Law Librarian Blog

My Second & Third (Final) Weeks Teaching Legal Research in China

[Please refer to my March 8 and May 18 LLB posts for background.]

I meant to post about these things right after they happened in late May, but I was too busy teaching then to do so. And I've been extremely busy since returning home in early June. I apologize. A law librarian's work is never done! Anyway, I just finished writing a 5-page report about my teaching experience to be published in Perspectives. (I may also seek publication in law library journals.) The report duplicates most of my May 18 LLB post and details my second and third (final) weeks teaching. It ends with my reflections and recommendations. [RLS]

Should (When Will) Legal Research Skills Be Tested on the Bar Exam?

The idea that the bar exam should include a legal research skills component has been kicking around for quite awhile. The late Roy Mersky, Clair Germain (Cornell), Blair Kauffman (Yale), and others have been promoting the cause for years. The National Conference of Bar Examiners and many others have been skeptical that legal research can be testable in a bar exam format but most ALR instructors know that a carefully crafted set of questions can test for an understanding of both the principles of legal research and their application -- it's really nothing more that determining if the exam takers are thinking like law librarians by analyzing a research issue from the perspective of access points and routes to legal resources. 

One would think that the critique of legal education presented in the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's report Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (2007) and some recent studies like Katrina Fischer Kuh's (Hofstra) Electronically Manufactured Law study of researcher behavior and outcome [LLB post] would give the proposal some traction but that's debatable. Blair Kauffman reports on the latest developments and current prospects in Testing for Legal Research Skills on the Bar Exam: Are the Bar Examiners Ready? on AALL Spectrum blog. Required reading for everyone interested in improving the quality of legal research instruction in the legal academy. [JH]

New Edition of Fundamentals of Legal Research Now Available

A new edition of a classic, Barkan, Mersky and Dunn's Fundamentals of Legal Research, 9th ed. (West 2009) $75.00 is now available from Thomson West. [JH]

My First Week Teaching Legal Research in China

[Please refer to my March 8 LLB post for background.]

I arrived in Wuhan last Sunday afternoon. To my surprise and dismay, I learned the next day that the law library is reclassifying/reshifting its English-language collection. No one seems to know when it'll be done. All I know is that that wing is closed to me and my students. I'd planned to inspect it last Monday and craft exercises using some of the materials there. But now I can't. So I spent most of last week revising my syllabus [Download Syllabus_(May_2009)], PowerPoints, and exercises to include only resources I know the students can access: Westlaw, LexisNexis, HeinOnline, and free websites available in China. Not ideal, not even close, but in China you often have to roll with the punches.
 
My classes have mostly gone well so far. I had around 100 students attend my first class Tuesday primetime: 7-9:25pm. That's right, 100 students! Most were Chinese, but there were a few from Africa who are enrolled in a new international law LL.M. program. It was a little overwhelming at first. Most of them looked attentive. Unlike at Touro, I didn't see anyone here using a laptop or crackberry. One student, however, got a call on his cellphone, ran out of the room, and apologized to me after class. Next door to my classroom, some other students had choir practice. That’s right, law school choir practice! They sang for the duration of my class. We could hear them because they sang loudly and the walls lack soundproofing. My students thought it was funny. So did I.
 
My second class on Thursday night only had around 60 students. And no choir practice next door, thank goodness. When I told the students that my class at Touro usually has around 15 students, and never more than 20, they looked at me in disbelief. I don't think there are formal enrollment caps here. The cap is however many students want to attend and can squeeze into a room. I gave out my first research exercise [Download Research_exercise_1_-_May_14_2009]. It's due on Tuesday. I'm curious to find out how the students do. It deals with American legal research, which I rarely teach at Touro. But in China, American legal research is foreign legal research. I asked for 20 in-class oral presentation volunteers on May 25 and 26. Two students raised their hands. (Chinese students are very, very shy when it comes to speaking in class.) I have 18 more spots to fill. I haven't figured out to how fill them yet. I may draw names out of a hat or give them the chance to do group presentations. The latter would get more students involved and help alleviate some of the individual shyness. Again, I'm rolling with the punches here. I don't like it, but have no choice.
 
