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Big Brothers

Large-Firm Life: An Ode to Librarians

News Watch
Large-Firm Life: An Ode to Librarians

New York Lawyer
April 8, 2005

By Alison McKinnell King and Daniel BoglioliNew York Law Journal

We now know what it feels like to be an Oscar winner who forgets to thank someone responsible for her success. In our last article, we mentioned by way of example the key roles the supporting departments at large law firms play in the success of young associates. In doing so, we did not mention every department. In particular, we forgot to mention the wonderful supporting role librarians play.

Of course, we couldn't have written this article without the help of our firm's librarians. Librarians are, by definition, the greatest research tools that any firm has. They are charged with understanding what resources are useful for what purposes and for staying on top of emerging research tools. These tools range from traditional sources — books and periodicals — to online and other Internet sources.

Additionally, librarians today are most likely to be the people responsible for maintaining a library's Web site and evaluating, purchasing and implementing the software and hardware necessary to access electronic information. A good library staff will make it easier for attorneys to access at their desks all sorts of information via the Internet and intranet.

Simply having access to the appropriate research tools is not enough. Librarians are also skilled at using these resources and are often responsible for training attorneys on what resources to use and how to use them. If you are not sure that you are aware of every resource available for your law specialty, call the library and arrange a training session with someone that does know. Not only does the library staff know the electronic data sources, they are also versed at finding the most cost-effective means of finding out the information needed. Instead of reinventing the wheel every time you have a research project, ask a librarian.

For recent law school graduates, your first step in researching is usually Lexis or Westlaw. Unfortunately, this is usually not the best route for several reasons. First, although Lexis and Westlaw are good when researching narrow concepts, they are usually not the best resources to get a broad understanding of an area or law. Indeed, using Lexis or Westlaw often leads to missing the nuances that are not readily apparent in a few cases.

Therefore, most research should start with a review of the relevant treatise. For example, we would not begin research on a civil procedure issue without first looking at "Wright & Miller's Federal Practice and Procedure." There are comparable treatises for almost all areas of law. For those who are a little rusty on subscription services or who were not formally trained in legal research, the library can point you in the right direction.

Second, in most law firm libraries the librarians are able to conduct legal due diligence, compile state and federal legislative histories and — according to our librarians — conduct multi-jurisdictional surveys of specific laws. They are also knowledgeable about sources of information from the government and can track down unpublished information from the federal government and various agencies. Librarians are also a great source when searching for company information and are able to search filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Third, librarians often have access to databases that although they are a valuable source of information, are not available to associates, usually for licensing reasons. For example, the library is a good place to go if you need to search for scientific publications. Depending on the urgency and the price you are willing to pay, you can have these articles within a few hours.

Finally, if you have identified a book or article from your research that would be helpful in preparing a brief, librarians will be able to obtain it, either by borrowing it from other law firms, law associations, or college law libraries or by buying it.

All of these resources are wonderful in concept but unfortunately attorneys seldom take advantage of them. So make yourself comfortable and start looking into what your firm's library has to offer.

Alison McKinnell King and Daniel Boglioli are associates at Kaye Scholer.

French book casts Britons as un-erotic, pet-obsessed drinkers

By Colin Randall in Paris
(Filed: 11/04/2005)

The French are being offered a new guide to the English that portrays les rosbifs as a binge-drinking, pet-obsessed race which still leads the world in pop music and humour but dresses with dubious taste and treats sex as a subject of national embarrassment.

Agnès Catherine Poirier, a writer and broadcaster, bases her conclusions on the "strange, insular people" of Britain on the 10 years she has spent observing its inhabitants while living in London.

In her book, Les Nouveaux Anglais, published in France this week, she says many stereotypes that spring most readily to French minds when reflecting on their cross-Channel neighbours are already things of the past.

No one wears bowler hats any more, Poirier notes, yet Burberry, the classic styling once favoured by the aspiring classes, is now the motif of the football hooligan.

Old-fashioned pubs are fast disappearing from villages and towns. Even the full English breakfast, eaten by one Briton in two only half a century ago, is today the preserve of "tourists hoping to rediscover a culture that no longer exists" and exiles dreaming from foreign parts of the country they left behind.

Poirier, 32, devotes whole sections of her book to British obsessions - class prejudice, pets, queuing, the weather, the tabloids and bingo - but is at her most abrasive when dealing with attitudes to sex.

A chapter headed ''No Sex Please We're British'' begins with the words: "Let us be charitable and put ourselves in the place of our poor British friends."

How, she wonders, could there not be a problem with sex in a country where silicone-enhanced breasts and bottoms are paraded in the popular press "without an ounce of eroticism"; film censors forbid images of erect penises; the Kama Sutra has been legally sold only since 1963; and the Ann Summers chain sells a million sex toys a year?

Poirier adds, for good measure, evidence of raised Gallic eyebrows at the David Blunkett affair, which she summarises as "a bachelor minister telling the press of his passionate relationship with a married woman he hopes will get a divorce and marry him instead".

"How, in such conditions, can you avoid becoming totally nuts and a touch schizophrenic?" she asks. "On matters of sex, the British learn only how to laugh... it frightens them, thus the obsession.

''Sex, this subject of national embarrassment, is present everywhere, for example in the often provocative dress and attitude of women. But to talk of it is out of the question."

Moreover, she says, sex in Britain seems to have nothing to do with love but has been turned instead into an exercise, like yoga or jogging.

However, Poirier makes it clear that her views should not be seen as revenge for tabloid attacks on her country, or British expatriates' invasions of Brittany and the Dordogne.

She admits to a personal love affair with la perfide Albion that began with her first schoolgirl visit and has been nurtured by admiration of Londoners' courage during the Blitz and her love of Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, English tea and chocolate, "and the inimitable accent of Laurence Olivier".

Despite self-confessed struggles to understand what makes the British tick, her book - a series of 34 essays with the declared aim of "revisiting national clichés" is a mostly affectionate look at the "shortcomings and charms of a great nation".

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005. Terms & Conditions of reading.

Cuban Librarians Jailed: American Library Association Shelves Their Case : March 2004 : Peacework

Nat Hentoff, a biographer of 20th century peace icon A. J. Muste, and columnist for the Village Voice, is writing a series of columns on jailed librarians in Cuba. Excerpts from these columns have been combined, with his permission, below.

In Cuba, 51-year-old Victor Rolando Arroyo - who directed an independent, private library before being sentenced to 26 years in prison during Castro's crackdown on dissenters in the spring of 2003 - is now in solitary confinement after protesting the treatment of another prisoner.

Arroyo belongs to the Independent Cuban Journalists and Writers Union. At his trial for "undermining national independence and territorial integrity," Arroyo refused a government-appointed defense lawyer because, he said, the verdict had been decided in advance.

According to the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Fronti�res), Arroyo "has high blood pressure, headaches, and diarrhea, and has lost between 15 and 20 kilograms since he was imprisoned." He is not receiving treatment. At his trial, closed to foreign journalists, the judge called Arroyo a "traitor to Cuba" and a "lackey of the US government."
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