Factors Affecting Academic Law Libraries’ Preparedness and Compliance with the Philippine Legal Education System

A recent study found that only 31% of academic law libraries in the Philippines are prepared to provide a hybrid of face-to-face and online instruction or HyFlex library services and programs in the new normal, and almost 20% cannot support the instructional and learning needs of their institution due to gaps in their basic law collection (Frias & Halcon, 2022). This paper investigates the relationships between the location, type, as well as size of institutions and the preparedness and compliance of their academic law libraries for hybrid learning and the Legal Education Board’s (LEB) standards on library services, programs, as well as collection. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire distributed to participants of the Basic Training for Academic Law Librarians conducted by the Network of Academic Law Librarians, Inc. The results of this study provide a foundation for improvement in library management with specific recommendations to improve the preparedness of these libraries for the new legal education system in the Philippines. The survey was completed by 72 out of 100 academic law librarians, and the data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA and the Brown-Forsythe Test. The results of the study included the following: 1) academic law libraries are generally compliant with LEB standards; 2) academic law libraries from private institutions are more prepared and compliant; and 3) the three categorical variables namely, a) location, b) the type of institution, and c) size of the institution in varying degrees are significant factors in the preparedness and compliance of academic law libraries to support the Philippine legal education system.