With more than 700.000 items, the BBF is today Europe's second largest library specialised in education. Like the Herzog-August-Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, it belongs to the association of German cultural research libraries fulfilling a national role.

Nine Libraries belong to the Library Network at the World Bank Group and IMF Headquarters location in Washington D.C. References to materials owned by all the Libraries are available through JOLIS, the online catalog.

With a multi-lingual collection gathered from throughout the world, the library is a “Central Legal Library”, and possesses a comprehensive collection covering international commercial law, international private law and foreign civil law.

The Max Planck Institutes are founders of Munich Max Planck Campus for Legal and Economic Research