Legal Research

Enhancing the Research Skills of Law Students

By Colin Galinski

Back in April, Simon Chester drew our attention to a study by Gene Koo, from the Berkman Centre at Harvard, on the types of skills law schools are not providing to their graduates. Also in April, Simon F. commented on Connie Crosby’s “4Students” post, with the following:

What would help, I think, is some detailed and structured course proposals or, at least, parts thereof, down to the level of lesson plans, with goals, methods and means of testing achievements made clear. Otherwise, criticism tends to be of the sweeping kind, with generalities that have no likelihood of making contact with real, ongoing teaching and learning ? that is, of the ?I?ll-tell-you-what?s-wrong-with-the-youth-of-today? sort. Slaw, when taken as a combination of its writers and readers, has the resources to produce some pretty valuable tools for students to learn legal research, I?d say. We might consider directing our minds toward such things.

These comments, along with an excellent Advanced Legal Research course I completed back in December, got me wondering whether a co-operative column on legal research skills development would be a worth a shot. I believe it is, but if I’m wrong at least I can resort to telling you what’s wrong with the youth of today.

So, I’d like to use this Column to run with Simon F’s idea, and hopefully move closer to producing a useful tool to enhance the research skills of law students. I will put forward a proposal for a course in some detail, though shy of the lesson-plan scale. What would be great is if Slawyers and other readers alike could contribute to the proposal by adding to and/or critiquing what I’ve set forth. In this way, we can tap into the Slaw resources, and make a more interactive Column.

Let’s call the course LAW 200: Research for the Real World (I’m thinking it should be a 2L course as students should be ready to take on some real-world work after getting the fundamentals under their belts in 1L), and start by defining elements that I believe set the stage for a course that actually prepares students for practice (in whatever form practice takes).

Some of the following are mentioned in Derek Hill’s article, Beyond the online: there?s more to legal research than sitting at a computer, and some have come to me during my time in law school. The idea here is to as closely as possible mimic the type of work assignments that will land on the desk of a summer student, articling student, and/or junior associate or in-house counsel.

LAW 200 Goals & Requirements:

-due to the intensive nature of the instruction and assignments/evaluation, the course will run as a 6-week module. The teaching material will include both online (databases such as WestlaweCARSWELL and Quicklaw) and print materials (journals, statutes, books, etc.) aimed at ensuring students gain facility with the variety of sources likely to be available in the workplace.
-each weekly lecture will conclude with the handing out of an assignment.
-assignments will:

• have tight time restrictions (eg. a legal memo due say in 24 hours);
• have a length limit (max 5 pages, or fewer, depending on nature of legal issue(s));
• contain questions that reflect actual needs of fictional, though realistic clients;
• require a research strategy that involves identifying the relevant legal issues;
• involve more than one area of law (in order to break down the artificial barriers that make it seem as though legal issues fall into discrete categories such as torts, contracts, etc.;
• require use of secondary sources, such as the Canadian Abridgment, Canadian Encyclopedic Digest, etc.;
• involve legislative research (current, historical, updated statutes/regulations);
• in some cases (this is tricky) be completed through teamwork.

In the end, the six-week course will function as a dry-run of sorts as students prepare for work in the near future.

So, we have a start. Now all that’s required to shape this column into something resembling a valuable tool are the thoughts others. In this way we can move from lamenting the legal research skills shortage to providing a resource for those looking to improve the learning and employment experiences of law grads.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on January 27, 2008 (boomark / email).