What Is the Future of Print in Law Libraries?

p strongPrint is not disappearing from law libraries, but it is becoming a smaller, more ive part of a collection strategy led by digital content./strong/p p Primary Research Group's 2026&ndash27 benchmark study of 36 law libraries found that digital resources accounted for 73.82% of the average content budget, compared with 25.27% for print. Looking ahead, respondents expected print spending to fall by 9.13% and digital spending to rise by 15.17%./p p Those figures describe rebalancing, not abandonment. Print can retain value where browsing matters, archival continuity is required, licenses are unstable, or practitioners and faculty strongly prefer a physical format. The management question is which titles justify recurring shelf, handling and preservation costs when a digital alternative is available./p p Space decisions should follow use evidence rather than a general assumption that all print is obsolete. Law libraries can combine circulation, in-house use, faculty consultation, citation patterns and replacement risk to identify protected core collections. Lower-use runs may be candidates for shared storage, coordinated retention or withdrawal, especially when reliable consortium access exists./p p For publishers, the market will reward formats that solve different problems instead of duplicating one another. For libraries, the strongest strategy is explicit: define the print categories that remain mission-critical, measure their use and redirect savings from routine duplication toward digital access, AI-enabled research, teaching support or other growing demands./p p  /p