 Good afternoon everybody. My name is Vicki Steiner. I'm an instructor here at the San Jose State University School of Information. Some of you may have studied with me in Info203 and I also teach our Info220 for legal resources and Info244 for online searching. I sure appreciate all of you joining us today for our lecture or webinar so you might want to be a law librarian. We have the privilege of being joined by Jean Willis today. Jean is the assistant director for support services at the Sacramento County Public Law Library. She's also a long-standing member and very active in our community with AALL, the American Association of Law Libraries. Jean, I want to thank you on behalf of the school and also all of our students for spending time with us this Saturday to help our students learn about the exciting opportunities that are available for careers in law librarianship. I won't take up too much more of your time because I want to give the students the full benefit of everything you have to share and Jean, I will turn the mic over to you. Everyone this recording will be shared on our website upon its conclusion and feel free to type in any questions you may have in the chat window or we'll have a question and answer session at the end of the presentation. Okay well thank you Vicki, thank you very much for inviting me and I want to thank the students who are attending now and those who maybe attend later when the webinar is archived. Welcome. My name is Jean Willis as Vicki said and I work at the Sacramento County Public Law Library obviously in Sacramento, California, for those of you who are further afield that is the state capital of California. So I'm going to talk to you today about law librarianship and what it means to be a law librarian based mainly on my career which I think is a model for everybody and my focus is on law librarianship for those who don't have a law degree. However, that's not to say if you do have one you shouldn't listen to this lecture because I think you'll get something out of it as well. But part of the reason why I'm doing this is that in the American Association of Law Libraries we have been hearing more recently number one that our colleagues are often having trouble filling jobs. So this is good news for you guys. There are jobs available and they're sometimes having difficulties finding suitable applicants for them so it's a good job market for you coming out of library school. Secondarily though at the American Association of Law Libraries we've been getting word that some library schools fortunately not San Jose State but some library schools apparently are telling their students don't bother thinking about a career in law librarianship unless you have a law degree and in fact this is not true and it's never been true and these days it's becoming even less and less true. There was a phase probably through into the early 2000s before the crash where there was a lot more competition from people who had a dual degree that is the JD and the library degree. These days there's less competition in that regard. We have perhaps less people with a law degree applying for these jobs. So there are jobs aplenty and so you should think about it as a serious career option. I've been a law librarian for more years than I care to tell you and it's been a great career for me. I've loved it. It's been wonderful and if you're interested I hope you'll find it as rewarding and as exciting as I have. So you can see on the screen the types of things I'm going to talk about and let's move right into that and also I do want to say at the end of my talk I will talk a little bit more in detail about my career and the arc of it and what happened which hopefully will give you some ideas of how things work. If you have questions go ahead and type them in. Vicki if there's a suitable point don't hesitate to interrupt me. I'll try to answer questions as we go along and or you know we can do some questions at the end. Okay so types of law libraries I really don't know anybody's background so if this is a bit redundant for you I apologize but just if you're starting afresh and you don't really know the ropes let me get started. So what most people think about in terms of law librarianship are academic law school libraries and that's certainly the case that there are law library jobs at law school libraries. Recently there has been a diminishment in enrollments in law schools for a variety of reasons mainly financial probably you guys can relate to that and there are some law schools that have closed and for a phase of time there too there was a downsizing of law school library positions this seems to have stabilized at the moment it doesn't seem to be quite as precarious as it was at one time and what we're also seeing is that people in my age group are retiring and moving off and out of the profession and so there are positions starting to open up including in law school libraries other types of and of course law school libraries are all over the country you'll find them just about anywhere other types of law law libraries are in private law firms these are often called legal information professionals sometimes research specialists or research analysts there again there's a lot of positions the thing with law firm law firm land that's interesting is that the traditional books on a shelf law library is almost just non-existent these days in law firms that's that's valuable real estate in inside a building to have a big law library there and they don't exist too much law firms have gone very digital high tech and so they're looking for people with technology skills and the interesting thing with law firm library positions is that often you can be located almost anywhere kind of like what Vicki is doing in her position at SJSU and you tell a commune and you could be almost anywhere I have a good friend who's a law firm librarian who lives here in the Sacramento area and he said I I don't have to live in Sacramento I could live almost anywhere but it was convenient for his family to be here and that's how he came to be living here so that gives you some scope for maneuvering and potentially getting positions in law firms technology skills are