Legal Commentary

Last October, I blogged about various ways I organize research: 1) emailing myself articles, 2) a spreadsheet, 3) a research database.

Having used the latter two methods more in the last eight months, I thought I would update that post with new observations.

For starters, mailing myself articles to read is out.  I don't do it much anymore, and if I do, I add it to the database.

Also, I found that the spreadsheet method isn't that great. I found myself looking at the list of cases at the end of the project, and I found that I had already addressed most of the key cases.  Where I did look at it first, it was missing a lot of information I later found.  I think the reasons for this are twofold.  First, it's not a very elegant way to view information - it's hard to sort, it's not big enough to hold all of the information I might want (and if does have enough, it becomes unreadable), and you can't attach the case or article being referenced.  Second, a single summary is not terribly helpful when you need to cite particular passages.

I've worked more with Zotero and other available products, but they just don't seem to work the way I would like.

That leaves the database, which has been great - I used to draft two articles and finish a third (that I had started using other methods).  The key was the linked quotes and notes database - I found that I could quickly get detailed information about the article or case without having to look back at the original article - that is, I only needed to read it once.  I get information into the database in two ways - I either directly add my notes and/or copy and paste quotes as I'm reading, but that requires constant computer and network access while I read - not so great.  Alternatively, I mark passages and notes on a written copy, and hand it off to my research assistant to add to the database.

I've also found a relatively useful way to deal with books.  For those that I can't get through open access (google books or creative commons, etc.), I link to directly.  For archaic media like bound paper books, I flag interesting passages with post it notes, and then enter those passages or notes about them into the database.  This is a little bit more work than I ordinarily would want to do, but the goal is to do it once and do it right for important books.

One drawback that I'm working on - if I add a new article topic to the database, I have to re-identify which articles might be relevant.  As the database grows (425 cases and articles and growing), I'm going to have to rely on my memory a lot more than I would like.  One solution to this is keyword searching in the notes, or a periodic browse through all articles about a certain subject area (like patent law) rather than article topic (like subject matter) to add additional article topics to a reference.

One final point - as the database grows and as research assistants graduate, it will take more cycles to add references to the database.  Whoever enters the data will have to make sure the item is not already there from prior projects.

So, there you have it.  This may seem like old news to those who have been doing this for a while, but I thought it might be helpful to anyone trying to figure out how to organize their research. I'd love to hear more tips from anyone who has a good working system.