Harvard Law School Library

I'm back in Melbourne after the long haul flight home and can finally post the photos I took at Harvard University's Law School Library last week.  

The Library was impressive, not only the architecture, the art, the librarians, and the books, but the reverential buzz which permeates the place.  Past famous graduates were sculpted into every corner, or gazed out at us with their learned, and oily brows from portraits lining almost every wall.  The portrait which struck me most was of George Lewis Ruffin, the first African American Graduate of Harvard Law School.  He graduated in 1869, the first born son of free African Americans living in Virginia, later moved to Boston.  I thought of President Obama who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991, and then counted up the American presidents who have held law degrees – 26 out of the 44, including, and this still surprises me, Richard Nixon. Eight US presidents have graduated from Harvard University, among them the ill fated John F. Kennedy.

I'd like to thank the Australian Law Librarians' Association for so kindly awarding me the scholarship which allowed me to attend AALL 2012, an opportunity I wouldn't have been able to take up otherwise.  I hope the Blog has given you a sense of (some) of the ideas buzzing in Boston for the three days, and I hope it encourages you to apply next year, I couldn't have had a better time, or been more happy to get acquainted with Boston.

The Library

George Lewis Ruffin

What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

Day 3, and the last day of AALL 2012. I just spent an hour working my way up and down the cavernous exhibitors hall, casting an eye over every stall and picking up a cute black bull stress toy for my nephew, and a tiny Lego man which one publisher had creatively come up with to entice people to his stall, all the parts separated so you could bespoke your own figure. I discovered a couple of databases I had never heard of before and could be really useful back home. My lack of a business card fazed no one, all they had to do was scan the barcode on my name tag hanging around my neck, I felt a little like a package at the supermarket, which made me smile.

The session, What You Don't Know Can Hurt You - An Overview of Social Media Legal Issues and a Deep Dive into Social Media in the Workplace seemed very apt to me as I take my tentative first steps into the land of Blog. I always attend sessions on social media when ever I get the chance to keep up to date and find out something new - and there is always something new. The two presenters, Marcia Burris and Barbara Yuill made the point that we are living in a period of change as significant as the industrial revolution in terms of how we live our lives. When you consider the impact of the Internet and email as it dawned twenty years ago, it pales in significance to social networking and the complimentary enabler of mobile technology.

Social Media Law is developing slowly in relation to the rapid growth that's happening but it's a good point made that we are not the customer of online sites, we are their product. If we keep this front of mind we go a long way towards self vetting our own digital foot print. It's not just the profiles and photos we load up that are eroding traditional notions of a private sphere, it's the cookies that collect data about our online choices, we are in effect, easily read. Privacy laws will change in time. Social media spreads very quickly and it is hard to undo tweets and postings said in a sudden strop, deleted information can be retrieved and is discoverable.

The last session I attended was on valuing library resources and services and it was an excellent way to end the three days. The title of the paper, What Makes a Librarian Worth a Million Bucks? was enough to entice me along. The session tied back neatly to the Keynote presentation by Richard Susskind on day one about our future roles. Walking past the hugely impressive Boston Public Library, and visiting the Harvard Law School Library yesterday, the answer to that question about our value it seems to me is this, we know stuff, we know how to get it, we know where it is, and we know what our lawyers want. Conferences like this keep us looking ahead not at whats coming towards us, but to where it's going.

The Law of the Salem Witch Trials

The thing I love about conferences is the chance to sit in on a really good variety of papers, so kudos to the Boston AALL organisers for putting on such an inspired mix. Choosing the papers to attend today was really hard, I wanted to be in two, or three sessions at once. I'm a believer in eclectic choices, obviously I'll attend the sessions that have direct relevance to my job, but I think we need to mix it up a bit.

First though I'll rewind to yesterday. I won't update you on every session I attended, which isn't to say they weren't all fantastic or of interest. The last session yesterday was as inspiring as the first, held in a smaller room, this was a popular choice with many people - standing room only to listen to Anurag Acharya, one of the two minds who brings us Google Scholar. Acharya discussed Google's approach to publishing and searching US legal opinions. Google is so clean and seamless it's a wonder to me that there are real live mathematicians behind the scenes organizing our (online) world.

Acharya' premise with Scholar was simple, everyone should be able to find and read the laws that govern them, to be free both to read and to search. To search (no surprise to this audience) you need to know things - the right way to formulate queries, and, you need a credit card, or an account. Acharya closely examined case law and citations, how they look on the page to understand them and to find a way to make simple legal queries 'just work'. He wanted to target an Everyman audience, not just for the attorneys and litigators (though it is also for them). Acharya has a very small team (from memory six or eight) to achieve big goals. One point that really resonated with me in relation to legal databases and user testing - he looks at how users use the system rather than just listening to what they say they want - what they actually do online is not always the same thing. My hope is that some of the legal publishers were in the room taking notes.

So back to The Law of the Salem Witch Trials, and my first session for Day 2. When I was studying undergrad in Arts I took a history paper on the European witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one among the many papers I happily thought would never be of use in the 'real world'. Right. And wrong. Following your interests is never a waste of time, and, it's amazing sometimes how that knowledge might suddenly come into play in a very useful way. I enjoyed this session and I learnt a lot about the local history of Massachusetts, the troublesome yoking with the UK, colonial American mores, and, that one of the women in the audience traced her ancestry back to two (sadly) executed witches which I thought was impressive.

