Evolution and Change in American Legal Education

This chapter examines the changing trends and best practices for collection development in academic law libraries. It begins by examining the historical development of the law school as a professional school, and the need for academic law libraries to become learning laboratories for educating lawyers and providing them with the tools and resources to practice law. It then charts how law school collections evolved in response to the emergence of electronic legal research resources. The increasing use of electronic databases and the subsequent development of the Internet have led libraries to examine what are the best practices in collection development. Along with internal forces, external influences, such as “Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law,” a report by the Carnegie Foundation calling for more practice and skills-based training, will require academic law libraries to adapt their collections in light of changing trends in legal education and scholarship (Sullivan, Colby, Wegner, Bond, & Shulman, 2007).