Law librarians and knowledge gurus being retrenched across the industry … DPP libraries not exempt from disruption … The Archbold v Blackstone’s stoush in the UK over criminal law services used at crown courts … Jade goes it alone … Nick Bonyhady reports from the silence of his law library 

The rationale for much of the downsizing is that librarians and libraries are costly overheads that take up too much space and anyway lawyers can find information for themselves at the click of a mouse.

Andrew Cunningham, head of innovation at MinterEllison, told Lawyer’s Weekly in 2016 that “everyone uses online resources these days”. 

MinterEllison has closed its Sydney law library and retains a handful of bookshelves in an office café. 

Minters is not alone. DibbsBarker, Arnold Block Liebler, TressCox and Henry Davis York have all either sharply downsized or closed their law libraries, some due to mergers, but all are motivated by “efficiency”.

Henry Davis York retained one librarian out of five as it moved into the jaws of Norton Rose Fulbright. 

TressCox, which is being absorbed into HWL Ebsworth, waved goodbye to its librarian meaning that there’ll be fewer librarians to service the needs of more lawyers at the expanded law shop. 

The spate of closures has also afflicted public sector libraries. 

The DPP in Sydney is down to one full-time and one part-time librarian. They report to the research lawyer while the research unit has also had its numbers slashed, so all up there are now two librarians and two lawyers to serve over 400 solicitors and crowns all over NSW. 

The Victorian DPP lawyer retired and the position abolished, while the ACT DPP librarian was made redundant. 

We’re told the Commonwealth DPP has one librarian in Sydney after the library was reduced by 70 percent following its move to smaller premises in Liverpool Street, with none in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth while there are some left in Canberra. 

In 2014, the Tasmanian Department of Justice cut $295,000 – the entire staff budget – from the Andrew Inglis Clark Library at the Tasmanian Supreme Court. 

The library, which is the coordinating law library for the whole state, still operates with one staff member present during opening hours, but its Launceston branch only opens for 12 hours a week and an online search reveals there are no opening hours for Burnie branch. 

One of our leading research organisations, the Australian Law Reform Commission, has not had a library or a librarian since 2012. 

Elsewhere, we find the proposal to close the ABC’s comprehensive sound and reference libraries, the disposal of hard copy material, followed by the retrenchment of librarians. 

The Australian Library and Information Association is up in arms about this cultural vandalism. 

One important function of law librarians is as gatekeepers between rapacious giants, such as LexisNexis and ThomsonReuters. 

Librarians we spoke to say that LexisNexis regards the professional gatekeepers as impediments who negotiate on price and are not as response to the marketing hype and flattery that accompany flogging expensive subscription services. 

The publishers try and insert themselves into law firms with the aim of selling specially designed online packages that are supposed to integrate with their internal case management systems. 

Law librarians also are repositories of considerable knowledge. One former DPP librarian told Justinian of a barrister from the private bar who had been briefed by the crown for an historic child sex offence case in a regional centre. 

Having been out of the jurisdiction for some years, the barrister asked the DPP librarian for the relevant sections of the Crimes Act in force at the time. Tracking the historical development of an act is no easy task, but the librarian quickly supplied the law as it stood at the time. 

Later he asked to be sent a definition of rape, which had already been forwarded to to him three days earlier. 

This person must have an inside track with whoever at the time was dishing out DPP briefs. The barrister was paid $22,000 for 10 days work, which he could not have done without the assistance of the librarian, who of course was retained for a fraction of that amount. 

And we wonder why there are relatively few convictions for child sex abuse. 

The retrenchment of librarians is not the only literary stoush in the legal community. For the last year-and-a-half, the United Kingdom criminal law fraternity has been divided over a decision to change the courts’ official text. 

Archbold Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice, first published in 1822, was the official criminal law service used by the Crown Courts until 2016, when it was replaced by Blackstone’s Criminal Practice. 

Blackstone’s is a relative newcomer, having only commenced publication in 1991.

The Judicial Executive Board, a panel comprised of senior judges, made the switch without any apparent consultation with practicing lawyers. When surveyed later, a clear majority of criminal barristers indicated a preference for Archbold.

Now James Richardson QC, the lead editor of Archbold and a prominent legal commentator, is contemplating legal proceedings against the Judicial Office over the switch. 

Richardson lost his job as editor of Archbold and Criminal Law Week. He had used Criminal Law Week, a journal published by Thomson Reuters which had had founded in 1997, to critique senior members of the judiciary. In Richardon’s view, that earned him enmity which motivated the decision by the Judicial Office to dump Archbold.

The Judicial Office has denied Richardson’s account, insisting that the switch was made because Blackstone’s was “thought to be the better book” and to “ensure consistency”.

It is not clear where inconsistency had arisen, given that Archbold was previously the official text used throughout the courts and by criminal law professionals. 

It was widely noted that Justice Sir Brian Leveson, of the Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking fame, is both on the Blackstone’s advisory board and a member of the executive board that preferred that textbook.

A spokesperson for the Judicial Office told the Times. 

“Sir Brian did not specifically recuse himself from discussion of the issue in judicial executive board. As is apparent from the first page of Blackstone’s, and was both known to the Lord Chief Justice and common knowledge, Sir Brian is (along with 13 others) an unremunerated editorial adviser to Blackstone’s.” 

Of course, the Times is the Murdoch stablemate of News of the World, the subject of intense scrutiny from Leveson’s inquiry. 

The fact that Archbold was £100 cheaper than its rival apparently did not factor into the decision. Nonetheless, the change in official criminal law texts was reported to save the British taxpayer about £100,000 a year.

Since the change was made, the premium that Archbold formerly charged has disappeared. Print copies of the most recent editions of the reference text are available online for about the same price, yet there does not appear to be any move to switch back.

Perhaps that is because the dispute is not just about a book. 

As the British law reporter Daniel Hoadley from the Independent Council of Law Reporting observed, Thomson Reuters, which publishes Archbold, wants to keep its readers within its own network, which includes the Criminal Appeal Reports and WestlawUK, the enormous case database.  

To that end, Archbold’s citations draw almost exclusively from those sources. By comparison, even though Blackstone’s is published by Oxford University Press, it uses citations from LexisNexis-owned law reports. 

As Blackstone’s and Archbold are often the starting points for legal research, whichever publisher has the dominant textbook also has an edge when selling subscriptions to the rest of their products.

Of course, access to each of the publishers’ walled gardens can be eye-wateringly expensive, especially for larger firms and universities.

Interestingly, the decline of law librarians both in Australia and the United Kingdom means there are fewer people to haggle over costs with the legal publishers.  

However, in spite of the formal switch (and perhaps because of the price cut), Archbold remains popular. Many judges are reported to have purchased the latest edition of the book out of their own discretionary allowance. 

The fact that the judges’ decision to change criminal law resources may end up before the judges is an experience worth watching.  

BarNet says its legal research and publishing operations are now being developed separately from the internet, email and telephony business, which has been sold to Anticlockwise Pty Ltd. 

A new company, BarNet Networks, is now running the networking and support  business, while BarNet concentrates on Jade, Jade Labs the Victorian Reports and other legal information projects. 

Anticlockwise was founded by Michael Lim and David Brown. Lim has been a systems administrator and sales person, while Brown worked as an ISP consultant and served on the executive of the Internet Industry Association.