Category: teaching
By - Tuesday, August 24, 2010 - 10:30pm
Here’s a couple things I believe:
- There are several providers of free legal information out there that are reliable enough to recommend to my patrons to use.
- Librarians need to collaborate and communicate more with information vendors – all information vendors…Wexis, ILS providers, independents and non-profits.
- Most legal research educational materials suck. They’re dry and the publisher bias contained within some is almost laughable.
- Legal information vendors use tactics to get law students hooked on their products that would make a drug dealer blush.
So, when Tom Bruce emailed me a few weeks ago and asked if I’d be interested in creating a Free Law Research Guide aimed at law students, I jumped at the chance. Without further ado, I present to you The Law Student Guide to Free Legal Research.
Although sponsored by Justia and the LII, I had total editorial control over what resources got selected. (I also didn’t get paid anything, so I have no real conflicts of interest to declare. Tom has promised to buy me the beverage of my choice upon our next meeting, though.) My only real direction was that I should only recommend sources that I – as a librarian – would use but that I should make it fun and interesting for the average law student. As for that…well, if you’re reading this, you’re probably a librarian. I just want to warn you that you may feel the need to do some pearl clutching at what you read in the guide. I make statements like “Legal research is boring and tedious and nothing can change that.”
Listen…legal research is boring and tedious.
You know, for normal people.
Librarians love it, but that’s why we became librarians. If it makes me a bad librarian to admit that publicly and I’m gonna go to Librarian Hell for doing so, well….I’ll be sure to pack marshmallows.
ANYWAY, the project evolved over the course of the past few weeks from the initially planned 3 page PDF that they could post on their social media outreach sites to the website linked above. (A great big thank you to CALI for hosting it on their Classcaster site!) There is still a PDF available that contains the basics of the site, but there’s much more available. For instance, there is a blog that will allow us to highlight developments in the #lawgov movement, new resources that are available or just general thoughts on legal research. I really love Austin Groothuis’ inaugural post. Guest bloggers are invited and welcome!
Although the site is primarily aimed at law students, there is also a section for law librarians and legal writing instructors. Just as one goal of the site was mirror the student-aimed Wexis offerings, we wanted to offer a similar assortment of teaching aids in the hope that it would encourage the introduction of free legal resources in the classroom. If you have a handout or powerpoint show that you’d like to share, please contact me and I’ll happily load it and give you full credit. Check back often for more updates.
Speaking of teaching free legal resources, there’s currently a short (~30 seconds) poll on the law librarian resources page. Aside from my anecdotal evidence, it occurred to all of us during our planning that we had no idea how, when or if free legal resources were being taught in law schools and firms. We would really appreciate it if you could share your experiences. Thanks!
One benefit of the website is that I can constantly add or make changes. The next section that seems obvious to add is a foreign and international law one. But I’m always open to suggestions. Similarly, if you find something that you think should be changed, drop me an email or tweet and I’ll look into it. I’m generally pretty low ego when it comes to things like this and am open to constructive criticism. So, look around and let me know what you think!
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By - Monday, February 22, 2010 - 11:50am
http://www.flickr.com/photos/topekalibrary/3727452909/ " width="300" height="237" />Photo Credit Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library http://www.flickr.com/photos/topekalibrary/3727452909/
I recently finished my last bibliographic instruction session at UK. (When you are leaving a job, every “last” seems to take on special significance…My last Bibliogrpahic Instruction session. My last coffee run to the student union. My last creepy public patron..*sniff* the memories…but I digress.) Anyhoo, it was for the Advanced Legal Research course and the topic was “Researching Federal Legislative History.”
This is my absolute favorite subject to teach and research task to perform. As I was prepping for the class, I began compiling the usual suspects for my resource show and tell….LexisNexis Congressional, CIS Index, Thomas, USCCAN, GPOAccess/FDsys, etc. I started to think about it, though, and realized that *I* don’t always just use the “accepted” resources. When I’m trying to find a cite for a popular name of a law, I don’t walk over to the reading room and grab a Popular Name Table from the USCS, I just google it. Sometime – just sometimes – I even look at the wikipedia entry to get an idea of what I’m searching for. So why aren’t I telling the students about this?
