Episode 4: The Jury is In: Circuit Court Librarians Help Judicial Staff Win Big

Hi class, this is Professor Nelson, and this is the third episode of the podcast. And today, we're going to talk to Suzanne Coriel, who is the Circuit Librarian for the Fourth Circuit Library. Is that what you call it? I'm not sure. >> The technical title is the Library for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. So it's much shorter just to say the Fourth Circuit Libraries. >> Okay. Yeah, that's a big title. So Suzanne is going to talk a little bit about what they do there, and I have some questions for her, and I think you're really going to enjoy this content. So let me start off with the first question. So Suzanne, tell me a little bit about yourself, how you became a law librarian, and what you and the other librarians there at the Fourth Circuit Library do to help the attorneys. >> Sure. Well, thanks for having me. I did some research before I decided to go to law school because I really didn't want to be a practicing attorney, but I realized that there was this career where I could blend my love for libraries and my love for the law and be a law librarian. So I went to the University of Iowa. They have both programs there, so it really gave me a lot of freedom for the four years that I was in law school and library school where I could, you know, take the classes that were the most interesting to me. I didn't have to work towards a specific, you know, practice area. I could work in the library. I had developed some great mentorships with people there that I could learn from. I was able to do law review, so it was really a great experience. And I thought that I was intended to be an academic law librarianship for the rest of my life. So I worked at an academic law library for about 10 years, and then I came over to the court. And so what the court library does at the federal level is, our mission is to be a resource for the judges and the personnel of the federal courts. We conduct and assist with their research. We provide a lot of current awareness resources. We organize and deliver training for them on various databases or on specific topical areas. And we also try to preserve a lot of the court history. So we have an archivist on staff who does a lot of outreach in that area. Yeah, it's fun. >> Yeah, I didn't really like that, but that makes perfect sense that you would have an archivist and like probably some special collections and all that. >> Exactly, yeah. >> Cool. Okay, one question before we move on. How many librarians or what's the size of the staff there at the library? >> Sure. Well, we have, of course, federal court libraries across the country. But here in the Moor Circuit, where we serve Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, we have five physical locations. We do have one in Baltimore. >> Oh, I didn't know that. >> Yes, yes, we have three librarians that are located at the federal courthouse downtown. And so in those five locations, we have about 15 staff total. >> Okay, that's a good size. >> Yeah, and so you'll find federal court libraries in most major cities at the federal courthouse. Whether or not those libraries are always open to the public and to practicing attorneys, sometimes that depends, but there's usually one there. >> Okay, good to know. Okay, so the second thing and something I love to talk about with my students is, can you talk about the tools or databases that the library subscribes to and makes available to the judges and the personnel? And then beyond the subscription tools, what else do you use there as far as low-cost tools or free tools? Or do you use those at all? >> Okay, sure. We are very lucky right now that our funding allows us to have Lexis Advance, Westlaw Next, and Bloomberg Law on the national level. So all federal court libraries and the judges and the personnel of the courts have access to those. Our additional resources are on kind of a circuit-by-circuit basis. So some of the ones that we subscribe to in the Fourth Circuit are Hine Online, ProQuest Congressional, ProQuest Legislative Insight, Regulatory Insights, Supreme Court Insight. And we've also made an effort to move into more e-books. So we offer both the Lexis Digital Library Platform and the ProView for the Thompson Raiders materials. Sometimes it's tough to get judges on board with the new technology, but at least they've kind of come on board with it during the pandemic so that they can have ready access to those materials. >> Yeah, definitely this whole pandemic thing has seen big growth in e-book usage. It'll be interesting to see if that continues. >> It certainly will be, yeah. >> I would think it will, but you never know. You have those people who always want to hang on to the old ways. >> Well, you know, I got to say there are certain things that I am a big print user for it. >> Me too, me too. >> So you can pry those out of my very cold hands right now. But it's all a matter of preference. And we want to always meet the judge's needs wherever it may be, whether it's print or electronic. So we do a variety of subscriptions and platforms. >> Right. And I assume you use Pacer pretty heavily. And that is something that I introduced the students to. And then I also showed them, you know, docket access on the premium subscriptions. But how do you use Pacer? >> Sure. In the federal courts, we don't necessarily use Pacer quite a bit. For the judges and the law clerks, they have access to the behind-the-scenes Pacer. It's called CME/CF. So they're using that to access all of the docket materials. In the library, we do use Pacer some, but more frequently I'm using it via Bloomberg because this searching is more robust. They have made great improvements on the Pacer searching, but I still really like using the Bloomberg access, especially for kind of tracking things and setting alerts. It's just, it's very convenient. I get very spoiled. >> Yes, I like it on Bloomberg too. And that's the one that I show in class and how students use is the Bloomberg option. >> And as for your question about the free tools, we don't use a lot of free materials because we really want things to be as efficient as possible. But we do use free resources for some like alerting services, you know, like current awareness stuff. Really, our best quote, free resource is the publications that are developed by the Federal Judicial Center, which is the educational arm of the U.S. courts. And they put out a lot of materials like pamphlets, handbooks that are intended for judges. Some of these materials are freely available to the public. So one that I would recommend to your students would be their handbook for federal law clerks. It's a kind of a good guide on, you know, what it's like to be a law clerk, what you would be doing, what tools are available for you. And that's freely available on their FJC website. >> Oh, that's great. I hadn't thought about looking there to find materials