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FILLING AN INCREASING NEED by Emily Cunningham Rushing of Haynes and Boone, LLP I might be able to credit my career to Tropical Storm Allison. I certainly owe much of my success to my parents who urged me to attend law school, as well as to a great and dynamic community of law librarians. Fortunately, a career in law firm competitive intelligence has been very rewarding and promises an exciting future. TRAGEDY BRINGS A NEW FOCUS TO LIGHT Although very tragic for the school, it was lucky for me that a 2001 tropical storm devastated the University of Houston Law Center Library. Panicked school administrators struggled with how to teach legal research when the library's entire print collection was being shoveled out of the basement with a bulldozer. Although electronic research was still relatively new for large academic libraries, the school decided to issue unlimited Westlaw and Lexis access to our incoming class of law students. I enjoyed working with the databases and quickly determined that research was going to be a focus for me. An undergraduate background in social sciences and statistics had laid the groundwork for logical searching, and a rigorous legal education helped me develop analytical skills. After receiving my JD, I proceeded to the University of North Texas College of Information (then the School of Library and Information Sciences) and pursued a Master of Library and Information Sciences degree in the law librarianship program, earning a certificate of legal informatics. I completed most of my master's coursework online through the school's distance learning program, further adding to the technology skills I was developing as a researcher. As I pursued my master's degree, I spent a semester in an academic environment as a student reference librarian at the SMU Law Library. I then moved to Houston, Texas to work as a research librarian at King & Spalding LLP, a large 52 AALL/ILTA White Paper