Jacob Sayward

Jacob Sayward is the Law Library's Associate Director for Collection Development and serves as a member of the Library's management team responsible for the overall administration of the Law Library.

Professor Sayward received his B.A. from Cornell, his J.D. from Penn State-Dickinson School of Law, and his M.S.L.I.S. from Pratt Institute. Before coming to Minnesota, Jacob was most recently Director for Collections, Faculty & Scholarly Services and Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law Library. Before his time at Cornell, Jacob was at Fordham Law Library and the Law Library for the Office of the Attorney General of New York.

Professor Sayward has taught introductory and advanced legal research courses to J.D. and L.L.M. students (including courses in Law Practice Technology as well as Foreign, Comparative & International Legal Research), and he has also served as a Co-Director of Cornell's Legal Research Clinic. He is admitted to practice in New York, and he is a member of the American Association of Law Libraries ("AALL"). He has chaired AALL's Committee on Relations with Information Vendors, where he regularly worked with legal publishers to resolve member complaints about problems like unethical pricing practices and nondisclosure terms in licenses. He has also chaired AALL's Academic Law Library Special Interest Section committees on both Faculty Services and Collection Development. He has recently spent several years co-chairing NELLCO's Print-to-Electronic Standing Committee, advocating for libraries on preservation issues related to the transition of legal information materials from a print format to an electronic format. He will also serve as Vice-President of the Minnesota Association of Law Libraries from 2026 to 2027, and President of that Association from 2027 to 2028.