A bill making its way to the Senate floor could determine the future for state law libraries. Yet some are worried about what the bill will mean for the general public.
State Supreme Court officials announced in May that many law libraries would be closed because of advances in technology and a lack of interest.
The Senate Judiciary Committee took up a House bill in a Feb. 8 meeting that would allow state Supreme Court officials to evaluate library usage and to determine which libraries to keep. Members voted to move the bill to the Senate floor.
Steven Canterbury, administrative director of the West Virginia Supreme Court said there are three of these libraries in the state.
"They ran between $125,000 to $180,000 per law library," Canterbury said to committee members. "We did a study of law libraries earlier, and in one law library (Cabell County) over an eight month period, not a single person came in."
Before closing law libraries, the state Supreme Court has worked to make sure no one is using them, Canterbury explained. Canterbury said there is still interest in the Harrison County law library.
"The libraries originally were established so that the smaller firms could compete against larger firms," Canterbury said.
The capitol's law library will remain open, Canterbury said.
"If you need to hunker down and do research, you know you're going to find what you need at the law library in the Capitol anyway," Canterbury said. "Even local regional courthouse libraries might not be able to satisfy that, so you would have to drive here. We just found such little use of the regional law libraries that we could not reasonably expect tax dollars to be used to support them."
Plus, many lawyers or pro se litigants can get the same information from the fingertips, Canterbury said. Many websites offer the same information, either for free or a monthly fee.
The push to close the libraries has met with some criticism. Canterbury said he has received thousands of emails.
"But out of the 1,300 I received, only six were from within West Virginia," he said. "Three of those were from the same family, but there is no law library in their county."
Keith DeBlasio, executive director of the Maryland-based Advocare, said he is worried about the bill's impact on those who cannot afford a lawyer.
DeBlasio said the general public can access West Virginia code for free but the annotative version, which consists of case law, cannot be accessed for free.
"For example, if you have a second home, and you're wondering if it can be designated as Class II for tax purposes," DeBlasio said. "It is explained in the code that the only residences that you can use for an alternative purpose can go to Class III. Without reading the case law and knowing that as long as it's not using it to rent, it's still a residential Class II."
DeBlasio said accessing the same information as provided in a law library can be quite expensive.
"Under Westlaw, you could pay $998 a year to get the West Virginia code annotative," he said. "That cost goes up to $1,209 for some programs. If you want one law book on Amazon, I found a 2006 version of state court annotative rules for $49.95. I haven't been able to find a single new issue anywhere."
Arguing with Canterbury, DeBlasio said there are many more than six West Virginians opposed to closing the law libraries.
"In our petition alone, I know we have gotten 130 on that petition," he said. "Many are out of state but there was more than six than at the Access to Justice meetings. There were approximately 20 signatures from people from West Virginia."
Delegate Gary Howell, R-Mineral, said overall he did not have a problem with the bill because of the extreme cost to the taxpayers.
"At one point, each county had one law library so that would be a quarter or a half of a million spent annually where many of them weren't being used at all," he said.
Howell did mention an issue encountered when he spoke with officials during Library Day at the capitol.
"I said, ‘Here's my concern. I know state code is online along with several other things. But what about annotated code?'" Howell recalled. "I was told that they can get it online. I asked, ‘Is it free?' I said, ‘I know lawyers use it but can the general public, can they get it for free?' I was assured that they could. So I voted for the bill as long as everyone gets access and they're not going to lose access to that info."
Howell said he later saw a letter to the editor written by DeBlasio that had mentioned the public's access to online information.
"He said that it wasn't correct," Howell said. "Some of the information there is contradictory. I wrote a letter to the head librarian for law libraries in the Supreme Court's office asking if they are able to access info from the law library for free of charge. I have not heard back."
Howell said he has not heard too many complaints from his constituents and does not regret his decision to vote for the bill.
"If information is not provided online, I would like to see it put in place," he said. "I have been working with those on the Senate side and if it's not the case, then a good compromise would be then to make them provide in the bill to provide a public terminal in the courthouse with the same information. That way, people can still have full access through the computerized system."
Yet, DeBlasio said the problem would not be fixed by just having kiosks.
"You will still have a problem that most people are not going to know how to search on the computer," he said. "Maybe they could provide a number to call in or a floating law librarian."
Canterbury said there has been discussion to have kiosks providing Westlaw's services.
"But it's really expensive for the license to be able to do that," Canterbury said. "Westlaw makes a living of people subscribing to the system, and it's not cheap. We did talk about that but the court has been disinterested in pursuing it."
There would not be a floating librarian like DeBlasio mentioned, Canterbury said. Instead, the help desk would be online.
"There would be a person online based in Charleston," Canterbury said. "We don't want to send people to other counties because of the cost. But the court has expressed little interest in going there (kiosks) at this point. IT doesn't mean it won't happen though."
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