Oedipus Lex

It is with great interest to me per­son­ally to find out about the pro­posed mer­ger of Middle and Inner Temple lib­rar­ies. It was only last week that I was look­ing into which inn to join. My motiv­a­tion to do it early was the use of the inn lib­rar­ies as I con­tinue my stud­ies, well that and the fact I will have to go in front of vari­ous com­mit­tees to explain my dubi­ous past. As luck would have it I was look­ing to join Inner Temple, I’d heard par­tic­u­larly good things about their lib­rary. Now I am not so sure and will be look­ing at Lin­coln and Gray’s inn instead.

Like many stu­dents study­ing law in Lon­don I find that there is often a run on books if there is a dead­line on a par­tic­u­lar sub­ject. The fact I could go into a spe­cial­ist lib­rary, with a good selec­tion of books and know­ledge­able lib­rar­i­ans holds great appeal to me and, I ima­gine, many in my situ­ation. And it is that many where the trouble for me lies. By effect­ively halv­ing the amount of inns of court lib­rar­ies those mak­ing these pro­pos­als are doub­ling the amount of people, prac­ti­tioner and stu­dent, per­us­ing the shelves. They are also halv­ing the amount of highly trained per­son­nel avail­able to answer quer­ies from people like me who fre­quently get lost among the shelves of books and if they are look­ing to cram two lib­rar­ies into one, I ima­gine those shelves would be fairly cosy.

And there is another point. Both lib­rar­ies hold col­lec­tions of unspeak­able value to the Eng­lish legal com­munity. What is to be done with them? Will they be crammed into the one build­ing? Or will they be held in stor­age and have to be reques­ted, thus adding delays to the access­ib­il­ity of texts? How will this work if you have a par­tic­u­larly tight dead­line and are due in court?

What about the dis­tinct per­son­al­it­ies of the two lib­rar­ies? It was only last week when I was listen­ing to two bar­ris­ter friends arguing about whose inn lib­rary was the bet­ter. This made me think of the mer­ging of Brit­ish army infantry regi­ments and the det­ri­mental effect it has had on mor­ale. The bar is a pro­fes­sion with an uncer­tain future at the moment. Cuts to the legal aid budget and the intro­duc­tion of soli­cit­ors with higher rights, coupled with the astro­nom­ical price of edu­ca­tion have den­ted the mor­ale of those think­ing of enter­ing the wacky world of advocacy. Will these pro­pos­als do any­thing to encour­age us that we have a future? Prob­ably not. My most learned friends Charon QC and Geeklaw­yer have blogged on this already and it would be worth­while for my four read­ers to check out their opin­ions. I how­ever will be look­ing else­where for an inn.