Law Schools and Money Management

The March issue of National Jurist has an article titled "Is your law school just out to make money?" In my opinion, the title should be "Is your law school running out of money?"

One of Cincinnati Law's recent grads is interviewed in this article. Tara VanHo was an excellent law student, a member of Honor Council, a student articles editor for Law Review, and a very dependable, hard working student employee for our library. Except for the error about free printouts (it's 1,100 free printouts, not 100 free printouts) I have no problem with most of Tara's factual statements about the library, just about the inferences drawn from them.

We, like many other libraries, have been faced with tough choices because of budget cuts. We implemented pay-for-printouts because that was a university-wide policy, one that we ignored until it became too costly for us to continue to do so. Pay-for-printouts is now accepted as par for the course by our current student body.

Tara's comments about the Cincinnati Law Library acquiring less books is dead on. Due to budget increases that neither compensate for past budget cuts nor for the rate of inflation in legal publishing, we now buy 66% less new titles than we did in 1997. I'm sure we are not alone.

Bottom line: The Cincinnati Law Library is not "making money."