E-books would seem to be a technology particularly suited for law firms. They travel well (stored on an e-book reader, tablet or laptop) and require no expensive real estate for shelving. If a title is ever lost, it can easily be downloaded again.
Yet when The American Lawyer asked, in its last couple of law librarian surveys, whether firms were actually buying e-books, the overwhelming answer was no. In the 2013 survey, just 21 percent of respondents were investing in e-books—a figure that was down from 2012, when 24 percent of firms were buying them. In interviews, library chiefs noted their interest in e-books, but also the challenges in adopting them. Among those challenges: the use of incompatible formats by vendors and pricing models that were too complex and too pricey.