valued and valuable the third big sector for law libraries are in the government at the federal state and sometimes local level obvious places for law libraries are in the federal court system the federal court library system is across the country I have actually been a federal court law librarian at one time in my career and there are positions available these are more brick-and-mortar library jobs where you do need to be located in a specific place and go into the courthouse itself and work some state court state courts also have law libraries in their courts and then federal and state agencies for example the DA the public defender state agencies like the environmental your local California environmental protection agency federal agency jobs are usually more located in the Washington DC area although you may find some elsewhere around the country depending on where the agency is mainly headquartered many states do also have a state law library we do have one here in California in fact it's a little bit down the street from where I am because as I said this is a state capital there's important state law libraries in places such as Montana Wisconsin Minnesota Texas and so forth so there are state law libraries and then public law libraries and people are beginning to learn about us more and more as the access to justice movement increases in scope and visibility public law libraries generally are affiliated with a county within a state and for example in California we have 58 counties here unfortunately we do not have 58 county law libraries we have about 30 around 30 to 32 official visible easily accessible county law libraries a lot of the reason why the others aren't as visible and as accessible is due to financial constraints other states do have county public law libraries you can find them in Texas Florida Pennsylvania Minnesota Colorado I am and I'm sure other places that I'm not mentioning we do serve the public it is more like a public library with a legal collection very challenging work very rewarding work and there's some others that I've probably missed like legal aid agencies for example and I'm not sure but probably something else that I haven't mentioned in the corporate sector there is some scope for law librarians with technology skills it's interesting because probably a decade or more more like two decades ago you we used to see a lot more law librarians working in the corporate sector and then that really diminished over time and dwindled I'm starting to see a little bit of an uptick there now more recently which is interesting in fact one of my colleagues here in the Sacramento area is a law librarian who works for a small technology company in the area and they value her her law librarianship skills but she is kind of a real techie so I am seeing that as an opening a bit of an opening up there in the corporate sector but you would want to have your high technology skills so those are types of law libraries what's out there and available types of positions you know go across the spectrum starting with what you traditionally think of in a bricks and mortar library of any type there's reference position there's those positions in technical services there is administration positions you know being a director assistant director and so forth then there's also positions that are focused around technology management or information management IT project management positions law firms are looking for people with skills in coding knowledge management project management and taxonomy and as I said there's positions in the corporate sector for law librarians with coding and other technology skills there's also positions for digitizing special collections I tend to see those more in general academic institutions in general public law libraries but some state law libraries and academic law school libraries do have people on board who do work on digitizing special collections and those special collections are things that you know you don't normally you wouldn't normally be able to access them unless you went into the library itself and by digitizing them they're able to put them online so you might still be sitting there going but don't I really need a law degree well no um it can hurt and if you do have one hey that's great but it's often not required or even listed on a job ad for example sadly my boss the director here at the Sacramento law library passed away last year and when they advertised that position it did not require a JD in fact the board wanted me to apply for the position but because I'm getting closer to the end of my career I chose not to do that the director that we have now on board does have a JD and a library degree but it was not required for that position the prior the director prior to my former boss also did not have a JD she was a director here for many years so you will see that a lot of jobs do not require a JD and many don't even say it's desirable a JD is mainly required for those wishing to climb the ladder at an academic law school library if you want to be a director or an assistant director in a law school library pretty much you will need to have a JD that's for certain some law school libraries do require the JD for reference position for legal writing positions and for teaching um legal research and and so forth although there was somebody yesterday that said I work in a law school library I do reference and I teach legal research classes and I don't have a JD so that is opening up a little bit more from what it used to be but there's other positions in law school libraries especially in technical services and access services so something to think about it's definitely not a closed door interestingly enough law firms used to be very resistant to hiring information professionals with a JD although that has been changing so you're seeing a reverse of the trend that's what's happening in the law school world many government law library jobs in fact most of them don't require JD's um some I can't even really think of one that absolutely requires it some will find it desirable again that's more at the director level position especially if it's a very large public law library but not it's not always the case