The Library has approximately 200,000 volumes in its collection, exclusive of microforms, making it one of the largest law libraries in the state. The Library is also one of the oldest U.S. Government Depository libraries in the United States, having been designated a depository in 1884. The current law library occupies approximately 38,000 square feet. It has a staff of 16 employees. It is a public law library, and its hours of operation are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. The telephone number is 334-242-4347 or 1-800-236-4069. The Reference Librarian may also be reached at reference@alalinc.net.

The collection of the Supreme Court and State Law Library, developed over the last 166 years, is one of the finest collections of legal materials in the state. The law library contains all of the reported decisions of the state and federal appellate courts in the United States, plus the statutes of all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

It has the Acts of Congress, the United States Code and the regulations of the various agencies of the U.S. government. The law library also has a fine collection of legal periodicals and treatises, including many rare legal materials. Unique to the collection are the briefs of Alabama Supreme court cases beginning in 1965 and the papers of the Alabama Judicial College.

The law library subscribes to both major computer-assisted legal research databases, WESTLAW and LEXIS, and has access to OCLC, a world-wide online catalog. CD ROM databases in the library include, Alabama Law Desk, Michie's Alabama Law on Disc, West's Alabama Reporter on CD ROM, and LegalTrac, a law-related periodical index. In addition, the law library has its own computerized public access catalog known as INNOVAQ/INNOPAC.

The Alabama Supreme Court and State Law Library is the oldest law library in Alabama having been established in 1828 as the Library Society of the Bench and Bar of the Supreme Court, a private non-profit organization whose goal was to provide a library for the "exclusive use of the Bench and Bar of the Supreme Court of the State." Among the names recorded in the Minute book of the Society were those of nine then or future Alabama Supreme Court justices, one future United States Supreme Court justice, and many men destined to guide and control the politics of the State.

In 1838, Governor Hugh McVay recommended that the Library of the Society and that of the State be housed together; however, in 1849 the greater part of the State Library was destroyed by fire. In 1859, both libraries were placed under the jurisdiction of the marshal of the Supreme Court, thus creating the Supreme Court Library as it is today. Two years later, in 1861, the Justices made the Library available to the Congress of the Confederate States, then in session in Montgomery. When the Supreme Court moved from the Capitol into the former Judicial Building in 1940, the Library moved with it. In 1965, the Library was designated the State Law Library and opened to the public.

Today the Library, housed in Alabama's new Judicial Building, serves the Alabama appellate courts, the Alabama judicial system, and the people of the state of Alabama.