by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
Like a lot of graduates from Florida Coastal School of Law, Martha Smith spent all her time in the library.
But Smith was one of the few students who earned a paycheck for the countless hours spent among the book stacks. Smith has worked at the library since 1996 as a member of the technical staff. And for the last six years, Smith has doubled as a law student.
Following her Dec. 17 graduation, Smith has a law degree to go with her master’s in library science. She marvels at the changes that have occurred over the past decade for both her and the law school.
“The school and I, it’s remarkable how far we’ve come,” said Smith.
She remembers back to 1996 when she interviewed in a construction tailor for her job at Florida Coastal’s half-built library. Now she’s studying for the bar exam and the school is preparing to move into its new campus, a 220,000 square foot office building that will more than double the law school’s size.
Ironically, Smith had no interest in pursuing a legal education when she arrived in Jacksonville fresh from graduate school at the University of Maryland. But the longer she worked on campus the more sense it made.
University law libraries require their directors to hold both a law degree and a master’s in library science. Smith started to realize the doors a legal education could open for her.
And Florida Coastal worked with Smith to remove the last significant hurdle: money. Smith received a full scholarship for her first year and aid packages thereafter to make her education affordable as well as practical.
“I saw that I basically had an opportunity to go to law school for free. Who gets that?” she said.
But just because her legal education was cheap doesn’t mean it was easy. Smith juggled her full-time job at the library with her class work. She quickly found that her administrative and research skills were assets in the classroom. But it took her a while to learn to think like a lawyer.
“It’s really challenging, a completely different way of thinking. And I don’t have that common personality type you think of when you think of lawyers.”
That aggressive personality that most people associate with lawyers is a benefit in the courtroom but Smith thinks it might detract from the public perception of lawyers.
“We all hear the lawyer jokes, but what I’ve found is people usually walk away from an interaction with a lawyer with a better impression than they walked in with,” she said.
Juggling law school with a full-time job was a grind, said Smith. But she counts herself as fortunate that she didn’t have to leave campus to work.
“I see students working all day, taking classes at night and taking care of families on top of it all. I don’t know how they do it. But the time management skills you learn will pay off in the long run.”
Smith said she was fortunate to attend a law school like Florida Coastal, which has emphasized making a legal education accessible to non-traditional students.
“Florida Coastal School of Law really made a name for itself early by trying to focus on professional people with different kinds of demand on their time,” said Smith.
And just as her skills as a librarian made her a better law student, Smith says the skills she learned in the classroom made her more effective while working in the library.
She better understood what references would be the most effective help to guide students’ research. After all, she was working with the same materials.
Smith is still putting her time-management skills to the test. Her law school days may be over but now the state bar exam looms. Smith spends from 20 to 30 hours a week preparing for the bar on top of her job at the library. She and the staff also must prepare for the school’s move, which is scheduled for June.
As a part-time student, Smith’s Bar preparation requires a bit more review than most students. First-year courses like contracts and torts are five years behind her, requiring a thorough review of those subjects.
“Bar preparation can be another full-time job, I’m still going to be in that grinding mode. I’m just going to reintroduce myself to my colleagues, remind them that I do still work around here and start getting ready for the move,” she said.
Smith doesn’t plan to leave library work to practice law, although she said she’s intrigued by “collaborative approaches” to the law like mediation. She doesn’t need to pass the bar to work in a law library, but Smith said she’s not the type to leave an opportunity unexplored.
With a law degree in hand, Smith is aware those opportunities have expanded. She’s now qualified to work as a director of a law library. She said she might also one day be tempted by an opportunity to do research for a museum or work as an archivist. For now though, she’s looking forward to the day when she can focus solely on her work for Florida Coastal.
“I don’t cut myself off from opportunities,” she said. “Because who knows what’s going to happen? Ten years ago I would never have thought I’d be graduating from law school.”