Situated in the Johannesburg regional office, the Library serves LRC lawyers, paralegals, candidate attorneys and interns working in the LRC’s national office in Johannesburg and four regional offices situated in downtown Johannesburg, Durban, Grahamstown and Cape Town.

As a result of the LRC’s participation in the Southern African Legal Assistance Network (SALAN) since 1994, the Library also provides information resources and services to members of the network, who are public interest legal centers working to advance human rights in the region. In addition, the Library supports the constitutional and human rights work of researchers and legal practitioners in the wider community, including members of the Bar and university students, as well as legal officers in rural areas where there are limited access to library resources.

The Library is staffed by a full-time librarian, who is responsible for managing the Library and providing specialised legal research to support LRC staff at both the national and regional offices.

The LRC’s reputation for producing strong litigation strategies, legal advice and law reform proposals, particularly in the areas of constitutional law and human rights, is due in no small part to the resources and services currently available in our Library.

Books, law reports and periodicals have been the central pillars of information resources available in the Library. However, with the advent of South Africa’s 1996 Constitution with a Bill of Rights, the importance of the Library has grown significantly.

The Constitution expressly requires that when interpreting the Bill of Rights, South African courts must consider international law. Consequently, practitioners who rely on the Library for their legal research increasingly require legal information relating to international jurisprudence and policy relevant to the South African context. They require a combination of the traditional paper-based domestic and international publications as well as a wide range of electronic resources.

The challenge for the LRC is to develop and maintain the Library’s constitutional and human rights collection in a way that reflects these new demands.

The Bram Fisher Library is located in the LRC's Johannesburg office on the 8th floor of 25 Rissik Street, corner of Rissik Street and Main Street.