the current director at the LA county law library which is a huge library does have a JD but the prior director the prior two directors there did not have a law a law degree so it's not required okay so how do I prepare for a law library job well it used to be a little bit more of a clear pathway when I was in library school way back in the dark ages um we had a lot more classes I was very fortunate when I went to library school and I had quite a few relevant classes in law librarianship although I see what Vicki is teaching and that's an excellent class to take so anytime that you have an opportunity to take any type of class that focuses on legal materials or law librarianship obviously you want to grab that opportunity and take that class if you can but I have a list here of other classes that you can think about for um coursework while you're in library school and I do emphasize cataloging because a lot of people don't want to take cataloging when they're in library school I don't know why there's a lot of antipathy to it perhaps you don't fall into that camp but I do know many people do I really encourage people to consider that wisely and and it take at least one cataloging class and you may say well why and I'll tell you because as we're automating more and we're getting more and more electronic resources as you migrate library software from one platform to another understanding the intricacies of the mark record format it's really valuable information you don't ever have to catalog if you don't want to although then I'll put a caveat there you may end up having to catalog even though you don't want to and I have cataloged throughout my career and I've been very very glad that I knew how to do it so it's not something that I wanted to do as a career option but it is something I have done throughout my career and I really feel that library school students should take a cataloging class that's my little uh PR for that and I'll get off my soapbox now um other things that you can do to prepare for a potential job in a law libraries are internships or jobs shadowing I have to apologize though because it's often hard for law librarians to offer people internships it's always worth asking if there's a law library that you're interested in and you think maybe they would offer you an internship there try but don't be offended or disappointed or crushed if they say no we in theory here at the county law library would like to offer internships but we haven't done it because it's hard often to fold that into our busy work day and the level of work that we do here is really high level work and it's kind of hard to think of what we could give an intern as a valuable work experience so we have always said no to interns but I have always offered in people seeking internships the opportunity to do job shadowing most people have turned me down on that and that's okay I'm not offended but some have taken us up on it and you know job shadowing can be a helpful thing to do it will give you insight it will open your eyes to what's going on what different law libraries do and if you job shadow especially if you job shadow it more than one law library you should put that on your resume number one it shows that you were genuinely interested that you went out and did something about it and number two that you probably learned something that's a value to potential future employer it'll also give you an idea of what we do and you may go hey you know what I thought I was interested in law librarianship and having gone to these two law libraries job shadowed for two days guess what I don't like it that's valuable too so think about that give it some thought and give it an idea um the other two things that I strongly urge you to consider is joining the american association of law libraries and consider joining a chapter of double a double l in your area because they're all over the country and some of you definitely live in areas where there is a local chapter so I'm going to hop out of my fabulous presentation there and we're going to go out online so I'm out at double a double l I'm going to go over here first as you may know to join as a student it's a really great deal it's $65 a year I do understand though I'm I haven't forgotten what a stretch it is to be in school and have enough money for whatever it is that you need and even $65 can be a bit of a stretch I do get that but if you can stretch to do it I really strongly urge you to join double double double a double l as a student member it's a wealth of information that you will gain access to including what I've come to hear our valuable webinar recordings we have upcoming webinars that you can attend like you're doing with me now live and then we have all these fabulous webinars that are archived and you can go out and you know attend them anytime you like these are not available if you're not a student member but if you're a student member here they are and they go on and on and on I attend a lot of these myself for continuing education purposes so these are things to consider and this is one valuable reason for joining double a double l another thing of interest are degree candidate scholarships depending where you are in your degree program you can apply for scholarships through double a double l and that's something for all of you to consider another thing that's nice to know about is the george a straight minority scholarship and fellowship if you're a minority student you may be eligible for this valuable opportunity including the fellowship so something to look at and be considered and that would be really for 65 bucks look what you could get there another strong thing to consider is to get a mentor even while you're a student you're welcome to do that if you're a member of double a double l you would join ask become a mentor a mentee as a newer mentor as a new excuse me as a newer member of double a double l and you could be matched up with a seasoned experienced law librarian and think of what you could do with that you can ask a lot of questions get your questions answered they could perhaps review your resume for you while you're job searching you can ask them questions about the jobs that you're