Before joining the Berkeley Law faculty, Robert Berring, Jr., worked at the University of Washington, Harvard University, the University of Texas and the University of Illinois.
In 1982 Berring came to Berkeley Law to serve as a professor and the director of the law library. From 1986 to 1989 he held a joint appointment as dean of the School of Library and Information Studies. Berring also served as interim dean of the law school from January 2003 to June 2004. He stepped down as director of the library in 2005.
Berring taught contracts, advanced legal research and courses covering Chinese law. He also regularly taught an undergraduate course about China for the Legal Studies Department, and offered freshmen seminars about law and cognitive studies.
In 1997 Berring was named to the Walter Perry Johnson Chair. In 1987 he was awarded UC Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award. In 2003 he won the Frederick Charles Hicks Award for contributions to law librarianship. In a survey conducted by the Academic Law Libraries section of the American Association of Law Libraries, Berring was named the author of the most influential work on the profession of law librarianship from 1957 to 2006.
Berring is the author of several texts on legal research and has written extensively about the conversion of information from print to electronic form. His recent publications include Finding the Law (with Beth Edinger, 11th ed., 1999) and Legal Research Survival Manual, (with Edinger, 2002). He also created the award-winning video series Legal Research for the 21st Century.
Education
B.A., Harvard University (1971)
J.D., UC Berkeley School of Law (1974)
M.L.S., UC Berkeley (1974)
Robert C Berring is not teaching any Law courses in Fall 2024.