The retrenchment of the traditional law library continues: Hours that librarians billed to clients fell from a year earlier, according to our latest Law Librarians Survey. Library revenue and budgets also shrank, as did the physical size of the libraries themselves. Meanwhile, librarians are evolving from stewards of dusty tomes and traditional legal research into specialists in strategic and analytical research, supporting clients and the firm itself.
Research staff billed fewer hours in 2016, the third consecutive annual decline. The average number of hours billed to clients dropped by 27 hours, to 314 from 341 in 2015, which in turn was a decline from 469 in 2014. Median revenue generated by librarian billable hours fell by 64.5 percent, to $100,000 from $281,930 last year. The median firmwide library budget also fell 24.6 percent, to $3.90 million from $5.18 million.