hunting for what they think about them so on and so forth so that would be a very valuable opportunity just for 65 dollars and then of course there's our career center you may have seen this already if you haven't you should check it out even if you're not quite ready to start applying for jobs I urge you to come out and look at job job websites and read the job ads because that's also going to give you information on how to prepare for applying for jobs and to consider what types of courses you might want to take read what the employers are asking for what kind of skills they're looking for what kind of experiences they're looking for and hopefully that will be helpful and informational for you there's a whole bunch of law school library jobs going at the moment but I do have to say unfortunately most of them are requiring and JD but I do know this one the technical services and reference librarians at NSU floor of Florida although it does say JD is preferred they are not requiring it and this would be a job that would be open to an entry-level person so there you go there's a job there other positions law firms are good bets for entry-level position if you look at this Brian cave position what are they requesting a master's degree or equivalent so they're not even requiring an MLS but I think the MLS will serve you well and they'll consider recent MLS graduates so there you go that's just one of them and I'll tell you a lot of those law firm jobs they're really looking for people like you so that's and then whoops that little thing keeps getting in my way because I wanted to go to the body of knowledge the body of knowledge I was on the AA double L board as the treasurer for the prior three years and this is something that we work together to come up with this is something to help you understand what you need to have and be a good law librarian and this is I I believe this information is available even if you're not a member of AA double L so I would encourage you even if you have enjoyed to come out and check out their body of knowledge because it's going to give you competencies and skills and again that can help inform you in what you want to take in classes and other ways to prepare for a potential position really this would apply across the board too in any library not just law libraries but this will give you an idea though of what we're looking for in law librarianship and how to be a good law librarian so I do like to emphasize the body of knowledge professionalism plus leadership at every level that's what it's about so heading back to my fabulous presentation the other resource that I recommend is considering joining a local AA double L chapter there's many across the United States some of you're from Southern California you may be aware of the Southern California Association of Law Libraries that's an excellent chapter I've been a member of that one I believe there's somebody here from Washington DC area they have an amazing chapter in Washington DC they do a tremendous amount of continuing education that would be a fabulous chapter to join and then I am also a member of the Northern California Association of Law Libraries there's 30 chapters across the country most offer grants to attend their institutes and workshops so I'm going to jump out of here again and hop on over to the web and go to no Cal no Cal the chapter websites usually also have job listings and they're often different and if you look at this you'll see it is different from some of the job listings at the AA double L website so you want to bear that in mind and consider that you'll see a Northern California there's a ton of law firm library jobs going but there is a librarian at the California Department of Justice in San Diego I happen to know that library it's great that does not require a JD I don't think any of these jobs here require a JD and many of them will be of the nature where they'll say you can live and you can live almost anywhere and and or they'll be advertising the position and they may want you to come into the office but you can be located in a variety of places and still have that job so no Cal has that and I believe that you can you you definitely can access this without being a member of no Cal I did want to point out the no Cal spring Institute I don't believe most of you are from Northern California if there's anybody from Northern California that's on this call we are offering our annual spring Institute on Friday March 20th at UC Davis which is down the road from where I am I am located beyond the L word expanding the boundaries of legal librarianship sounds pretty good doesn't it pretty helpful so we're offering a really fabulous program I think I'm not on the program committee so I can praise it but you can see where we're offering some really interesting programs one on legal data science we're doing some anti-bias training that's always helpful measures for justice court library partnerships law school to law firm tech skills and so on and so forth I'll put it out an offer there that if there is anybody in Northern California who falls like they would like to attend this if you send me an email and let me know I can go to the board and see if they'll give you a discounted student rate to attend I can't guarantee it but I'll investigate it so that's an offer for somebody who may be in this part of the in this neck of the woods so jumping back then again to my presentation I do want to point out that the American Library Association and the Special Library Association also offer student membership rates and they may also provide student-centered forums both organizations are very good highly regarded professional library associations I've been a member of ALA for many years and my staff and I also often attend webinars that they offer and their student rates I think are or even a bit lower than a double a double l so don't don't be afraid to go there and check that out but I do want to stress to you the value of networking face-to-face if you do join a double a double l chapter or a double a double l itself you know try to attend meetings or conferences getting together face-to-face is is really valuable and I think sometimes people forget