I met with two students for three hours on Friday afternoon in my office. I was only supposed to have two hours of office time, but stayed an extra hour to show a student how to search on GPO Access and Westlaw. He said their Westlaw rep only showed them how to do "basic" (?) stuff. I showed him how to add tabs, do Boolean searching, find by citation, KeyCite, and use limiters. This seems "basic" to me, but apparently not to students here. He was very appreciative and said I should show the whole class these things. I told him I'd try to if time and internet connection permits.

To be continued . . . [RLS]

What is CaseMap?

Haven't tried it so I don't know but Sue Altmeyer, Electronic Services Librarian at Cleveland-Marshall, does. It's a research log tool provided by LexisNexis. Sue explains that LexisNexis CaseMap allows one to create tables of the actors, documents, evidence, pleadings and legal authorities, link them and create reports. CaseMap also works with LexisNexis' TimeMap and TextMap. Sue links to David Thomson's (Denver) CaseMap as a Tool for the Research Log Function: Finally, a Technology that Can Help us Teach Better [SSRN] for additional information. [JH]

Harvard Law Library Research Tutorials on YouTube

Terri Gallego-O’Rourke, Reference Librarian and Instructional Services Coordinator, has put together a great series of short video tutorials providing expert guidance on both general research topics and statutory and legislative documents. The videos are available on the Law Library's YouTube Channel or on the library website. 

Check out: How to Find Compiled Legislative Histories on Lexis Nexis Congressional

Great work!  [RJ]

Do This First: Cost Saving Tips for LexisNexis and Westlaw

Sue Altmeyer, Electronic Services Librarian at Cleveland-Marshall and LLB contributing editor, has put together some great cost saving tips for Lexis and Westlaw on the Cleveland-Marshall blog. I doubt Sue would mind one bit if law firm librarians scraped the content and circulated the tip sheet to 1Ls under the heading "Do This First."  [JH]

RIPS-SIS 2009 Teach-In Kit Now Available

The Research Instruction and Patron Services Special Interest Section (RIPS-SIS) has released the 2009 National Legal Research Teach-In Kit. Compilied and edited by Gail A. Partin and David E. Lehmann, the Kit includes games, handouts and guides, exercies and Powerpoint presentations. Nice job. [JH]

Using the Consumer Transaction Model for Legal Research Instruction

In Step Right Up: Using Consumer Decision Making Theory to Teach Research Process in the Electronic Age, 60 S.C.L.Rev. 123 (2008) Amy Sloan (Baltimore) advocates for conceptualizing legal research as a consumer transaction rather than a professional skill.  Here's the abstract:

"The legal academy has framed legal research as a professional skill, and much research pedagogy centers around replicating a controlled professional environment to allow students to learn how to do research by simulating legal practice. Although this is a valid way to conceptualize research, it is not the only way. Another way to conceptualize research is as a consumer transaction. Legal information is, in many ways, a product that information providers market to lawyers and students, as the promotions and contests that LexisNexis and Westlaw sponsor demonstrate. Once legal information is understood as a product, the process of research can be seen as a purchase transaction, and research instruction can be seen as a form of consumer education.

This article approaches research from a consumer perspective. It sets the stage by explaining why legal information is a consumer product and analyzing changes in the information marketplace that have affected research process. The article then explains consumer decision making theory. It demonstrates why this is an appropriate vehicle for describing the research process and explains the marketing, cultural, psychological, situational, personal, and social influences that affect consumer choice in the research context. The advantages of approaching research from a consumer perspective are addressed next, followed by an exploration of ways to incorporate consumer decision making theory into research pedagogy. The article concludes that making students better consumers of legal information will help them become better professionals."   

What First-Year Law Students Should Learn in a Legal Research Class

Nancy Johnson (GSU) has posted Best Practices: What First-Year Law Students Should Learn in a Legal Research Class on SSRN. (Legal Reference Services Quarterly, 2009). Observing that 1L legal writing instructors rarely have "adequate class time to teach students the print and online sources needed to complete a research task successfully," Johnson identifies core legal research principles every 1L should learn. She proceeds to discuss best practices in teaching the legal research process, along with the important research sources that must be covered, including judicial opinions and reporters, digests and finding cases, statutes, administrative publications. Well done.

Hat tip to Jan Novak, Associate Director, Cleveland-Marshall Law Library, What Do You Know About Legal Research, Anyway? [JH]

The OpenCongress Wiki

The beta version of the OpenCongress Wiki is now online. Check out the project's description.  I don't know if it will ever be a very useful resource for legislative research by law librarians but I do think it could become a great teaching resource for collaborative assignments in ALR courses. Just a thought. [JH]

Teach Legal Research in China!

