Kaye Scholer says goodbye to old offices and 95 percent of its law books
Kaye Scholer has moved to a new headquarters in Manhattan with dramatically smaller library space.
The law firm didn’t take about 95 percent of its library, made up of tens of thousands of books, when it moved to new offices this month at 250 West 55th Street, the New York Times reports. “Shelves full of uniformly bound legal volumes—beloved of any photographer, videographer or cinematographer who needs a background that instantly proclaims ‘law office’—are headed to oblivion in the digital era,” the story says.
The new library has about 700 linear feet of shelf space, compared to about 10,000 linear feet of shelving at the former office. Surviving the cut was a set of New York Jurisprudence, 2d, which costs nearly $20,000 for a new hardcover set.
The books that didn’t make the move will be recycled or donated.
The Times spoke with lawyer Ira Goldfarb, of Friedman, Levy, Goldfarb & Green for his take on the law firm library. Partners at his firm were recently photographed in their library for a Super Lawyers advertising supplement.
“The answer to your question is that they’re basically decoration,” Goldfarb said of the books. “They’re an anachronism. We couldn’t give them away if we wanted to.”