that in our in our wired world and here we are online having a class online this is really great it's really convenient but there's still real value in seeing people face-to-face other resources to consider these are two things that came across my listserv from double a double l recently there's been a portion in the United States in the law library community and in and in the legal community in general called access to justice what this is about is and probably most of you can relate to this but if you have a legal issue of some nature most U.S. citizens would find it hard to hire an attorney unless it was for something relatively basic like getting a will or something like that but people have are confronted with legal matters all the time sometimes unexpectedly and sometimes expectedly and gaining access to justice can be hard so what's happening is the law library community is working in in conjunction with other librarians to try to give them some basic training on legal research and legal reference and particularly for the public librarians and for academic general academic librarians so I ran across the one on my left here which is a south uh vicki can maybe relate to this little bit south carolina library association they've invited law librarians to do some online training this is just one of the classes they're offering i think they're offering it's a five-part special series on performing legal research i believe this is free i think that any of you could probably attend these courses if you want and it would give you some really good training in addition to vicki's class at sjsu so i couldn't you know encourage you to consider doing that if you have the time i suspect that they will also have those classes archived somewhere that you could take them later this web junction class and that's from oclc they did this just recently and it is archived the mirror one of the maryland state law librarians provided this and it was another outreach effort to public librarians to give them some basics on how to do legal research and reference so that's also has some good information in it and those are things that if you take those kind of classes you can put them on your resume oops um other online resources i'm in california so i'm mainly showing you something in california i believe if you're not here you can access info people um they have archived web webinars there they're not the i don't think they've ever offered anything specific to law librarianship which is not to say that they might not someday in the future but they do have some interesting webinars that we take here in our library and something to look at and see if there's any webinars there that could fill in some gaps in your educational background or just something that you might be interested in and want to learn about so free webinars there and then um oops another trading opportunity um this is something that we offer here at our county law library i don't think most of you are in northern california so this may not be viable a viable option for you but if anybody is uh attending this in in northern california we are offering to california law library library basics classes we offer these twice a year once in the spring and once in the fall you can check around i know la county also offers similar law library basics class there usually is a charge for them we need to kind of recover some of our costs because we are not very wealthy um but they're they're pretty helpful classes the type of people that attend my class are people who are state agency workers mainly but some of them are also what we call self-represented litigants people who are trying to learn more about the law and how to use the law library to help themselves so you can look around if you're um elsewhere in the country you can look around and see if you have a local county law library that may be offering classes of a similar nature a lot of them do i know for example the king county law library in seattle does offer classes like this so you can check it out see if that would be helpful for you so what's next we kind of covered the job ads on the library association websites as i as i said previously check out what's there and i would check out job ads throughout the course of your um library school um tenure uh you're lucky because you can actually pretty easily pull up job ads and see what they say uh and that's one way to inform yourself as to what type of classes you might want to take might inform yourself about hey i saw a webinar about this somewhere and so on and so forth and then you'll be more prepared for the time when you're ready to start applying for jobs you'll have a better feel for the types of jobs that are offered out there who's the who are the type of employers that are offering jobs and where are these located and what types of skill sets are they looking for so that's another valuable way to inform yourself as well as get prepared for submitting your resumes so now i have an interview help well as i said if you do become a student member of double a double l you could ask for a mentor and a mentor could really help you out with this you could even practice with your mentor your mentor could probably even do a mock-up job interview with you and that could be really helpful i would say apply for any and all positions that look look interesting to you but you just want to be sensible about it if it is absolutely requiring a law degree and you don't have one don't apply for that that's not going to work but don't be put off by something that says jd preferred if they're not requiring it go ahead and apply for it if you're interested also you know be sensible if it's asking for many years of management experience and you don't have that then you know just be sensible that's probably not the job for you list on your resumes all the relevant classes that you've taken that apply to that particular employees requirements and what they're looking for the skill sets that they're looking for you know talk about that that's one way of doing it do you have any other relevant job experiences when you're in the interview process to talk about now one thing that we've learned throughout the years and going