Page 68 - Panama City Living July-August 2019

LAW LIBRARY
When you ask a lawyer a question, the answer usually begins with, “It depends.”
Previous page: Carol Hoots and Judge Don Sirmons
The American legal system is complex. It is based primarily on the principle of the common law system that originated in historic England, premised upon custom and judicial decisions as opposed to statutory language. Also called case or precedent law, in the U.S., case law establishes precedence for subsequent similar court cases. Each state has its own case law and the federal system also has its own case law. Therefore, to resolve an issue, one must have knowledge of whether that issue has previously been decided by a judge and, if so, the rationale for why the judge made the decision. Facts become important in this process. A change in facts could change a decision.
Some issues are decided by statutes passed by legislative bodies or administrative rules and regulations passed by governmental agencies. This calls for statutory interpretation. Do the facts of a given situation fall within the intent and meaning of the applicable statute? Plus, when there is any issue that needs to be addressed, it seems everyone wants a statute passed to address it. And each new statute is subject to interpretation.
Finally, there are different areas of law such as civil, tort, criminal, juvenile, domestic, mental health, guardianship, estate planning, tax, and social security, to name a few. Each area has its own special rules of procedure to follow.
When faced with legal questions, anyone who has not studied the law will find that they can rarely get definitive answers. Is the legal system treating everyone the same? Why do I need a lawyer to handle my case? Can I afford to hire a lawyer to resolve my case? Why does it take so much time to resolve an issue? Carol Hoots, the librarian at the Bay County Law Library, has been hearing these and so many more questions on a daily basis for the past 35 years.
Situated within the Bay County Public Library on 11th Street in Panama City, the law library takes up space in the southeast wing of the sprawling building. Carol can be found next to stacks of legal books near the information desk where she offers assistance to library patrons conducting their own legal research. She is not a lawyer and cannot offer legal advice, but she can assist a library patron in navigating what can easily be described as a daunting quagmire of legalese.
Efficiently and with much expertise, she guides
patrons through the complexities of extensive
statutes, regulatory codes, state and federal case
law, computerized databases, forms, and other legal materials of the local court system. Her work has taken on legendary proportions for those whom she has led through the maze in the last three and a half decades.
68 • July–August 2019 • www.PanamaCityLiving.com
Once situated in a small remote corner on the third floor of the Bay County Courthouse, the law library initially housed a modest collection of reference and research materials for judges, attorneys, and the general public, including inmates who represented themselves. Carol became the law library’s first employee in 1983, shortly after she and her husband, Tom, relocated to Panama City for his work. With a degree in education from the University of Delaware, she began working for a local law firm and soon was tasked with assisting in the library. Little did she know she would spend the greater part of her career doing so.
Carol began to supplement the library’s resources and services to meet the growing needs of both the local legal community and laypersons, in all areas of the law. After the State implemented a new statute in 2004, the library’s funding structure changed considerably and finding sufficient funding for new resources has been a challenge ever since.
A milestone in both Carol’s career and for the law library was when West Publishing Company first offered a computerized legal research engine in the late 1980s. “The terminal was the size of a refrigerator! It was called West’s Automated Legal Terminal, nicknamed WALT,” she remembers. Its importance in the quickly developing future of computerized legal research was apparent and Carol successfully advocated for its purchase. After extensive training, she was certified as a Westlaw specialist.
As Bay County’s first and only law librarian thus far, Carol recognizes that, as technology has evolved and expanded, legal research has moved far beyond paper copies of case law or lists of authorities cited in Shepard’s Citations. “Attorneys do not need to frequent the law library nearly as much as they did when I first started in the early ’80s. I can remember attorneys copying dozens of court cases out of regional case law reports; now, cases can be affordably retrieved through several databases. Our
Right: Carol Hoots offers a friendly smile to those seeking assistance