A day in the life of a law firm Assistant Librarian
Anuja Sharma is Assistant Librarian at Mayer, Brown Rowe & Maw at their London office. We asked
her to tell us about a typical day in the office at this major international firm.
My day starts between 7.30-7.45 am. depending on what sort of mood I am in first thing in
the morning and how sunny it is outside. I tend to listen to Magic or Heart radio stations in
the morning as it's a nice easy start to the day. I catch the tube (Central Line) at 8.30 am.
The journey should only take 25 minutes into St. Paul's station but invariably there are
delays, so I can get to the office anytime between 9.10 am to 9.30am.
My day at the office usually starts off by going through emails that have come in overnight,
most of which tend to be requests for articles from the Weekly Library Bulletin. The bulletin is
done on a weekly basis (on Mondays) and all members of the Library team have some input.
In addition to dealing with requests for articles, there are usually a couple of research
requests as well. Often the research requests can be quite unusual, for instance recently I
was asked to find out as much information as I could on the use of Islamic Finance in
Securitisation deals. I went through the usual routine of looking for articles, looking in
textbooks on Islamic Finance then by accident I came across an Islamic Finance website
which contained lots of useful information. This sort of research query tends to take up most
of the morning. In between I will be answering more mundane queries (such as retrieving
cases or trying to track down missing books) and dealing with other matters that might arise.
In addition to this I run daily news searches on various companies that certain fee earners
have requested information on; this is one of those in between tasks that I can do whilst I'm
waiting on others to get back to me.
This usually takes me up to lunchtime. If I don't have plans to meet up with friends, then
lunch is usually homemade sandwiches (as I'm a veggie I prefer to bring in my own lunch) at
my desk or if the weather is nice, then I go for a walk round St. Paul's Cathedral.
The afternoon tends to be taken up with cataloguing new books, placing them in the various
satellite libraries, (the Firm has 15 satellite libraries) and ordering books that fee earners
have requested (these tend to be ordered on approval). Sometimes in the afternoon I get
research requests from the Firm's USA offices. Often, these are requests about obtaining
information on UK companies (for instance this may involve getting filings from Companies
House, etc). The other most common query I deal with from the States is to obtain copies of
UK case law for them.
This usually takes me up to 5.30 pm. which means it's time to start thinking about going
home - unless it's a Wednesday. On Wednesdays I work a bit later into the evening because
I have a catch up meeting with a colleague who works in the evenings only. The purpose of
these meetings is so that the Evening Library Assistant has some personal contact with
other members of the Library team and it is opportunity for them to raise any concerns they
may have. Other nights I often finish by 5.45pm and sometimes the journey home is nicely
interrupted with drinks or dinner with friends.
