YOUNGSTOWN –The renovation of the Mahoning County Law Library on the fourth floor of the Mahoning County Courthouse is complete, and a grand reopening will take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday.

Demolition and construction began months ago, but the Law Library has remained open throughout the construction. Law Library Executive Director Susan McGrew and her assistant were moved to an adjacent room part way through the project.

A big reason for the renovation, which cost about $400,000 — all paid for by private funds — was to provide three private rooms where meetings could be carried out more effectively than under the floor plan in use since the 1970s.

The law library has two rooms — the first room a person sees when they enter, where McGrew and her assistant work, assisting lawyers and the public, and a large second room with few interior walls that was used for various purposes. With the renovation, the first room was upgraded with additional seating and workstations, but fewer books.

The second room has been subdivided into three large meeting rooms that can hold up to 12 people, each room equipped with a computer and Westlaw legal research software. The walls have soundproofing materials, making the spaces more private and conducive for meetings of attorneys and clients.

Attorney Jay Blackstone, longtime chairman of the Mahoning County Law Library Resources Board, said the renovations were made in part to acknowledge the changes in the ways lawyers and the public research the law, given the amount of research done on the internet today.

Blackstone said in September that adding meeting rooms was a natural evolution to make better use of the law library’s space — “to give them some private rooms where they don’t have to worry about anyone overhearing their conversations.”

The second room was actually used for many years by the Mahoning County Juvenile Court until the juvenile court got its own building in the 1970s on Scott Street.

Blackstone noted that the original 1907 plans for the courthouse, which opened in 1910, called for the law library’s second room to be divided into four rooms or offices, meaning that room is now returning to the design created by the respected architect of the courthouse, Charles F. Owsley.

“Now (more than) 110 years later, we’re going back,” Blackstone said. “It’s an interesting evolution.”

The money used to pay for the renovation came from funds that accumulated between 1905 and 2010 from membership fees collected from attorneys of the nonprofit Law Library Association, Blackstone said. The fees were payment for being able to use the law library.

The association dissolved itself in 2010, and half of the approximately $900,000 in its endowment was available for use by the law library.