The Theodore F Jenkins Memorial Law Library Company

What it reported doing in 2024

Jenkins law library is philadelphia's public law library. Founded in 1802, it is america's first law library. Through an experienced, dedicated staff, the library provides legal research assistance to attorneys and self-represented litigants (srls) via print and online resources. It is also a cost-effective provider of continuing legal education (cle) classes.the library offers affordable access to legal research tools required to practice law and assist srls, such as bloomberg law, lexis, vitallaw, and westlaw. The library's research platform provides over 250,000 online treatises in addition to its extensive current and historic collection of print volumes available on-site. Keeping with its mission to collect, organize and disseminate legal information, the library digitizes and indexes materials unavailable online elsewhere, including a comprehensive archive of 117,511 Pennsylvania trial court opinions, 1,118,995 Pennsylvania appellate briefs and records, 2,266 philadelphia city solicitor opinions, 1,374 Pennsylvania legislative histories and 168 Pennsylvania election law legislative histories.as part of its public function, jenkins assists srls who arrive daily, seeking access to pa specific forms and information to help them understand their rights in a wide variety of extremely personal and emotionally charged legal problems including employee rights, tenant eviction, protection from abuse orders, debtor/creditor issues, bankruptcy, divorce, and custody issues. Our librarians guide srls to print and online resources. Srls are informed that the librarians are not attorneys and cannot give legal advice. There is no limit to the time we spend with an individual, beyond staff capacity. In 2024, more than 1000 slrs visited the library to conduct research and we gave out 842 free form packets to srls directed to us from the courts. We received 637 questions from srls via email, phone and visits.our librarians have been assisting srls at the first judicial district's family court help center on tuesdays and thursdays for three hours with filing simple divorces since april 2019. Jenkins' librarians are trained by court staff to assist srls in understanding the divorce process and to help with filling out forms. Srls are informed that the librarians are not attorneys and cannot give legal advice. Complicated issues are referred to the lawyer referral & information services (lris) or legal service organizations. In 2024 we assisted 994 visitors which was an average of 10 litigants per day that we volunteered.family court administrative judge margaret t. Murphy thanked the leadership at jenkins, the members of the staff and the board of jenkins for assisting srls who appear throughout the family court and in particular at family's court help center. She stated, "your assistance and support has been a tremendous help! Thank you." family court judge ida chen refers to jenkins as a "justice partner" with the family court.another public function that jenkins provides is free membership to philadelphia nonprofit legal service agencies. Jenkins also provides at nominal cost membership and services to philadelphia related and/or budgeted agencies, as well as free membership to all judges in the first judicial district and the Pennsylvania appellate courts.jenkins membership program runs on a rolling calendar year. For 2024, we had more than 6,000 members which includes judges, students, attorneys and staff at firms of all sizes and within a diverse set of practice areas. Our heaviest attorney users are solo attorneys and small firms who are unable to afford the resources that large law firms maintain. Most of the library's onsite visits were from firms with 10 or fewer attorneys. Large firms have significantly reduced the size of their libraries and as such rely on jenkins for legal resources not available to them via their online subscriptions. In addition, they utilize the research expertise of our librarians on a daily basis. Our libr

Financial Efficiency

• Mission deployment rate: 78.2%; rating input score 78
• Program expense ratio: 90.7%; rating input score 91
• Fundraising efficiency: $343.83 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 94; 94th percentile among comparable filings

Transparency & Controls

• Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 63rd percentile among comparable filings
• Pay-setting controls: Limited
• Foreign activity oversight: Limited
• Grant itemization coverage: Limited
• Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
• Related-party transparency: Limited

Accountability

• Independent voting board: 100%; rating input score 100; 63rd percentile among comparable filings
• Governance controls: 8 of 8 controls in place; rating input score 100
  • Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
  • Whistleblower policy: Pass
  • Document-retention policy: Pass
  • CEO compensation review process: Pass
  • Other executive compensation review process: NotApplicable
  • Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
  • Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
  • Audit committee oversight: Pass
  • Independent financial-statement audit: Pass

Sustainability

• Operating margin: 22.9%; rating input score 79; 79th percentile among comparable filings
• Total-asset coverage ratio: 4.2; rating input score 81; 81st percentile among comparable filings
• Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.3; rating input score 34; 34th percentile among comparable filings
• Officer compensation ratio: 6.3%; rating input score 45; 45th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

• Program expense growth: -1.4% per year; rating input score 0; 10th percentile among comparable filings
• Revenue growth: -0.8% per year; rating input score 0; 9th percentile among comparable filings
• Asset growth: 10.4% per year; rating input score 100; 60th percentile among comparable filings