for continuing education at library sent library conferences and webinars is a story is very powerful so think of stories from jobs that you've had where it might be relevant to your to a job that you're applying for in a law library so if you've never worked in a law library what kind of experiences have you had in your your past that might be relevant for example i was a waitress for many years i really like doing it actually and when i started applying for jobs in law libraries i talked about that i also worked in retail on and off for years and both jobs involved working with the general public having to help them find things or make decisions and you know dealing with disgruntled people who are unhappy with some aspect of what's going on either in the store or in the restaurant and how did i make them happy how did i turn that around so come up with some good stories if you have them and talk about that because you know if you go in and for an interview and you're you know they're looking for what makes you relevant to them what do you bring to the table how will you enhance that library what kind of skills do you have and why are you interested in applying in a law library you know i want to hear from somebody that they did think about this a little bit it doesn't have to be in depth and detailed but if people come for a job and i'm interviewing for a job in my library i want to know why they're interested in it and even if it's like well you know my my present job is being downsized but you know i have had an interest in law and i took this webinar and it looked interesting to me and i thought this might be a good job and i have this and this and this skill i'll take that you know but if you have a particular passion about it talk about that create a story around it and explain why you're interested in law librarianship but i will tell you one thing a big deal breaker for us here is when it's blindingly obvious that the person knows almost nothing about this library when they come in for a job interview and it does happen and it always kind of surprises me frankly i mean we have a fabulous website it's very content rich and somebody comes here and they can't talk at least at a minimum level about what this library does and the types of things that we have on our website that intrigue them i'm just going to lose all interest in that person unless they have something else to dangle in front of me and make me feel excited about them you know do your homework if you have a job interview you definitely want to go to that organization's website and familiarize yourself with who they are what they do you know who they're serving you know what kind of content they have on their website and you want to talk it up and talk about what excited you about that or what interested you about that that'll make you a much more viable candidate trust me and it's easy that's really not hard to do okay so before we get to questions i did say i talk a little bit about the arc of my fabulous career and i say that not so much tongue-in-cheek i've really enjoyed being a law librarian it's really been a rewarding interesting exciting sometimes crazy making career for me just to give you a little bit about the arc of my career development as i said i don't have a jd i do have a master's in library science i later went back to the university to drexel university and got it certification um and that's about it i did go to law school for a year i didn't finish the course work and didn't get a jd i started out in law firm land and i was the law firm librarian on and off throughout the first half of my career law firm librarianship is really interesting exciting crazy making it'll drive you nuts but you'll also get a lot of reward out of it it's it's an interesting place to work it's where the rubber meets the road and as i think you saw throughout the course of my webinar today there's jobs out there there's good jobs out there and they are they are looking for it they are looking and will accept entry-level people so consider that seriously it's a good place to work um i also did work in a law school library many years ago my my career at the time was very portable and i was fortunate and lucky enough to work at the university of sydney in sydney australia fabulous i loved it um is it is it possible to get law library jobs in australia these days as an american perhaps there are opportunities for that the sad thing though i do have to report because i'm still very in touch with the law library community down there is that unfortunately they have been downgrading and downsizing law library jobs over the last five to ten years so it's a little bit of a tighter job market i did also work as a director of a law court library in sydney it served both the supreme court of new south wales and the federal court of australia it was a fabulous opportunity for me and it really informed my career when i came back to the states i worked in the in the federal courts as the director of the third circuit court of appeals law library from there i went on to become an it manager in the law firm in of all places fresno california i was very flexible and i will say this to you the more flexible you are able to be and you may not be able to be that's okay but the more flexible you are able to be in terms of where you'll live and work the easier it will be to get jobs but if you can't be flexible don't despair i have plenty of friends that have stayed in the same general area all their careers and they've made a good career out of it i've been flexible i've had a lot of different jobs in a lot of different places following my stint as a law firm i t manager i i then worked at the san diego county law library and then following that i've been up here in sacramento for quite a few years so you can see that i've bounced back and forth between the private sector the public sector and academia and it's been a good career for me i didn't have a jd i've done very well uh my board did ask me to be a director here at this library i've been a director in two court libraries so i've even risen up to the top and for various reasons i've chosen to go back down again and that's another interesting thing