If you are thinking about attending AALL, read what ALLUNY members Chris Lund and Laura Hankin had to say about last year’s annual meeting and conference.
By Chris Lund
When I learned that this year’s AALL Annual Conference would be held in Boston, I knew I had to find a way to attend. I’d been to three conferences before, but my first two (2013 and 2014) were when I was still working on my library science degree, and my third (2019) was only a few months into my first real law library job, so I was itching to finally attend one with some actual experience under my belt. Since my organization does not cover professional development costs, I wasn’t sure how feasible this would be. Fortunately, ALLUNY came through with a conference grant, so I registered, booked my room at the conference hotel, and started planning.
The trip had an ominous start on Friday night when a few hours into my drive from central New York to Boston, I was unpleasantly surprised by a flat tire, striking in the midst of a rainstorm, as I was passing through a rural stretch of the interstate with no cell signal. I did my best to change the flat, then cautiously drove another fifty miles on the donut to the nearest civilization and booked a room for the night until I could get the tire properly replaced the next morning.
Fortunately, Saturday morning was far more uneventful. The tire debacle caused me to miss a Saturday afternoon luncheon I had really hoped to attend (which was my whole reason for leaving on Friday afternoon instead of Saturday morning), but I managed to arrive in time for the Opening Reception. Maybe it was just me, but I quickly felt that the vibe in the room was one of excitement and energy, and for the first time since the start of Covid, I felt like I was “back” in the groove of AALL. I visited a few vendors but spent most of my time catching up with friends and colleagues, taking full advantage of the bar, and picking up my 10-Year AALL membership pin. After completing my rounds, I joined up with some other members of the LISP (Legal Information Services to the Public) special interest section. We braved the blazing heat and walked the two blocks to Amorino on Newbury Street where I refreshed myself with a fantastic Strawberry/Mango gelato and spent the evening catching up with LISP colleagues.
Sunday morning started off with a quick breakfast and a stop at the Government Law Libraries Special Interest Section (GLL-SIS) Award and Recognition ceremony, which presented many well-earned awards (congrats to all the winners!) and also featured an address from David Leonard, President of the Boston Public Library, who was a fantastic speaker. I was very happy to see a public library representative included here. One of my firm beliefs as a government law librarian is that we need to put more effort into outreach and partnerships with our public library colleagues. .
Next up was the opening general session and keynote address by Charles Vogl. AALL President Beth Adelman kicked things off with a welcome message, noting that this year’s conference brought in over 1,700 attendees (a new record). When Mr. Vogl then took the stage, I must admit that I was skeptical and had expected a generic corporate-speak type of presentation, but the more he spoke, the more he started to win me over. It’s hard to do justice to this talk in just a few words, but the gist of it was about the importance and impact of personal, one-on-one invitations, and how to improve human connections in an increasingly isolated world. If you have time, I recommend watching the full presentation on the AALL eLearning website.
My third stop for the day was the session on “The Crossroads of Licensing and Copyright.” As the current Chair of AALL’s Copyright Committee and the conference coordinator for this program, I’m probably biased, but I felt like this was an incredibly informative program on a rapidly evolving topic. My subjective opinion is at least somewhat strengthened by the fact that this session quickly became ‘standing room only.’ Speakers Kyle Courtney (Harvard Law School), Alan Inouye (ALA), and Anna Lawless-Collins (Boston University) discussed the subtle, and often confusing, interplay between license terms and copyright laws, and how, depending on context and interpretations, each of them can be used both as sword and as shield in determining what library materials may or may not be shared with public users.
After the copyright program, I raced downstairs to take part in the joint LISP/GLL/SR Roundtable discussion about creating courthouse and law library spaces that are more welcoming to the public and that take into consideration things like the individual experiences, backgrounds, and diversity of library users. So many great ideas and suggestions came out of this discussion, for example, the concept of updating the artwork in your building. The walls of my law library (like many others) are currently adorned in ancient, gigantic portrait collages showing the faces of primarily old white men, who were members of my county’s bar association 100 years ago. While this has historical value, it doesn’t exactly scream “This is a space for you!” to our average court user. Someone suggested we replace some of these portraits with artwork commissioned from local artists who are integrated into the modern community. I loved this idea so much that as soon as the session ended, I pulled out my phone and emailed my boss to request permission to implement this in my library (a few minutes later I had a response from him giving me the green light.)
