db

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP

Overview

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP is a global law firm headquartered in New York, NY. Founded in 1948 by Marshall Skadden, Les Arps, and John Slate, it has since risen to become one of the world’s top-ranked law firms. Over the past 78 years, Skadden has worked to become a go-to firm to address its clients’ complex legal problems, including developing complementary practice area specialties. On Skadden’s website, the firm says that to deliver the highest quality work, it must stay “focused on the simple formula of developing an inclusive complement of extraordinary attorneys, working together as a team.” And Skadden defines its firm culture with three words: collaborative, innovative, persistent. Skadden’s research department and its librarians operate within this framework. It’s integral to the firm’s teamwork formula that top legal talent work together with the best researchers and the right resources to get the job done.

Demographics

Total employees

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP employs 3,840 people. This number is made up of both attorneys and the support staff who work at the firm. Making up the firm’s workforce are 1,516 attorneys and 2,324 non-attorneys. As will be explained in further detail below, Skadden is a multinational law firm with offices across four continents that practices multiple types of law.

Attorneys

The current attorney count for Skadden sits at 1,516. This represents attorneys across all offices and all practice areas. Associates make up 67% of the attorney ranks at 1,014. There are 317 partners (21%). Rounding out the remaining attorneys are 185 counsel (12%). Each attorney is able to utilize the research department and the libraries for all their work needs.

Offices

Skadden has 22 offices around the world. Each location has a different local style, atmosphere, and challenges, although the firm states that its overall culture runs throughout. The New York headquarters is significantly larger than the rest of the offices with 585 attorneys, with Washington, D.C.’s 220 attorneys coming in second. The London, UK, office is Skadden’s third largest with 160 attorneys.

Practice areas

With attorneys working on legal matters ranging from Antitrust to Intellectual Property to National Security, Skadden requires a large breadth of resources to accommodate the research needs of the firm. The attorneys work within 26 main practice areas, with the top five practice areas by attorney count being Litigation, Corporate, M&A, Tax, and Antitrust/Competition.

Resources

Office Libraries

The Research & Knowledge Services department at Skadden has library staff members in 10 of the 22 offices. With a presence in nearly half of Skadden’s offices worldwide, the department’s research team is able to field corporate and legal research queries from 3 AM – midnight ET every day of the year. With a total of 44 professionals in the group for 1,516 attorneys, that equates to a ratio of 1:34, or 1 researcher to 34 attorneys.

There are over 42,000 records in the library’s catalog, representing both print and electronic materials. Item records in the catalog are honed for the needs of Skadden, with special attention given to subject classifications. On-site office libraries are always open for browsing and checking out materials for the 22,000+ items in the print collection, even when not physically staffed.

Outside Resources

Because the library is seen as resource and not just a physical place, many items in the collection are electronic resources. Online access has been configured and designed to be accessible both inside the office and off-site when logged into the firm’s network. There are more than 20,000 electronic resource item records in the library catalog. Most of these records are set up with URLs linking directly to the databases or eBook portals for the individual item. In addition to the catalog, Skadden’s intranet highlights the firm’s 100 most-used databases and eBook portals. Most of the top 25 databases are provided with seamless access (no logins required).  A selected listing of top databases is below:

In addition to the databases accessible by attorneys, the librarians can access more than 600 other sites and databases in support of the firm’s research needs.

The Community & The Library

The Covid-19 pandemic brought many changes to how Americans conduct business over the past few years. With employees working remotely, both needs and habits of workers changed, including at Skadden. The research department had to maneuver through the many challenges offered by this new work environment – most significantly in terms of online resources. With office closures and pandemic lockdowns, attorneys and staff had to do all work remotely. This meant that there were no print books, no office desk sets, no routed print periodicals, etc. The research department was tasked with making print resources available through online offerings where possible. The trend towards online adoption and push to reduce the amount of print holdings will only continue, and the research department will continue to do what it can to meet the needs of the firm.

Conclusion

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP is a made up of a dynamic community of attorneys working in multiple practice areas across multiple offices along with a large support staff to back up the organization. As Skadden has continued to grow, so too have its needs for high-quality research and resources. As such, the Research & Knowledge Services department must continue to keep up with the firm’s work and its clients as well as stay abreast of current resource offerings. As Gregory (2019) states:

Knowledge of the community that the library serves, whether it is a geographical area or an organization, is the keystone of effective collection development. The more the collection development staff knows about the work roles, general interests, education, information-seeking behavior, values, and related characteristics of potential library users, the more likely it is that the collection will be able to provide the necessary materials to those users when it is needed. (p. 13)

References and Further Reading

Caplan, L. (1994). Skadden: Power, money, and the rise of a legal empire. Farrar Straus & Giroux.

Gregory, V. L. (2019). Collection development and management for 21st century library collections: An introduction (2nd ed.). ALA Neal-Schuman.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates. (2022). About the firm. Retrieved March 6, 2022 from https://www.skadden.com/about/overview

The Skadden story: An autobiography. (2014). (N. Taylor & S. Feldman, Eds.). Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.

The Slate [Skadden’s intranet]. (2022).  Retrieved March 6, 2022 from https://theslate/

Thomson Reuters. (2022). Monitor Suite – Results: Skadden Arps Litigation (2019-2021). Retrieved March 6, 2022 from https://monitorsuitelinks.thomsonreuters.com/resource/39bab54cbac58c8f36117da423964427