Since 2000, the Overseas Young Chinese Forum (OYCF) has awarded fellowships to overseas scholars, professionals, and doctoral students to teach short courses in various fields---including law---at mainland Chinese universities. [Note: you need not be Chinese or fluent in Chinese to apply.] The award amounts range from $2,000 to $2,250 each and are meant to help pay travel, housing, and food costs. Fourteen awards were announced last September for the 2008-09 academic year. And I was lucky enough to be one of the winners! From May 11 to June 3, I will teach foreign and international legal research at Wuhan University (aka Wuda). Wuda is one of China's oldest and best schools. Its library school's history goes back to 1920, near the start of modern Chinese librarianship. Its law school, which just moved into a new state-of-the-art building a few years ago, is renowned for international law. I visited there last December for a couple of days right after my wedding in neighboring Jiangxi province. I met with professors, students, and the librarian as well as scouted the building and campus. I was quite impressed and look forward to returning soon. Great Firewall of China and time permitting, I will blog here while I am there teaching.

The application window for the next fellowship cycle (2009-10) will probably be open from June through July like it was last year. In the meantime, persons interested in applying should check OYCF's website regularly between now and then for the latest details. And they should start contacting prospective host schools in China as soon as possible. An invitation letter from a host school must be submitted with the fellowship application. It took me two months to secure mine last year. I first contacted a dozen schools throughout China via snail mail. One of them e-mailed me a few weeks later, giving me contact information for the new dean of the law school. I wrote to him, but never heard back. Another school, Wuda, snail mailed me an invitation letter (download here in pdf). I never heard back from the other schools. Please feel free to contact me anytime with questions about invitation letters or other aspects of applying for a fellowship. I would be happy to share more about my experience. Good luck! [RLS]

Interface Design Matters

Julie Jones (Cornell and LLB Contributing Editor) wasn't around when LexisNexis and Westlaw made their collective presence felt in legal research but I and my gray hair colleagues who read this blog were. Both services were great at databasing discrete short objects for research purposes like a court opinion, slip act, rule or reg, law review article, etc. They also made print citation indexes a thing of the past because each citation could be treated as a discrete object. As a means to updating print-based research using looseleaf services and the like LexisNexis and Westlaw were wonderful new tools in the early 1980s.

Both services, however, have run into trouble by cramming treatises and mult-volume works from their massive print catalogs through this code structure. It just doesn't work. It's why legal research can't be completely digital yet. The editorial structure and finding aids that are essential elements of the works get lost or are substantially less effective than the print versions because the interface, which has remained largely unchanged for 30-some years, doesn't accommodate them. Julie does a great job analyzing the issues in her recently published LLJ article, Not Just Key Numbers and Keywords Anymore: How User Interface Design Affects Legal Research. Highly recommended for ALR instructors.

Julie sticks to LexisNexis and Westlaw. I would only add that if one wants to see how the interface for multi-volume secondary works should be designed for online use, one need only look at the interfaces created by BNA for the web-based versions of their print titles. In my opinion, BNA "gets it." LexisNexis and Westlaw do not, simply do not want to change, or have systems that are too large to accommodate the changes needed for this form of legal literature. [JH]

Carnegie Report Co-Author Identifies Opportunities for Academic Law Librarians

Judith Welch Wegner (North Carolina), co-author of Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law ("Carnegie Report"), writes that "law librarians have an opportunity to enhance their teaching and institutional contributions as part of a broad effort to improve the preparation of lawyers." in Teaching Legal Research: Educating Lawyers, AALL Spectrum (February 2009). She outlines seven challenges and associated possibilities for law librarians. [JH]

Berring Reflects on the Berring-Wrens Legal Research Teaching Debate

In Twenty Years On: The Debate Over Legal Research Instruction, Perspectives (Fall 2008),  Bob Berring reflects on the debate over legal research teaching models that arose with the publication of Christopher G. Wren and Jill Robinson Wren's 1988 LLJ article The Teaching of Legal Research, 80 Law Libr. J. 7 and their book, The Legal Research Manual: A Game Plan for Legal Research and Analysis (1983) (2d. ed. 1986).

