ABA Journal – “Law librarians have recognized rapid technological shifts in their profession and, as a result, plan to focus on new skills for the future, according to data released Tuesday by the American Association of Law Libraries. The inaugural AALL State of the Profession 2019 report—which captures information from academic, government, law firm and corporate law libraries—shows that 27.4% of law firms or corporations have at least one active artificial intelligence initiative. Of those, 68.4% involve the library. When asked which skills they plan to develop in the next two years, 56% of law firm and corporate law library employees said artificial intelligence or machine learning, 43.5% said data analytics and 42% said blockchain. According to the report, 92.6% of government law library employees report that artificial intelligence or machine learning has already affected their workflow by automating routine tasks and opening up more opportunities for other work. In the future, 48.6% will focus on staying current with emerging technologies, 41.1% on data visualization and 37.4% on data analytics. A similar trend is seen in academic law libraries, where 39.3% of employees plan to develop skills in data analytics. The next two highest responses were data visualization, at 36.4%, and staying current with emerging technologies, at 34.6%…”