The Gazette 1983

GAZETTE

SEPTEMBER 1983

St. Louis University Law School Seeks 4 A Little Irish' Collection by Martha Baker

Reprinted from St. Louis Business Journal, April, 1983.

Because of St. Louis University's membership in Online Computer Library Center, all Irish legal matter will be listed in the data base available to the 7,000 libraries in the network. The Law School Library has all curent Irish court reports; most old reports and statutes would be purchased with the endowment. More than 55,000 has been contributed so far to the endowment, Searls said. Robert Staed, 68, a St. Louis lawyer of Irish descent in general practice with Kappel Neill & Staed, said, "We never intended to pick out the glamorous little country of Ireland to build up the library, but merely to make the library we now have much more complete." •

When Eileen Haughey Searls visited her mother land not too long ago, she returned with an idea: establish a complete working Irish law library at St. Louis Univers- ity School of Law. Searls, 58, is a St. Louis University law professor and librarian who decided that to complete the law school's Irish holdings would take very little investment and organizing. "The library has the basis collection. To complete and maintain it, we need an endowment of 552,000. I know that's ridiculously low, but that's all they (The Irish legal system) publish." In order to establish a library as up-to-date as any law office in County Cork, Searls said the Irish Law Center would need, among other works, the "Acts of the Oireachtas," records of legislation; the "Irish Tax Cases and Digest of Cases" (the law library already has the "Irish Reports," "Irish Jurist"); the "Custom and Excise Tariff," tax sets; and the official biweekly gazette, the "Iris Oifigiuil." Searls and the members of the law center's committee hope such a working library would assist St. Louis-area companies with branches in Ireland. Those companies include Alton Packaging Co., Emerson Electric Co., General Dynamics, Monsanto Co., The Seven-Up Co. and Mallinkrodt Inc. A counsel for Emerson said an Irish law library might be useful for initial research, "depending on the problem." In most cases, he added, any company would follow the advice of its lawyers in Ireland in the long run. "But the, library would contain information about tax holidays (forgiveness of tax for a period of time) set up by the country to encourage investment." He added that an additional advantage to research materials being handy is that the center would carry publications pertaining to the European economic community because Ireland is a member of the Common Market. "Companies using Ireland as a base sell to the whole European community. The Irish law library could provide material for companies interested in establishing a subsidary there." Neasa Gibbons Rohlik, an Irish solicitor in St. Louis and a member of the law center's committee, said she imagines that most companies with Irish subsidiaries call corresponding attorneys in New York who, in turn, contact their counterparts in Ireland. "But they pay for that. The St. Louis University School of Law Library is free."

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