Legal Information Professionals
Working in the legal information industry is a rewarding career for many reasons.
There is a sense of accomplishment when you guide a student to valuable resources they will use for their entire career or help a lawyer with an urgent request. In some cases, you are providing self-representing clients or independent lawyers with access to justice in the form of important legal resources they would otherwise not have access to.
The variety of work is limitless: research, teaching & training, resource management, etc. You will never be bored! The research is specialized, and each day is different, so it keeps things interesting.
You are working in a professional environment and exposed to a variety of people. You are constantly developing and building confidence in your training, public speaking skills and in-depth knowledge of Canadian legislation and case law (depending on the position).
Though the job can be challenging, your colleagues are there to provide generous support. Positions are often permanent full-time, offering good salaries and excellent compensation.
Legal Information Professionals work in a variety of roles, like Coordinator, Technician, Specialist, Librarian, or Manager, just to name a few. These roles can take place in a variety of organizations, including Accounting, Law Firm, Corporate, Government, or Courthouse Libraries, Professional Associations, Research Centres, and Legal Publishing.
What do Legal Information Professionals do?
- Conduct case law and legislative research on common legal databases such as CanLii, Westlaw, QuickLaw, HeinOnline, ICLR, etc.
- Set-up and monitor media searches on law firms, industries, and special interest topics to keep lawyers up to date
- Instruct incoming students on how to conduct legal research and how to use the library catalogue and other resources
- Manage both print and electronic collections and liaise with vendors
- Manage and track invoicing and budgeting for the library
- Manage and track usage and billing data for various library and legal technology products and services
- Conduct user research, UX testing and product reviews
- Promote library services, resources, and legal technology products
- Create promotional and training material: documentation, videos, etc.
- Build and code document automation, workflows, and expert systems
- Complete legal technology, knowledge management, and project management tasks
- Create research guides and set up and maintain intranet sites with links to resources
- Post and maintain web content and external sites
- Manage internal knowledge content and search systems
- Complete business development research and competitive intelligence
- Records and information management; information governance
Our Career Paths
To demonstrate the various ways our members have entered the legal librarianship sector, see some of our career paths below. We hope this gives students and future legal information professionals an idea of what to expect and how to find a rewarding career in the legal information community.
Job Board Links
Are you ready to launch your career in the legal information community? We have compiled these useful job board links to help you in your search. These are just some of the organizations where our TALL members work.