October 2024

by Martin Korn, Golden Arrow Publishing

The New York Law Institute, located in one of the World’s most cosmopolitan cities counts many international law firms as members.  This brief post will highlight the importance of offering foreign language titles to attorneys in the non-United States office locations for many of these global firms.

One of the issues I’ve dealt with over many years was the dearth of third party legal content available to attorneys in European and Asian offices. I recognized early on that it wasn’t always so easy as saying that a particular non-US country did not enjoy long history of legal scholarship (which is still true in many instances) but more along the lines of “I’m not familiar with that country’s catalogue of materials”.  Of course, this is in large part due to the essentially monolingual educational tradition affecting most Americans.  I’ve found that the eBook materials offered in the NYLI collection to be most helpful in providing relief to practitioners in multilingual jurisdictions.

There are basic approaches to identifying foreign language titles of interest.  One is to use a third party translation service such as Google Translate as an assist.  The other is to use database filters provided by your ProQuest eBook Central collection.  Of course a combination of both options will always be a good idea.

No matter what, I suggest starting with Advanced Search.  For the purposes of demonstration I will focus on antitrust law, one of the primary reasons US based law firms open offices in Europe.  The first item to note – antitrust law is generally referred to as “competition law” on the other side of the Atlantic.  We will use both terms to be inclusive.  German and French will be the languages for the purpose of this note.

Starting with Google Translate we have:

English French German
antitrust No translation but “antimonopole” is an alternative kartellrecht
competition concours wettbewerb
law loi but “droit” works gesetz

With this in hand we can experiment and search these terms in the title:

title contains: kartellrecht

Result: Two editions of one title and a second title.

On the other hand, using the filters alone with no searching:

Language: German

BISAC Subject: antitrust

Result: Three titles, one of which was the more recent edition of the two titles in the first search.

Combining methods brings back these results:

Language: German

Title: gesetz

Keyword: kartellrecht

Result: Two editions of the same title and a second title.  None from the first two search methods.

The disparity of results is why I recommend the use of both approaches.  Also, consider different combinations of terms, this will increase both the number and relevancy of the resulting list.  The level of detail to include in these enhanced bibliographies is up to the creator.  For this article I include the publishing date in the display to assist the patron.

Below is a sample digital resource collection that could be presented to French and German speaking patron attorneys who practice antitrust and competition law.  Consulting with the users would be a great way to both fine tune the interface and to identify potential titles missed in the initial set up.

Utilizing these methods is an excellent opportunity to assist NYLI subscribers to enhance the value of their service and that of their subscription.  It is just another reason for practitioners to join the roster of NYLI members.

Antitrust and Competition Law Resources

Ressources sur le droit antitrust et la concurrence – Française

Ressourcen zum Kartell- und Wettbewerbsrecht – Deutsch

Martin Korn, a recent vLex Fastcase 50 Honoree is the owner and co-founder of Golden Arrow Publishing. While building that business, he headed the library and research department as director at an AmLaw 50 law firm for over 25 years.  He has shared his insights with colleagues at industry conferences, and has authored articles for the community of law librarians. Prior to his time as a librarian, he lived in the more academic world of anthropology, where he held the titles of curator and education coordinator of the now defunct California State University, Northridge Anthropology Museum.  His graduate studies focused upon forensic anthropology where he authored a chapter for the US Navy’s guide on human remains found on San Nicolas Island, and as an occasional consultant to the County Coroners of Los Angeles, Orange, and San Bernardino. Contact him at martinkorn@gapubs.com