Law librarians are ‘at the forefront’ of using and educating on artificial intelligence

January 12, 2026 Careers

Law librarians are 'at the forefront' of using and educating on artificial intelligence

By Amanda Robert

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.

"We have always been the technology adopters, and AI is no exception," says Silbiger, who also is the Hawaii State Judiciary's state law librarian and access to justice coordinator. "Of course we're at the forefront of evaluating these tools, designing workflows and educating others about what is effective, what is efficient and what is ethical."

According to an AALL survey published in November, law library staff increased across the legal profession in the past two years. Law firm and corporate law libraries especially expanded their staffs, reporting a more than 8% increase from 2023 and their largest number of professionals since at least 2015.

Another survey, released by the Thomson Reuters Institute in 2024, showed that the number of library and research personnel in law firms grew by more than 5% over the previous year in terms of full-time employees per lawyer. This marked a significant change from 2017-2022, when these roles declined by an average of about 2% per year by that measure.

"It's recognition of the critical role that librarians play in managing knowledge, supporting access to justice and navigating rapid technological change, because business is booming around AI," Silbiger says.

Librarians are seeing more opportunities to guide the entire legal profession in understanding how to best use AI, she adds. They are helping students navigate AI as they learn to become lawyers; law firms use AI tools to increase productivity and profitability; and courts consider how AI can improve their processes.

"We're at every table," Silbiger says.

Cas Laskowski, the head of research, data and instruction at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, wants to make sure law librarians continue to have seats at those tables. She helped launch the Future of Law Libraries initiative, which hosted a series of roundtable discussions on AI with experts from academic, law firm, court and other government law libraries nationwide in 2023 and 2024.

In October, the group published a white paper summarizing the discussions and resulting recommendations, which includes creating a centralized AI organization for all law librarians.

"We want to keep getting people together to think about what we can do proactively as a community, to empower us to be active in the conversation and not lose our chance to impact what's happening," Laskowski says.

Leading the way

While law librarians have always evaluated new ways of researching, Rebecca Fordon finds that AI requires them to quickly learn and assess a constant stream of new tools.

Fordon, a law librarian at the Ohio State Michael E. Moritz College of Law, also believes AI will change how legal research is taught, in the same way Westlaw and LexisNexis moving online or the emergence of Google and Wikipedia did.

"We have to work with the fact that that's how people are going to be accessing legal information, and maybe also work against our assumption that the best way to get legal information is not that way," says Fordon, who is currently teaching an advanced legal research class that includes AI.

Law schools are increasingly looking for librarians with AI expertise, Fordon also notes. As one example, Stanford Law School recently posted open positions for an "AI & Technology Initiatives Librarian" and "Data Science & AI Librarian," which are exempt from the university's hiring freeze, she says.

Sean Harrington, the new director of AI and Legal Tech Studio at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, agrees AI is dramatically changing the work of academic law librarians, who already are service-oriented and have the skills to introduce the tools to students.

"Do you want a random con law professor teaching AI? Or do you want somebody who has a background in information science teaching AI?" Harrington asks.

Law students are pushing for more instruction on AI, Harrington adds. In his last position as the director of technology innovation at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, he taught AI and the law courses, and each semester he offered a presentation on the latest developments. It had typically drawn 60 to 80 students, but around 170 attended this fall, he says.

"Remember, now we're getting the cohort of students who had ChatGPT three years ago in undergrad," Harrington says. "They expect to use it."

Fordon also helped teach an optional "AI and the Law" class that more than half of the 1L class attended. As much as students want to learn about AI, law school faculty also look to librarians for answers on how to use new tools for their scholarship, she says.

Fordon and Harrington are co-founders of AI Law Librarians, a blog that aims to inform law librarians and the greater legal community about issues involving AI and the law.

"We thought our voice could be important because people trust what we have to say, and we don't have anything to gain from teaching people about this stuff," Fordon says.

Showing the way

As the director of knowledge research and resources at DLA Piper, Emily Florio leads the team that procures the firm's 200-plus information resources. She also leads the team that conducts research using those resources for lawyers and their clients.

"We were busy before generative AI came on the scene, but it has totally transformed our day-to-day and how much time is spent on generative AI," says Florio, a past president of AALL.

In the past three years, generative AI tools haven't replaced any of the firm's resources, Florio explains. They instead have joined existing resources, which means Florio and her team must be familiar with an ever-increasing number of tools.

While Florio believes law librarians who understand and adopt AI will eventually take the place of those who don't, she nevertheless maintains that they are responsible for showing lawyers they can still accomplish a lot of tasks without using AI.

"We as a firm are very progressive and ahead of the curve with the adoption of Gen AI," says Florio, who notes DLA Piper uses both firmwide and practice area-specific AI tools. "But with that comes the lessons learned of not becoming really myopic about gen AI being everything when there are other tools that could do what they're trying to do better."

Law librarians are also helping courts determine how and when AI can be used to streamline their operations and improve access to justice, says Silbiger, who assisted the Hawaii State Judiciary with its AI usage policy.

Silbiger has used a couple of AI tools for legal research but hopes to soon experiment with others, she says. She notes that law librarians have considered or are already using AI for other purposes, including creating instructional videos about divorce and revising legal forms so they are easier to understand.

Like their colleagues in law schools and firms, law librarians in courts are often on the frontlines of training the judiciary and its staff on AI, Silbiger says.

"For my audience, I talk about our core clients-the people from the public-because they all have phones, and they have access to this technology," says Silbiger, who has participated in several presentations on AI. "So you need to understand what it can do."

AALL prioritizes AI education, so its members are in the position to lead those conversations in their organizations, Silbiger adds. It recently launched an AI Caucus, which offers a forum for law librarians across the profession to share their experiences with AI. Nearly 250 members have joined, she says.

"It's a continually evolving conversation, because the technology is going to evolve and unfold, and we're here for it," Silbiger says. "The law librarians are here for every step of the way."