Following the roundtable session, and after a brief stop by the first aid station to address the aftermath of an unfortunate run-in with an unusually aggressive paper towel dispenser, I went back upstairs to check out Lexis’s double-colon-titled “Exhibit Showcase: AI Unleashed: Revolutionizing the Legal Industry with Generative AI and Lexis+ AI™” (trying say that five times fast). I am certainly impressed by the things that Lexis+ AI™ can do, and I’m very optimistic about the future potential here, but the showcase simply repeated what I have seen through the Lexis+ AI Insider program.
My final “official” session of the day was “Moving Beyond Print”, a discussion of the many concerns and considerations at play as we move more and more rapidly towards a mostly electronic environment. The speakers touched on big picture issues, such as privacy concerns, access, and preservation, as well as risks that can be easily overlooked (like getting rid of a print resource because of the assumption that “somebody else will preserve it”, until everybody has made the same assumption and then no more copies are left to preserve). The best piece of advice I took from this session is when it comes to making print vs. electronic decisions, it’s important to “know your audience.” For example, if you need to convince your users of the efficacy of converting to electronic resources, don’t say “everything is online” (we all know that isn’t true), but instead try saying “everything that you need is online” (presuming, of course, that this is correct – which you’ll know if you “know your audience”).
At the conclusion of this session, I grabbed a quick (and much needed) dinner, and a “pre-gaming” nap before the evening’s social events.. First, was the informal ALLUNY gathering at Jaho, a coffee and wine bar conveniently located across the street from my hotel. As fellow friends filtered in, we slowly began to commandeer the bar and make it our own. The star of this show was undoubtedly ALLUNY Listserv coordinator Sidney Lanier’s young daughter, who was firmly in command of the entire room. Somehow the group managed to occasionally divert our attention long enough to catch up on our work and our lives and to do some future ALLUNY-related planning. From there, we braved the rain and took what we later learned was an unnecessarily long route over to the Bloomberg Law reception at the Boston Public Library for more eating, drinking, and socializing in a spectacular setting.
My Monday morning kicked off with a bright and early Discussion Den on the topic of the unauthorized practice of law in public access law libraries, moderated by Rebecca Katz, Executive Director of Justice Access (who, amongst other things, brought us all donuts!). We had a very lively discussion, sharing real world examples, questions, struggles, and other issues we all face. While I learned quite a bit during this chat, I think the best suggestion I picked up was the idea of requesting a formal advisory opinion on how far we can go in assisting library users before crossing the line into unauthorized practice (I’m currently looking into this).
Next on my agenda were tours of the State Library of Massachusetts and the Social Law Library. I made the ill-advised choice to walk from the conference center to the State Library, which was only about a mile away but felt like ten in the sweltering heat. My primary consolation was that it gave me an excuse to stroll through the Public Garden, which was stunning. After taking in the grandeur of the State Library building and it’s interior artwork, I enjoyed viewing some of the rarer items in their collection (like books owned by William Bradford brought over on the Mayflower, early 1800s tintypes of State legislators, and an original 1776 Declaration of Independence printed in Salem, MA). We were also invited to explore the normally off-limits stacks, which felt like being instantly transported back 100 years. At the Social Law Library, our small group explored a vast array of resources, from the ancient to the modern. The history nerd in me was especially enamored by their 1472 copy of Justinian’s Institutes, and the law librarian in me was amazed to learn that this copy of the book included built-in annotations surrounding the primary text. I guess some things never change, even after 550 years.