to know and i have many friends that have done the same thing so there's a lot of flexibility if you're flexible and that's the end of my talk and if there are any questions i'd be glad to take them excellent thank you gene but i was going to go through we've had some comments and questions in the chat window so i wanted to start from the first one that i received this was a comment by carla and carla if you want to pick up the mic after i note this um we'd love to hear more here um carla wrote i joined double a double l but i have yet to join a chapter but i was able to connect with our county law library and she's informally interning with them now so that is fantastic yeah do you want to say anything about that yes i was interested especially from your class in law librarianship and so i joined double a double l and i um networking is so important so i just um contacted a and friended you know how you can friend in there yeah a couple of people and um one lady named shelly newton um contacted me back and she works at our county law library and so i said i'd love to meet up with you and you know take a tour of the library and then so she took me into the conference room and she asked me anything you know is there anything else you'd like to know and so i thought well let me let me pitch it out there and see if an internship is possible and so i just asked and i thought the worst thing she could say is no and i'd be in exactly the same place but then right yes where is this which county law library we are in uh clark county nevada oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah oh great great i'm just having the time of my life good for you excellent carla i'm so glad to hear that's fabulous great thank you all new congratulations congratulations then we had a question from brawnwin um what about the two years minimum law library experience is that something to be concerned about in the application process i think that relates to one of the postings you share yeah yeah well yeah i mean they say two years minimum um a lot of them do want people to have experience but as you saw there was a brian cave thing that said you know we'll take um you know people without finishing their mlis um you i guess you would have to consider it i mean if they're if they're saying specifically two years minimum they probably are going to look for that but it may be worth trying to apply anyway because as i said there there is it is more of an an employee uh a job seeker market than it is an employer market uh it just would depend on how i guess it's worth a shot and all that can happen is is you don't get an interview you know so what's the worst that could happen you don't hear back from them perfect and then we had a question christina is there another site to locate internship opportunities not that i'm aware of i i am not aware of that i guess you could check um the american library association we don't we don't have anything with double a double l i mean mostly it is like what the prior student said um you know people that people called call us all the time and so it really is kind of looking around your general area and cold calling most of the time yes and christina sometimes the opportunities do pop up on the um i school website um so that's a good place to look as well yes and even on linkedin sometimes you can not only find job opportunities but they might have um internship internships as well that's true then we have a question from janice should double a double l membership be listed on a resume sure yes definitely and in fact i it were i to apply for a job today i would list it on my resume so yes you do want to list that and if you're in a chapter you want to list that as well in fact were i to apply for a job today i would list all my uh professional memberships absolutely so do that throughout your career okay excellent and then there's a comment thank thank you for sharing with us your fabulous background your incredible knowledge and giving us hope there's lots of hope out there these days trust me there really is this is a this is a job seekers market right now and i know it seems scary and i was there and i haven't forgotten i i'm way older but i haven't forgotten what it's like but yeah you know that it is a job seekers market right now wonderful and then we have an experiment um i'm looking to transition to a law librarianship after many years working in public libraries and youth services is this possible or are law librarians mainly coming from new graduates no i think that's fabulous and i think you you're you have a wealth of experience that is is relevant and valuable um take whatever classes you can take so that you have some you know a bit more information and background in law librarianship but no we're not necessarily only looking for recent graduates and and people would be probably very happy and and people um i mean i know of many people who transitioned over into law libraries from public libraries or general academic libraries so yeah definitely that's that's great go for it and then there's a question do you have any tips for those transitioning from a legal career to law librarianship i'm most interested in public law librarianship as i've worked in public service organizations yeah well the for sure i mean there's a lot of people that most not all but a lot of law library law librarians who came uh with jd's um were practitioners first and then came into law libraries so it's you have an advantage if you've worked in the legal field and or if you have a jd there is an advantage to that and really all you're doing is looking for jobs that look relevant to you um if you're interested in a job in a public law library then keep your eye open for those positions um they don't come up a whole super often but you know look around i don't know where you're looking but look around for them and you could do what your colleague said maybe talk to your if there's a public library close to you um go in and chat with them talk to them about it perfect and then uh arselia asked how do you recommend listing mls classes and web seminars on a resume it would probably be after your work experience and after where you've listed um your