Legal Research

There's an interesting article in the Atlantic this month, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"  Author Nicholas Carr worries that Internet use is changing the way that we read and absorb information:

Over the past few years I?ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn?t going?so far as I can tell?but it?s changing. I?m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I?m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I?d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That?s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I?m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I see this phenomenon at work when I teach Advanced Legal Research.  I can tell that some students are skimming cases and statutes and occasionally missing some of the most crucial sections because they aren't in the habit of reading intensively.  It's easy to understand how it happens.  We are all trying to wade efficiently through the sea of information that hits us every day, and skimming is a necessary coping mechanism.  But once you find the cases and statutes that are relevant, you almost have to reset your brain and consciously switch it from the "skim" setting to the "intensive reading" setting in order to ensure that you don't miss something important.  It's not easy to make this switch, but it really is a vital skill for attorneys.