By shrinking 40 libraries for 20 offices down to one, Foley & Lardner LLP ushers in a new era of information access with a digital library

Established in 1843, award-winning Foley & Lardner LLP is experienced at adapting to change to become stronger. With the considerable energy and money required to maintain 40 libraries in 20 offices around the world, it became obvious that change was once again on the horizon.

In 2012, Foley hired their first Director of Information Services, Jeff Bois. His primary goal was to increase attorneys’ access to content and maximize the library staff’s support of their endeavors, while reducing costs. To achieve these goals, he saw the introduction of eBooks and an associated digital library platform as fundamental. Essential to the creation of this digital library were:

• A ‘technology agnostic’ platform that would work with any mobile device the attorneys used.
• A broad inventory of legal eBooks to replicate the firm’s print collection.

Bois and his team selected to work with LexisNexis®. Legal eBooks from LexisNexis are published both in formats that are universally accessible from any mobile device. In addition, the LexisNexis® Digital Library solution with OverDrive® technology provides lending and content management capabilities—and is publisher agnostic. As a result:

• Firm attorneys now have more mobility and access to the firm’s collection
• Costs associated in maintaining the print libraries are reduced, including those for redundant content
• The library staff spends less time managing titles and more time supporting firm attorneys

Once again, Jeff Bois is looking forward to change. He said, “One reason our firm is an early adopter of eBooks and a digital library platform is that by getting in at the beginning, we have a vitally important opportunity to influence how those technologies evolve and are enhanced by vendors.” Read Foley’s tips for enhancing attorneys’ adoption of a digital library.

More information? Learn how your firm can benefit from the LexisNexis Digital Library.

“Because Transformation Is Essential to the Communities We Serve” is the introductory tagline of the webpage promoting the American Library Association’s (ALA) newest attempt at establishing the essential link between libraries and their constituents. Launched in Washington D.C., in October 2015, the multiyear Libraries Transform campaign is “designed to increase public awareness of the value, impact and services provided by libraries and library professionals.”  

The 2016 National Library Week theme, Libraries Transform, was deliberately chosen to align with the ongoing campaign. For the observance, library supporters and advocates were actively recruited to show support and “spread the word about the important role of libraries in people’s lives” in creative ways.  

Read the full article from Information Today, Inc. here.

Bexar County is home of the first library in the United States that does not stock a single print book. Instead, the BiblioTech library has thousands of e-books that patrons can access on hundreds of computers, e-readers and tablets. Due to the success of this library, construction is now underway for a third branch that will open in 2017.  Read the full article from Good E Reader here.

With the objective of reaching out and giving back to the community, Michael Tuazon, Head of Legal for Reed Elsevier Philippines (REPH) along with other REPH employees has conducted its very first RE Cares activity sessions for the year entitled “Sinag ng Pag-asa Library Visit - Tutorial Sessions” at the Payatas Community, Quezon City in March 2016.

This monthly activity will be in partnership with REPH’s partner foundation, the Kapatid Kita Mahal Kita Foundation (KM). KM believes in community-building in the most poverty-stricken areas.  Through the people’s kind-heartedness, children of the poorest of the poor are sent to schools and become useful members of their respective communities.

The scholars supported live in a barangay which lies within an open dumpsite known as the Payatas open dumpsite. It is the largest open dumpsite in the Philippines and remains a very poor area with most of the families making a living off the garbage they collect.  To help uplift the children’s condition and with the hope of giving them a better future, REPH now sponsors more than 100 kids who live in Payatas. Besides sponsoring the children’s academic financial needs (e.g. tuition fees, uniform, books, etc.), REPH likewise helped in making into a reality the “Sinag ng Pag-asa Library” (literally meaning Ray of Hope Library) which was inaugurated last November 2015 so the scholars have a place to study and do their research after class.  It is stocked with reference books and also is equipped with several computers with internet access.  It is where we conducted our tutorial class on basic English sentence construction and grammar.

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The REPH Legal team in Manila is going from strength to strength – made up of 6 paralegals, supervised by another lawyer, the UK Legal team has been supported since 2014 and James Harper and Blair Macdonald have been training and working with the team over this time.

Keen to capitalise on this, Blair has been working behind the scenes to introduce direct access to the REPH team for our UK business colleagues.  The principle behind this is “right-source” your legal support – by transitioning some of the ‘everyday’ workload and enabling direct access, we can increase the availability of the onshore team for the more complex questions and advice (and therefore speed up average overall delivery across all work).  

This process has already started; with licensing contracts the UK business will be given direct access to the REPH Legal team.  The Legal Licensing function now deals directly with the legal professionals in Manila for all first line queries, document amendments and some legal advice.  This represents a major benefit for our internal customers as it effectively doubles the number of staff who can review and respond to your queries.

The News and Business licensing in team will follow suit in May 2016.  Thereafter, we will be adding the Author Licensing teams before rolling out further into the various legal and tax markets teams later in the year.

This is a major development for the legal team and the culmination of planning, training and engagement going back to 2104.  As the REPH Legal team further develop their skills and expertise, they will become ever more accustomed to supporting all areas of the business and we will be able to further leverage their support.  This should, in turn, drive down overall turnaround times across the varied work types we assist on! 

We would welcome any suggestions for other areas to focus on that you would find most helpful, and are also delighted to hear from any volunteers to represent their teams to ensure they have more options for legal support!  Contact blair.macdonald@lexisnexis.co.uk or james.harper@lexisnexis.co.uk  or come up to L8 to see one of us!