um the jobs you know your work experience and your educational background and with your educational background i probably just like in a somewhat of a paragraph format listing relevant classes i don't know that i'd put every single class down but i'd think about relevant classes and put those down i've seen them on resumes for sure absolutely and especially talking about ones or webinars that left an impression on you that as gene mentioned you can tell stories about that give you opportunities to show off what you've learned and also your interest right exactly and then we had a couple comments um people just sharing where their backgrounds are coming from we have people from paralegal backgrounds court reporter backgrounds practicing backgrounds yeah we have all of that and in the california county law library system i mean some of the sadly and unfortunately the reality is that some of the smaller counties do have county law libraries but their financial situation is not great um and so often we a number of our county law librarians come from court reporter um paralegal backgrounds and they they they haven't even gone to library school so you know this is something that can be a good transition um and but those jobs aren't as well paid as we'd like them to be and or but if you're getting a library degree and you have a paralegal background and court reporter background you know talk about it because that's valuable you you've had exposure to the legal system you you have knowledge that somebody else didn't have won't have that you know hasn't worked in the legal system so you know people will be interested in that for sure absolutely and christina was just sharing with the questions about resume this is for high school students specifically mentioning jill clise with our career services she also is an excellent resource for resume building and yes and carla notes that law librarianship has made made her feel at home and hopefully it will for others too that's fantastic yeah it is and i will say in in regard to that feeling at home i have many many deep ties with several many law librarians it's been the other aspect of my career that's been invaluable are the friendships that i've developed oops sorry the friendships i've developed throughout the course of my career um a deep ties with a lot of people i'm still very much in touch with my colleagues in australia um and that was a long time ago that i worked there as a law librarian uh it's it's been rewarding and we do now um double a double l is encouraging recent retirees to stay involved and engaged so some of us some of them are providing mentorships and helping out in other ways so and because we because we love the field and because we have so many friends some of them are still coming to the conferences um so it's something that's been a very rewarding career for me absolutely and um others who might be interested i just posted the link for the annual conference that's coming up in july um students that are interested might have the opportunity to attend um it's in norlands and actually i will be there on behalf of iSchool so if you happen to be in town stop by your gene will be there as well i will be there i will be there and there is the student registration rate is very low it's a very good deal i know it's expensive and and it's probably not everybody can go but it's it's well worth it if you're at all able um and they do have that was one thing i was going to say so thanks vicki um they do also have a career uh you know you you have the ability to apply for apply for an interview for jobs there um so a lot of people come in from all across the country and there's job interviews going on throughout the course of the the conference so if you at all can attend i would encourage you to do so excellent i was saying it's very tempting yes it is it is and you'd have a lot of fun too you would absolutely would it does anybody else have any questions feel free if you uh prefer to grab the mic or to type in the chat window everybody is expressing their gratitude gene for the information rich presentation well if anybody has any recommendations for me as to if i if i were to do this again any recommendations on how to make improvements or things that maybe i didn't talk about that you you think would be valuable please let vicki know absolutely yeah and i appreciate the opportunity like i say this is i'm grateful too because although i'm not directly representing double a double l i am doing it based on the concerns that we have coming off the board that we do want library school students to consider law librarianship as a viable career because we do have so many open positions that we're having trouble filling so thank you for coming excellent and i brennan had a question about um legal resources course i teach the info 220 which is our legal resources course every spring so look for look for that course there some of the other courses that we offer we do have a law librarianship pathway on the um i school website so some of the other courses that could be helpful include um government documents there are other seminars as well as jean mentioned the courses in cataloging reference librarianship the online searching courses of course your research methods course you don't have any writing and research experience those are all fantastic courses to take see here excellent a cilliam writes she's going to spread the word out to her former colleagues do that please we want you to do that for sure absolutely thank you everybody i'm so glad i appreciate you spending your time with us this saturday i'll be sharing the recording link on the iSchool website and of course if you have any questions jean has kindly shared her email address here and the slide i'll type it in the chat window as well as well as my email and getting in touch with any of either of us with any questions that you may have we're happy to answer any questions and before i round out the recording any last call for questions here thank you everybody for attending i hope to have these sessions as often as there's interest and jean again thank you so much for your time and expertise today oh thank you have a good day everyone thank you