Preface

Thank you for reading this open educational resource. I wrote this book for library and information science (LIS) students and law librarians. These are two different audiences. My first audience might never step foot in a law library. My second might feel that they never leave. For both groups, I hope to provide interesting and useful information in my area of expertise: empirical legal research services.

As I wrote this book, I thought about the information LIS students would need to understand the idiosyncratic nature of U.S. legal practice, teaching, research, and librarianship. For my law librarian colleagues, I thought about the pioneers and milestones that showcase our long-standing contributions to the legal profession and its schools. Of course, this book is neither a treatise on U.S. legal practice nor the history of law librarianship. But the book contains some elements of both topics en route to its main topic and purpose.

The main purpose of this book is to demonstrate the skills required for empirical legal research services. Though this service area has been developing for nearly two decades, there is no text to guide the work. This book seeks to fill that gap by describing how to conduct ELS reference interviewing, empirical bibliography and literature reviewing, ELS study designing, data acquiring and evaluating, ELS research project planning and management, ELS scholarly communication, and empirical legal research teaching. My LIS students will read the book chapter by chapter. My law librarian colleagues, I hope, will find individual chapters useful on their own.

Law librarianship is a service and justice profession that enhances the practices of law, lawmaking, and government administration, and increases access to legal materials. Empirical legal research services contribute to these broad goals and support rigorous inquiry into difficult questions about the operations of our law and justice systems. For more than a decade, I have enjoyed my work in empirical legal research services. I am delighted to share what I have learned and eager to continue this work in the years to come.