for students, but that's a good, that's a good reminder for me to look at that and see what else might be useful there to talk about in class. Okay. So that's great. Let's see. I guess question three, I sort of already asked that. I guess what I'm wondering is what is the access to the public or to legal practitioners outside of the court personnel? I mean, is your library open to attorneys or how does that work? >> Sure. In both Richmond and in Baltimore, our libraries are typically open to the public, not right now, but we hope to reopen by the end of the year. And when attorneys come in, they don't necessarily have access to electronic materials because we can't provide Lexis or Westlaw credentials. But we do have a lot of print materials. And so the big things that we recommend for attorneys to use and the sets we try to keep in our libraries are like Wright and Miller federal practice and procedure, Moore's federal practice, which is the Lexis publication that really takes people through step by step within federal practice. We also keep a lot of court rules because court rules are incredibly important when you're in federal practice because each jurisdiction has its own very specific rules that get as nuanced as the font size and the font type. So it's really important for people to be aware of what those are. We also try to keep a lot of form books. So people kind of had that checklist of what to be going through as they're drafting their arguments. And we try to keep a lot of jury instructions as well, which are also very jurisdiction specific, but they can really help you develop your documents. Right. Yeah. And those are like the key, all the key publications for practicing attorneys. So that's good to know that you have those in print. You know, I know like court rules and some jury instructions you can find on websites, but having Moore's and Wright and Miller, like that's very valuable to attorneys that don't have access to them electronically or in a small firm or if they're a solo practitioner. So that's exactly. And we try to keep a lot of treatises because we really, we know that litigators can really benefit from those, you know, instead of reading, you know, case after case after case, if they can find a treatise that's exactly on point and synthesizes all of that for them, we try to make those treatises available in a variety of topics, like including bankruptcy, because we still, we serve the bankruptcy judges as well as the district judges as well as the circuit judges. So we have all of those materials available. That's great. And so if attorneys come in to use print materials, do they have access to getting help from the law librarians as well? Oh, yeah. Yes. If they have questions. I mean, we're not going to do the research for an attorney who comes in because they've already been trained how to do legal research, we hope. Right. But we will help find the books that they might need. If there's additional materials that we might need to request from another library, we'll try to get those. Oh, that's great. Yeah. And we've really tried to, you know, kind of enhance our services a little bit during the pandemic. And so if somebody needs a chapter or needs a particular section, you know, we'll scan it and send it to them. We don't want to make people's lives more difficult. Right. Right. That's great. And one of the things that I try to focus on in class, and my students will probably say that I don't stop talking about it, is, you know, this idea that don't spin your wheels, stop it for help. And if you can't find something, like, I think the tendency is to just keep trying, trying, trying and doing more random keyword searches. And that's not a good use of time. And so, you know, I talk about how you can, you can chat with the State Law Library or you can ask the librarian at University of Maryland, but now they would know this would be a resource for them as well at the Circuit Library. Like, there's always help you just have to ask. Exactly. Yeah, we always recommended our law clerks and our judiciary personnel, you know, don't spend more than 10 minutes looking for something, give us a call. I think one of the big things is, is that when you're dealing with a new topical area is, you know, if you're running searches and you aren't getting anything, it could be that there's nothing out there. That's, that's always a possibility, especially in, you know, federal court practice. But sometimes when I direct somebody to using an index, and so they can try to figure out what the terminology is, you know, maybe they're searching for a different term. That can really help too. So looking through those table of contents or looking through the index can really help, help craft a better search. Yep. Oh, that's great. I'm so glad to hear you say that because that echoes what I tell my students as well. Okay, so I guess that was the fourth question when I was asking about the resources and how practicing attorneys can use them. Do you have any closing words or any advice for students, especially the students that go into clerkships? A substantial amount of ours do. They might be state clerkships, but you know, is there any kind of like last guiding nugget? I would say, you know, make the most of your time while you're in law school and, you know, go see proceedings when you can, you know, see, you know, the criminal proceedings, see naturalization proceedings, see civil proceedings, all of that, because it's just kind of interesting to see all of the different areas to which you'd be exposed when you're in a clerkship. And as for, as for, you know, getting a clerkship, I think that the greatest skill is just being curious, just being curious about all the different areas of law that are out there, and, you know, all the different things that you would learn in that clerkship, because it really is an incredibly valuable experience. That's great. Thank you so much for talking to me and to my class. I know they're all going to really enjoy this. One thing that I have been letting the students know is that if they have questions or they want to follow up on any topics, they can submit questions to me and I'll pass them to you if you don't mind. Not at all. And your students are welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn. Just mentioned that they're in your class and we can connect and I'm happy to answer any questions along the way. Oh, that is so great. Thank you. I'll be sure to put your name, your full name up there so they can search on LinkedIn, find you. I really appreciate that. All right, Suzanne, thank you so much for talking to me. I really appreciate this and this will be my final podcast, my final episode of the semester for my students. I know you're all sad about that, but I will be posting this and I will ask you to do a little write up about what you learned and then send any questions that you have and we can follow up on those. Thank you.