Having learned my lesson about walking in the summer heat earlier in the day, I hopped onto the subway for the return trip an arrived at the Conference Center just in time for the LISP roundtable discussion on legal information websites (and 35th anniversary celebration). I’m currently in the midst of my own website project, so this one especially appealed to me. The two example sites that formed the basis of our discussion were Pennsylvania Legal Research 101 (winner of the 2023 Dr. Joel Fishman Professional Publication Award from GLL-SIS) and the Massachusetts Trial Court Law Libraries’ “Massachusetts Law About…” series. The two pages take slightly different approaches to providing legal information, but they both do an amazing job accomplishing their primary goals. Some helpful, practical tips brought up during our discussion included things like including downloadable PDF versions of individual pages whenever possible, spreading the work around by assigning specific pages/categories to individual staff members, specifying the level of license you’ve granted for copying/re-use/distribution, and keeping everything written at an eighth grade reading level (or lower). Getting all these tips to incorporate into my own website project was the second-best part of attending this session. The best part, of course, was that it ended with cake (which was particularly welcome since all my running around in the morning caused me to miss lunch).
Flying high on my cake-based sugar boost, I headed down to the vendor floor where I did some more mingling and demoing then took a trip to the future with “A Robot Wrote this Session Proposal.” The most memorable part of this one was probably seeing a virtually generated, but very realistic looking, version of Nor Ortiz (Yale Law Library) presenting an on-screen intro. I’ve seen plenty of deepfake videos before, but this one hit home as to just how much this tech can really do. After the unsettling intro, the panel got into some of the nuts and bolts about the history of AI and of how it works (or, at least, some very surface-level nuts and bolts that could be understood by a group of law librarians who don’t hold advanced degrees in electrical engineering and/or computational neuroscience). A small part of me felt like attending this was bordering on AI overkill, but considering how much of a role AI is bound to play in the remainder of my career, it was well worth it (I’m still trying to absorb as much as I can about this emerging and ever-changing technology).
After this session let out, it was time for my “dinner followed by pre-gaming (i.e., napping)” routine to get myself ready for the Thomson Reuters extravaganza. I have to admit that, after previously experiencing events hosted at a “music experience” museum, a genuine Texas rodeo, and the Library of Congress, I was a bit underwhelmed when I saw that this year’s gathering would be held in the hotel ballroom, but my opinion changed as soon as I walked into the room. The entire ballroom had been transformed into a miniature version of Boston, complete with living statues, a dance floor (featuring an incredible Irish Stepdance performance), and all the food I could ever dream of (which, is really the most important part of any party). In order to protect the innocent, I won’t get into too many more details, but suffice it to say, we all had a great time.
My last day began with another trip down the AI rabbit hole at “The Impact of Generative AI for Access to Justice.” As a government law librarian serving the public, this is a topic that is of particular interest to me. Every day I see the many, many people who fall through the cracks and into the civil justice gap, unable to afford an attorney, but also unable to qualify for legal aid. This session excelled in discussing the ways in which lawyers will be able to harness generative AI to create more time and capacity, giving lawyers the ability to reach a broader user base, ultimately extending the reach of access to justice initiatives. It fell short, however, because it did not include any real discussion of how AI could be used by self-represented litigants. And while I understand the hesitation and many caveats that would need to be put in place (e.g., unlicensed practice of law, risks of hallucination, outdated information, etc.), it seems to me that this will inevitably become a larger and larger component of self-representation regardless of whether we want it or not(self-represented litigants will turn to whatever tools are available to them). One of the most memorable recent takes I’ve heard on this topic is that we shouldn’t be comparing what a self-represented litigant will get from AI vs. what they’d get from a lawyer, but instead we need to compare what they’d get from AI to what they’re getting now. And, in that comparison, AI wins by a mile even if it’s very far from perfect.
The next 90 minutes brought me back to the exhibit hall one last time. I took advantage of this block to sit through a few vendor demos, play around with some interactive tools, and load up on all the free swag. As the afternoon wound down and the vendors began packing up, I settled into my last session of the weekend: “Out of Mind Out of Sight: Staying Connected and Relevant in an Increasingly Virtual Workplace.” When the presenters polled the audience to ask how many of us were fully remote, how many were fully on-site, and how many were working a hybrid schedule, I realized that I (along with most of my government library colleagues) were in the decided minority of the “fully on site” category. However, that doesn’t mean this session wasn’t applicable to me. On the contrary, even though I still show up to the office every day, I am part of a statewide network of dozens of law library staffers spread out across 62 different counties. Even when I’m on-site, most of my interactions with my closest colleagues are entirely virtual. One thing I particularly liked was the suggestion of creating some sort of “water cooler” type space to give staff the opportunity to socialize, through something like a virtual book club, or maybe a Teams thread dedicated to solely posting pictures of your pets. While it may sound frivolous at first, these are the types of informal interaction that can become the glue that holds a team together.