The debate between Berring and his colleague Kathleen Vanden Heuvel and the Wrens can be found in the following articles: (1) Robert C. Berring & Kathleen Vanden Heuvel, Legal Research: Should Students Learn It or Wing It?, 81 Law Libr. J. 431 (1989) and (2) Christopher G. Wren & Jill Robinson Wren, Reviving Legal Research: A Reply to Berring and Vanden Heuvel, 82 Law Libr. J.463 (1990).

Berring's Perspectives article is a personal reflection on the matter and an interesting one. [JH]

Legislative Resources Online: How Does GPO Access Measure Up to Other Government Websites and Fee-Based Websites?

The GPO has conducted a comparison of legislative information available on GPO Access to that available on selected, relevant Government Web sites and non-Government sites. This analysis compares two separate source bases of Government information to what currently resides on GPO Access. The first includes legislative resources available on external, free Government sites that provide resources to the public at no cost. The second includes legislative resources available on non-Government, commercial, fee-based Web sites.

Analyses and comparisons were executed on four Government Web sites including GPO Access, the House of Representatives Web site, the Senate Web site, and THOMAS. The commercial, fee-based Internet services evaluated were CQ.com, HeinOnline, Lexis-Nexis Congressional, and Westlaw.

Key findings include:

• GPO Access has the largest total number of legislative resources among those evaluated.
• All Government Web sites, with the exception of GPO Access, utilize at least some external content by linking to other Web sites.
• On House.gov and Senate.gov, most of the legislative resources link to other Web sites to supplement their information.
• House.gov and Senate.gov mostly link to GPO Access rather than THOMAS to supplement their information, and in some cases link to both external services.
• THOMAS links to House.gov for a very small amount of resources.
• The scope (number of years covered) of most resources on GPO Access is exceeded by the following: House.gov, THOMAS, Lexis-Nexis, HeinOnline and CQ.com
• Non-Government Web sites possess their own content, but in a very small number of cases will supplement that information with a link to GPO Access, and in one case, a link to a Library of Congress site.
• Lexis-Nexis, CQ.com, Senate.gov, and THOMAS offer a significant amount of additional legislative resources and features not offered on GPO Access.

Cleck out the Report's Executive Summary and these two tables: (1) Comparison of Legislative Resources: Scope of GPO Access and Government Web Sites and (2) Comparison of Legislative Resources: Scope of GPO Access and Non-Government Web Site. [JH]

Tax Law Research Presentations

By University of Oklahoma law librarians:

• Legal Research: Nonprofit Organizations, by Jennifer Gerrish
• Legislative History Sources for Federal Tax Law, by Darin Fox
• Tax Procedure: Online Research, by Darin Fox

Hat tip to TaxProf Blog. [JH]

HeinOnline's List of 2008 Weekly Tips

HeinOnline has created a topical and library list of the weekly tips the Company's blog published in 2008. Topics covered: searching, citations and linking/navigation/printing. Collections covered include American Law Institute Library, Code of Federal Regulations, Federal Register, Foreign and International Law Resources Database, Law Library Journal, Legal Classics/World Trials, Treaties and Agreements Library, U.S. Congressional Documents, U.S. Federal Agency Library, U.S. Federal Legislative History, U.S. Presidential Library, U.S. Statutes at Large and U.S. Supreme Court Library.

With 50-some tips, this is an excellent source of instructional materials for ALR classes. [JH]

ARL Back on Lexis

According to WisBlawg, the American Law Reports are once again available on Lexis.  Remember to notate the change on your ALR guides.  [RJ]

Top 10 CALI Legal Research Lessons, Fall Semester 2008

1. Introduction to Secondary Resources by Brian Huddleston.
2. Legal Research 101: The Tools of the Trade by Sheri Lewis.
3. How to Find Case Law Using the Digests by Brian Huddleston.
4. Anatomy of a Case by Brian Huddleston.
5. Updating/Validating Case Law Using Citators by Rebecca Trammell.
6. American Law Reports by Kimberli Morris.
7. Periodicals Indexes and Library Catalogs by C. Andrew Larrick.
8. Introduction to Search Logic and Strategies by Sarah Gotschall.
9. Legal Research Methodology by Wendy Scott & Kennard Strutin.
10. Finding Statutes by Kit Kreilick.

Source: All Time Lesson Runs Since 2008-08-01. [JH]