People who know me know how much I admire law librarians. The law librarian blogs routinely give you great information. For example, Sabrina Pacifici's BeSpacific.com has information on government efforts on Hurricane Katrina that I simply haven't seen elsewhere and I recommend that you make a visit to her blog to see what I mean. In fact, long-time legal bloggers regularly refer to Sabrina as the best of the legal bloggers.

I was reading the law librarian group blog called "Out of the Jungle" and was, once again, struck by the high quality of librarian blogs.

Let me point you to the recent post on Out of the Jungle called "Practical Skills." In this post, Diane Murley addresses in a thoughtful and thought-provoking way a question that has been on the minds of lawyers and law students, but too infrequently, law professors and law school administrators: why don't law schools teach law students the practical skills needed to practice law?

Hey, that's a pretty simple question, and one that goes right to the heart of the matter.

Diane's post also goes to the heart of the matter and raises a series of questions that all of us in the legal community should thinking about and trying to answer.

When I was an adjunct law professor and taught an IP contract drafting course, I remember how much students appreciated the class where I took about 20 minutes and explained to them what they would actually do when given an assignment at a law firm to draft a contract. They told me tha they didn't feel that they were getting that information in their other classes.

The money quote from Diane's post:

"Do law school professors seek input from practicing lawyers on how the professors can better prepare their students for practice? Should they? Do substantive law professors care what lawyers think? If not, why not? Should they care more about whether students will be ready to practice law when they graduate?"

Her comments comparing what the approach of law professors with that of law school librarians will open your eyes and make you think.

I didn't think that it was possible for me to be a bigger fan of law librarians, but Sabrina and Diane and other law librarians have made me raise my admiration level even higher in the last few days.