And with that, my 2023 conference adventures were complete.
Well… almost. I couldn’t spend four days in Boston without visiting at least one bookstore, so I said my goodbyes, then walked two blocks over to Newbury Comics (a must-stop for any visit to this area). After a few minutes exploring their shelves, I went next door to Trident Booksellers & Cafe where I had a great lunch followed by some shopping. I managed to limit myself to only buying three new books, which I consider to be an exemplary exercise of self-control. With my books in tow, I returned to the parking garage and did the five hour drive back home, where I happily arrived with all four tires still intact.
By: Laura Hankin
I am deeply grateful to ALLUNY for awarding me a grant to attend AALL 2023 in Boston, MA this year.
I have worked in a government (NY) public-access law library for 15 years, and this was my first year of AALL membership and attending the Annual Conference. In fact, I have never attended a professional conference of this size and while excited about the opportunity, I was a bit anxious at the start. Despite this, people were friendly and welcoming, the panels and programs were interesting and full of information, and I left with new ideas — some I implemented when I returned to work, some will need planning.
My first night at AALL 2023 was spent walking around the exhibit hall. It was my first AALL conference and the excitement was palpable, but aside from a handful of people I knew from the NY Courts and those I met through them, I wandered from exhibit to exhibit, recognizing the names of many vendors certainly and making notes about which I was particularly interested in revisiting (it was a lot to process). I do want to note that I deliberately delayed a hip replacement surgery to attend the conference, and while the overall experience was largely on level surfaces, it was a lot of walking. Pro tip: when you’re making plans to attend this (or probably any conference), look at the map and choose your lodging carefully. I should have chosen to stay at the hotel at the conference end of the convention center simply to save some of the steps.
Walking into the room for the keynote address and being surrounded by 1800 colleagues was overwhelming. There were many people in the exhibit hall the previous night, but I really hadn’t realized the number of people in attendance. By sheer luck I walked in with fellow members of ALLUNY I had met the night before. As the presentation progressed, I was having trouble understanding the connection between the experiences and issues mentioned in the keynote and our practice. But in retrospect I am reminded of the first course I took in library school, thinking what has this to do with being a librarian? Like many things, with time, we find relevance and significance when we can gain some distance and perspective. Charles Vogl, the keynote speaker, spoke about community, which he defined as a mutual concern for each other, and how by chance or by choice we are finding ourselves distanced from others. The product of this is personal loneliness, but as significant as that is, we are missing opportunities to help colleagues grow professionally. There were words or ideas in the keynote that echoed through AALL programs and the social events. Among these were connection: fostering and maintaining connections between colleagues, connecting with patrons, the benefits of connection within and outside of the workplace.
I went to AALL 2023 knowing next to nothing about generative AI or large language models, indeed even what those terms really meant, their significance, the possibilities and concerns. Like probably most working in a law library, I had read the cautionary tale of an attorney using ChatGPT to create a brief which cited nonexistent caselaw. Before attending a number of programs, I dismissed it as someone who simply took an easy way out of a task, but there are nuances to this situation and it is a harbinger of much more worrisome misuses of these tools.
Large language models are a type of generative AI that are trained using text and textual content. Large language models are predictive, based on patterns in the enormous amounts of processed text, e.g. they can predict possible endings of a sentence. Generative AI creates new text, images, audio, or video based on common elements of existing text, images, audio, and video.
There’s a concern that generative AI will replace lawyers and legal professionals, but like databases, these are only tools. Admittedly “wicked smaht” tools, but tools that require a deft hand and ability to refine a search or question to expand the parameters, or to force them to address specific nuances. The strength of these tools lies in their ability to quickly process, condense, and locate information from large collections of text; it is the people, researchers who benefit from the speed, agility, and synthesis of generative AI tools, who will be able to use the products of these tools to produce coherent, well- structured, error-free materials such as reports, briefs, memos, et al.
