AI Isn’t Eliminating Legal Librarians, It’s Expanding Their Role

As reported (password protected) by Amanda Robert of the ABA Journal, 

“Law librarians are pushing back on the idea that generative artificial intelligence will eventually replace them. If anything, they have become more relevant as they test and promote new AI-based tools for government, law schools and law firms, says Jenny Silbiger, the president of the American Association of Law Libraries.” 

There is a lot of truth to this. AI hasn’t closed doors for libraries and library science. It’s opened doors because of the ability to quickly access, move, and leverage data in ways never possible before AI.

I was talking with a team member this morning about our library looking to archive and make accessible publishing by legal practitioners, academics and other legal professionals. Our ability to pull this information together and make it available to legal professionals, the public and legal research platforms would not have been possible before AI. 

Heck, I’m pretty certain we’d not have realized the obligation and ability we have to archive and make “useable” this body of secondary law without AI. And there’s no way we’d have seen the data of our library being used by AI assisted platforms to help interpret primary law.   

AI is going to be the biggest tool driving access to legal services and justice in my life time — and there are likely going to be more people working in this area helping more people than ever. We’ll just be doing different things.