Could Law Librarianship Go the Way of Birmingham’s Thousand Trades – and What Can We Do to Preserve the Profession?

In this article, based on his presentation at the Birmingham Conference – hence the title – Greg Bennett runs through his analysis of job adverts for librarians over the six months preceding the Conference. The purpose of this was to gauge the proportion of those adverts where the criteria involved expertise that currently only law librarians can offer. He then considers the longevity of those very criteria; that is, whether those that currently require the expert knowledge of a law librarian could be replaceable by artificial intelligence (AI), or some other process or other people. Finally, he suggests areas of strength for the future for law librarians, encouraging those involved in the legal information profession to emphasise these strengths in their roles.