The Impact of Generative AI for Access to Justice program was very interesting and it was an opportunity to hear how generative AI is used to improve intake and investigation for the California Innocence Project. AI has the ability to summarize files and information through which, in offices with large caseloads and limited funds and personnel, staff are able to assist more people more quickly and efficiently, and to provide better service.
However, as one who works in a Help Center in a NY Courts law library, my experience is that as limited and stretched as those resources are that assist people with criminal issues, there are seldom any legal resources available to low income (actually anyone who cannot afford an attorney) people with civil legal issues. Thomson Reuters and Lexis are preparing to make generative AI tools available to professionals, but those same tools may not be available to the public. But I suspect it won’t take long before unrepresented litigants are using ChatGPT to generate wills, or separation agreements (two of my most common queries). And for these documents in particular, the generated documents may simply give people an outline and some prompts to consider important issues when currency or in-depth knowledge of the law may not be necessary, particularly for people who have little property or money.
The only program I attended and would recommend another choice was the Cool Tools Café. Having attended webinars showcasing virtual tools and apps for libraries and librarians, I think this information is just as easily conveyed and experienced online, I should have chosen another program. It was well attended and fun, but not the best use of my time at this otherwise unique conference and range of programs.
The Monday 7:45 AM Discussion Den: The Unauthorized Practice of Law: What is Our Risk, Really? was the most surprising, partly because of the number attending that early, and the way the circle kept expanding as more and more people arrived and took part. Those in attendance were primarily from government or academic law libraries and the discussion revealed a great deal of common ground in terms of the discomfort of not really being able to identify where the clear line was separating legal advice from legal information. This was a group I hope to continue to interact with online after the conference to continue to discuss solutions to safely providing assistance.
The succession planning program was the one I felt I needed the most, mapping our future at an organizational level in the most literal sense. I’ve seen little succession planning in my position or at most libraries where I’ve worked. It was only by chance and more significantly, their generosity that when faced with the task of reviving a neglected library, I was able to lean on the knowledge and experience of a retired supervisor. However, I want a plan to make the next transition easier when I or anyone on the library staff accepts a new position or retires. At best, lack of planning wastes time and resources, at worst library service suffers while we reinvent the wheel, but at its core the purpose of succession planning is to help to develop leadership. The critical elements of succession planning are: staff development, the redundancy of specialized skills, well defined job descriptions and preserving institutional knowledge. How these are accomplished are cross training, recognizing the strength, talent and potential of individual staff, documenting all tasks, and identifying the purpose and process of workflows. Preserving institutional knowledge is achieved by making information available on a shared drive, ensuring that people know how to get to it, and having the primary task-holder write instructions and deliver training and explain why a workflow or policy exists.
To a large degree, succession planning demands transparency, and there might be reluctance to reveal too much, to share the knowledge that comes from having specialized skills, or that which separates management from staff. One of the things I did as soon as I returned to work from the conference was to create a shared calendar, in part so all library staff could anticipate upcoming vacations for others in our unit, and I also included deadlines for annual projects. For the most part, those deadlines only apply to me, but I want all of the staff to see the schedule and be able to participate or step in if necessary. This will require training, so beginning this fall, I will cross train at least one other librarian in at least one of these annual tasks. I am also looking for a way to preserve the details of significant events or situations that came up and affected an individual library or the libraries district-wide, as I’d like to document how they were resolved, who was consulted, and why specific choices were made.
At the conclusion of the meeting, having missed the Bloomberg reception, I limped my way over to the Boston Public Library. Despite the heat and the elevator being out of service, the John Singer Sargent ‘Triumph of Religion’ murals on the third floor were breathtaking — The incredible murals of the Boston Public Library – The Humble Fabulist.
It was truly an amazing experience, I hope to be able to attend AALL 2024 in Chicago, and again, I thank ALLUNY for offsetting some of the cost of attending this year.