Christine Sellers the author of blog Law Librarians of Leisure has published the results of a survey she has undertaken about…
employment issues for law librarians in North America in 2009.. it is well worth a read
Here’s the link to the article http://lawlibrariansofleisure.com/2009/06/02/survey-results-are-in/
and here’s the article in full
Survey results are in!
Posted on June 2, 2009 by Christine
I left the survey results open a little bit longer since results were still coming in yesterday. However, as a result, there were 182 total responses!
Most respondents (70.9% or 129 people) had not been laid off from any organization related to the law librarian field. However, this did leave 53 people (or 29.1%) that had been.
Of those that had not been laid off, around half (60 or 49.8%) were worried about being laid off in the future. Of those responses, most (25.6% or 31 people) were not sure when the lay off would happen. Other respondents had more of an idea. Two respondents expected the laid off to be within the next month, while some saw it happening anywhere from the next three months (5 respondents) to the next six months (8 respondents) to the next year (14 respondents). Comments to this question were perhaps the most telling. The general sense was that lay offs were a possibility, especially if the economy continued to get worse. One respondent wrote that “our chief judge just called us on the carpet, calling us unused, irrelevant and ‘fat in the budget’ that needs to be cut. We have to cut 60% of our total acquisitions budget next year. Cutting staff is the next logical step.” Another respondent wrote that they were “worried that our field is being viewed as obsolete.” Respondents hailed from most every state and there were even two from Canada.
Of the respondents that had been laid off, it is not surprising that most (40 or 78.4%) had been working in a private law firm library since the news coming out of the economic crises was that firms had been the hardest hit. However, there were 6 respondents (or 11.8%) laid off from academic law school libraries, 2 respondents (or 3.9%) laid off from vendors, 1 respondent (or 2.0%) laid off from court librarians and none from government libraries. The highest number of lay offs occurred in New York (8), followed closely by California (6) and D.C. (6). However, a total of 20 states were represented.
Although lay offs appear to have affected law librarians no matter how long they have been in the field, law librarians who had been in the field 21-25 years were slightly more affected (11 respondents or 23.4%). The next highest group hit were those in the field 0-5 years (9 respondents or 19.1%). Coming in after that: 7 respondents (14.9%) had been in the field 6-10 years, tied at 6 respondents (12.8%) were those in the field 16-20 years and those in the field 30 or more years, 5 respondents (10.6%) had been in the field 26-30 years, and 3 (6.4%) respondents had been in the field 11-15 years.
There were some telling responses provided in the comment question at the end of the survey. One of the more touching responses was a respondent who wrote, “I have been searching for a new position, nationally, for 7 months. I’ve come in second a number of times, so I’ve been told. It’s hard out there, and very scary. I will probably have to leave law librarianship, at least temporarily, in order to survive and feed my family.” One respondent had been laid off twice: “one in California, once in Georgia.” Other responses reiterated the uncertainty in the field as a result of the economy. As one person said: “Economy not improving. The firm continues to reduce hours or lay-off staff. I am still employed FT but there is great uncertainty as to what may happen tomorrow.” And another respondent summed up the situation as “I’m not less worried about being laid off as our entire department being eliminated. Much of our research is being rerouted to associates, outsourced filers could handle the book updating, administrators the invoicing, and the client development and marketing work we do isn’t obviously ours alone – we split the credit. I’m concerned that the firm will decide they can do without us.”
I would like to send a big thank you to everyone who participated in the survey. If you have anything to add, please feel free to leave a comment.
