Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 6, 1994                   TAG: 9402020265
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: F-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BY SAUNDRA TORRYTHE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

SIGN OF THE TOMES: LAW LIBRARIES HUNT THIEVES

A Boston lawyer got caught when he tried to sell the lawbooks he had diligently filched from Boston's Social Law Library.

And at the Federal Bar Foundation Library in the District of Columbia, every civil procedure book from every state has disappeared at one time or another - and no thief has ever been nabbed.

While few are ever caught, lawyers, it turns out, are just as sticky-fingered as the next reader when it comes to "borrowing" books that are not supposed to leave the law library.

"It is every librarian's nightmare," said Bennie Martin, executive librarian at Chicago's Cook County Law Library. Martin, a lawyer himself, would like to think better of his profession.

"You are held to a higher standard," he sighed. "You are sworn to an oath. But how can we set an example, if we are being prosecuted for theft - and petty theft at that?"

Law librarians report thefts each year of scores of volumes, as well as hundreds of pages that are slit out of books with razor blades or lifted from loose-leaf binders.

Pamela Gregory, of the Prince George's County Law Library in Maryland, calculated theft losses of $13,000 for 1991 and 1992. Cook County spent more than $6,000 to replace stolen and mutilated lawbooks last year.

With all their nooks and crannies, and with staffs too small to keep watch on exits, many law libraries are easy pickings. "It is so easy for attorneys. . . . They carry these huge litigation briefcases," laments Lilian Weber, of D.C.'s Federal Bar Foundation Library.

While the big law school libraries generally have security systems, most of the smaller law libraries for the practicing bar are forced to live with their losses. The systems are just too expensive: about 25 cents per volume to put security seals in books.

And the security is easy to defeat. If no one is watching, a thief can hold a book high in the air to avoid the scanner and slip through the gates.

Besides, much of the theft involves pages from books - a practice that would not typically be detected and seems to particularly infuriate librarians. "It is a more insidious attack," said Frederic Baum, who heads the library of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. At least when a book is missing, "you can replace it," he said. But often, librarians only learn of the stolen pages when someone desperately needs them.

And just which volumes do discriminating thieves prefer? Believe it or not, the top targets for filching are ethics opinions - the rulings on what lawyers can and cannot do under the profession's ethical code. Gregory and other librarians keep them under close watch in their offices, and Gregory won't even allow lawyers to sign them out. "Oh, no," she said. "I make them use them right here in my office."

Other favorites: Probate, criminal and child-neglect materials are hot targets at the D.C. Superior Court law library, librarian Lettie Limbach says. So, too, are jury instructions for robbery, theft and such. (Maybe the lawyers are just preparing for their own future defense.)

While librarians take the problem seriously, occasionally even they have to chuckle at the thieves' antics.

Martin recalled that the lawyer with the encyclopedia stuffed in his pants argued that "he had not intended to permanently deprive me of the book."

Baum says that once in a while a stolen book turns up across town at another Manhattan library. "A real guilt-ridden thief," Baum joked.