Richard Susskind

Day one of the conference and Keynote Speaker Richard Susskind stepped up to the podium to address his theme - Tomorrow's Legal Marketplace. Susskind is one of the most influential and thought provoking writers on the legal profession and it's response to new developments, particularly in the IT arena. He mentioned that his book, The End of Lawyers?, published in 2008 could also have marked the end of his own career, and that makes a nice segue into a proposition for all of us, with law and legal services changing at a rate of knots, what about our own careers? How do we stay relevant, or better still indispensable?

Susskind identified three drivers of change in the current legal marketplace, the first being the drive of 'more for less'. As budgets are cut and more quality output is expected from fewer heads, legal process outsourcing making inroads, this issue touches us all. The second driver was 'decomposing' which relates to the way that any piece of work can be decomposed or broken down into its component parts in order to find the most efficient way of sourcing those elements. Finally the last driver, technology. Susskind relayed that in 1995 when he predicted the use of email by lawyers would overtake other forms of delivering legal advice he was accused of bringing the profession into disrepute. Times have changed!

A couple of remarks really caught my imagination. The first was in relation to outsourcing and off shoring and the cry that this development is cannibalising the law. Richard quipped that if there's going to be cannibalisation you want to be the first at feast. I'd add that you want to know as much as possible about these issues in advance, so when the topics are raised at work, you already have an informed response and not just a gut clenching fear of being eaten alive!

Relaying the story of famous Ice Hokey player Wayne Gretzky in an interview, when asked why he was such a genius of the game, he replied he always skated to where the puck was going to be, not to where it was. Susskind has an uncanny ability to do just that with the legal profession and future technologies, his full presentation is not available on the site yet (approximately two weeks I'm told) but it's well worth listening to in full if you get the chance. He asked us to look ahead five years, and have a persuasive concept of what the future will look like. He mentioned that our profession would have four key job groups in tomorrows market - Project Management, Knowledge Engineer, Legal Technologist and Process Analyst. His parting comment was positive - 'The legal sector is moving towards your skills and experience.'

Steve Buscemi

My first morning in Boston (yesterday) hung over with jet lag I left my hotel to find a bagel and coffee, or, cawfeee. Some people visit a city and read every guide book, interview everyone they know who has been there, and Google the living daylights out of the town. I don't see anything wrong with this approach, in fact, I'd like to be the kind of person who performed these thorough searches (and not just when I'm going on holiday). My way is to literally follow my nose, I'll arrive at the hotel and ask for a map, search begins there. Then I'll head out paying careful attention to the road signs in case I can't find my way back, looking for a cafe that looks like it might make good coffee, in a good locale. And so I found myself on the edge of Boston Common ordering coffee and standing next to Steve Buscemi. A star! I was so overcome I couldn't remember what I wanted to order. This says something about search, chance and following your nose. The conference starts in earnest tomorrow with Richard Susskind as keynote speaker. Looking forward to it, and, another star.

Business cards or the tech tools ?

Fancy leaving your business cards at home! Networking is so important and business cards provide us with a nice and easy introductory 'step' in the whole meeting and connecting with people process.
But if without business cards (and we are all caught at one time or other), what else could we use as an ice-breaker, conversation starter and general memory aid at large networking-rich events?
* Could the LinkedIn app help out? I admit I don't have the app on my phone so can't comment on how easy it is to use on the fly for adding connections.
* Maybe you can take a photo of yourself on your phone, set up a standard message, and then text your contact details to everyone you meet?
* Or maybe treat it as a great reason to access your work email and send everyone you meet a nice follow up email?
Will it be technology to the rescue? Or good old pen and paper?
Lianne

One Business Card

The day before I left for Boston (yesterday) I worked through my list of things to do before leaving work. The last being - and my favorite - out of office and forward phone. I said goodbye to my work mates and drove home. It wasn't until I got home and started packing that I realised I had forgotten one very important thing for someone traveling half way across the globe for a conference - my business cards. I only had one left. I had given the second one away the night before. That wasn't exactly business related. I ALWAYS forget to take my business cards with me, to meetings, work dinners, any situation where someone(s) are pressing them eagerly into your hands and you have to demure, saying you forgot to bring your own might suggest you don't actually have one, or, worse, you are not important enough to hand them out. I have boxes of business cards at work, every time my title changes, new business cards arrive and the old box is relegated. I think I have had eight or nine over eleven years. That is almost one box of cards a year. And it certainly says something about the elasticity of our roles these days. I keep the cards, one day I imagine I will give a PowerPoint presentation and flick through them to emphasise the point: it's a long time since I've been called a 'Legal Librarian'. Anyway, back to the one card. I will keep it with me and think hard about who I give it to, I won't drop it into a bowl at a publishers booth keeping my fingers crossed for a prize. This is the first challenge I will set myself over the four days of listening, networking and shaking hands at AALL, Boston. Amanda

Along for the ride

Hi, folks, Anne here with a quick post to make sure I've got the blog system sorted...and I'm looking forward to this interesting opportunity to vicariously share the AALL experience.

Boston Calling

Welcome to the Boston Calling Blog.  A site inspired by an upcoming trip to Boston to attend the 2012 American Association of Law Libraries Annual Meeting and Conference, and with thanks to the Australian Law Librarians Association for awarding me the Fellowship Scholarship which has allowed me to attend.

To stimulate and to inspire discussion I have asked four other people to Blog with me - Anne Paton, Lianne Forster Knight, Marisa Bendich, just waiting to hear back from the fourth.  The plan is to use the Conference as a spring board to discuss the issues which affect us all, with a particular emphasis on the globalisation of law and our mobile profession.

Amanda Surrey