It hit me like a thunderbolt: I was teaching the bibliographic instruction version of abstinence only education!
I decided to mix it up a bit this year. After all, what are they going to do? Fire me? Heh. (As an aside, is this what it feels like to have tenure? Because it’s a pretty heady feeling! Double heh.) While covering the Usual Suspects, I also mentioned wikipedia and Googling for information. And when doing so, I took the time to mention what you should be looking for in free web resources and the pros and cons of using them. Also, in addition to having the students look up information via the traditional sources, I had them in their in-class lab and homework assignments google for popular names and compare the information that they find via sites like Wikipedia to what they find via a traditional source like CIS Index.
I haven’t started grading them, but I did glance through the assignments this morning. (They were just turned in on Friday.) From what I could tell, the students get it. They saw that wikipedia doesn’t always have complete information, but occassionally contains links to official sources from Thomas or GPO. I asked them to explain how they would do a similar legislative history assignment (a no “right” or “wrong” answer question, I just wanted their honest feedback) , and generally they say that they would try a google search first to get the popular name, but then use traditional sources. Not only that…many of them seem to prefer the books!
I am definitely going to try and expand upon including this type of information throughout my future bibliographic instruction sessions. I feel better knowing that my kids are going out into the world better prepared for what they’re probably going to do anyway. And I’m glad that they are hearing it from me rather than getting it second hand from their classmates. 
By - Wednesday, December 16, 2009 - 6:40pm
I got my class evaluations for my 1L Legal Research course yesterday. Happily, they were all positive with regards to my teaching contribution to the course. So I must totally know what I’m doing, right?
I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING.
Okay, I’m being slightly hyperbolic. I know how to run a classroom. I can create an organized lecture, appropriate slides/handouts, and (when I haven’t had too much coffee) speak in a slow, clear and understandable manner. I took Bibliographic Instruction in Library School, which wasn’t the greatest course, but did provide some tips. I’ve also picked up some neat tricks from people, such as Iris’ Subversive Handouts. (Actually, while you’re there, check out all of Iris’ teaching posts – she has some great stuff there.) I’ve also developed some nifty ones of my own, such as using a wiki in lieu of a handout and/or powerpoint presentation.
So, for the most part, I’ve got bibliographic instruction down. (Although I know there’s always room for improvement. ) However, I don’t just do basic bibliographic instruction. Like many other law librarians, I teach a substantive, for credit course on Legal Research to 1Ls. This is where I start to wonder if I’m providing the most effective instruction possible.
I took many classes in my JD and MLS coursework. (MANY classes.) Not a single one of them was on learning theory, assessment or curriculum development. Granted, not many other professors around campus have taken these types of courses either, but I’m not trying to completely change all of higher education. I would just be content to know I’m doing the best I can in my classroom.
- Are stand alone research courses better or should the research curriculum be blended with a writing one?
- Should it be done when students first enter law school? Before they start? At the end of their third year? (All suggestions I have heard.)
- What is the best way to test research skills – Exam? Practicum? A series of homework assignments? Combined with a written work product such as a brief?
- Is it a terrible thing to ban laptops in classrooms? (I did…accidentally…this year. It seemed to make for a more engaged classroom and not a single student complained about it in their evaluations. I’m very inclined to continue this practice in the future.)
- What’s the best way to present a print resource (assuming you don’t have 20 copies of the Index to the USCA to hand out)? Copies of relevant pages? Scans and power points? Hope they see it when they do their homework?
- When do you incorporate electronic resources – right from the beginning or give them limited Wexis access until second semester? And, for that matter, who teaches Wexis…librarians or reps?
I have no answers to these questions. (Although I wouldn’t mind hearing your opinion on them if you have one.) I have decided that I’m going to take some education school courses, if possible, in the near future and try to get some actual theory to chew on in addition to my trial and error. And I’m spending all day tomorrow in an assessment training session sponsored by MPOW. If you know a good “how to teach legal research” resource this younger librarian can utilize, I would be very much interested in hearing about that too.
Note: In case you’re wondering, that picture is of Christopher Columbus Langdell, creator of the case law method of teaching law.
