Eliza Boles
Law librarians who teach are often described as “support” faculty. But in today’s law schools, that label no longer reflects reality—and it certainly doesn’t justify the persistent pay gap between teaching law librarians and other law professors.
Teaching law librarians design and teach credit-bearing courses. We mentor students. We publish scholarship. We serve on faculty and university committees. We help shape institutional policy. And we do all of this while holding more formal education than many of our faculty colleagues.
In addition to a JD, law librarians typically hold a second master’s degree in information or library science. That extra credential isn’t ornamental—it’s what allows us to teach advanced legal research, manage knowledge systems, guide empirical and interdisciplinary work, and lead institutions through rapid technological change. In most professions, more education correlates with higher compensation. In legal academia, law librarians are the exception.
That disconnect becomes even more troubling when you look at where the work actually lands.
As law schools grapple with generative AI, data literacy, and emerging legal technologies, law librarians are routinely asked to step in. We train students. We train faculty. We draft AI policies and guidance. We sit on task forces and committees. We translate complex technology into ethical, pedagogically sound practice. This work is not optional—it is essential to the credibility and functioning of modern legal education.
Yet it is rarely reflected in compensation models.
The same pattern appears with service. Law librarians are often heavily represented on college- and university-level committees, particularly those that cut across departments. We serve because we are collaborative, institution-minded, and capable. But service labor—especially the kind that keeps institutions running behind the scenes—is unevenly distributed and inconsistently rewarded. Over time, those with less formal power end up doing more invisible work.
Many teaching law librarians hold faculty titles in name. In practice, however, we are often paid significantly less than other law professors with comparable teaching and service responsibilities. That disconnect sends a clear message about what—and who—an institution values.
This isn’t about individual administrators or doctrinal faculty acting in bad faith. It’s about compensation structures that haven’t kept pace with the realities of legal education. Law schools increasingly emphasize skills training, technology fluency, and interdisciplinary competence—the very areas where law librarians lead. Continuing to underpay the people doing that work is not just inequitable; it’s strategically shortsighted.
A Call to Action
If law schools truly value teaching, service, and technological leadership, compensation must reflect that value.
It’s time for institutions to:
- Reexamine pay structures for teaching law librarians
- Acknowledge the full scope of our instructional, service, and technology labor
- Align compensation with credentials, workload, and institutional impact
Law librarians are not peripheral to legal education. We are central to its present—and its future. Paying teaching law librarians substantially less than other law professors is no longer reasonable. And it’s time we said so, clearly and publicly.
