Law Library - ABA Requirements of Law School Law Libraries

ABA Requirements of Law School Law Libraries

As of 2010, the American Bar Association has propounded rules requiring each law school's law library to include among its holdings the following "core collection":

1. all reported federal court decisions and reported decisions of the highest appellate court of each state;
2. all federal codes and session laws, and at least one current annotated code for each state;
3. all current published treaties and international agreements of the United States;
4. all current published regulations (codified and uncodified) of the federal government and the codified regulations of the state in which the law school is located;
5. those federal and state administrative decisions appropriate to the programs of the law school;
6. U.S. Congressional materials appropriate to the programs of the law school;
7. significant secondary works necessary to support the programs of the law school, and
8. those tools, such as citators and periodical indexes, necessary to identify primary and secondary legal information and update primary legal information.

The ABA further sets forth additional requirements, including the requirement that the law library have a full-time director, and sufficient staff to attend to the needs of the institution.