplay of statutes, regulations and case law (otherwise known as “applying the facts to the law”). Also, as mentioned by Tanguay at footnote 2 above, looking to secondary sources or legislative history may be required when dealing with interpretive nuances or new areas of law.
Legal information is further complicated by the variety of players in the marketplace, which includes governments, non-profit content providers, and particularly, the legal publishing industry. The industry is competitive and evolving. Legal information is costly, and available in many places, and not all content is available from all providers.
The migration of formats from materials that were historically published in print format to digitized and born-digital materials requires special mention: although technology may have made accessing the information sources easier, in other ways, technology has added additional complexity to the research process.
Overlaying artificial intelligence on this complexity makes the work of the legal information professional even more critical in today’s legal information landscape.
Learning to navigate the complexities of legal research is a core competence of legal professionals, as will be detailed next.
