At my law school, students have to do their first big legal research assignment in the library.
Without the use of a computer for research.
Using books
LOTS of books.
When you're writing a legal research memo (not to be confused with an office memo, which is short and easy), you have to use statutes and cases that have already been decided. These are contained in about a million books, all by series of publisher and jurisdiction, etc.
For my first legal research memo, I had to use seven different sources. I probably ended up looking at 25-30 sources to find the ones that would best support what I needed to say. For each case, you generally have to look in 2-3 large books to find the necessary case information, and that's only after you've looked in 2-3 other books to discover that you want to find the case at all, and then figure out how to find it! And sometimes, someone in the library has already taken the book you want, and some people keep the books for a long time, perhaps as some sort of table. Who knows...anyway, it can take a while to get what you need.
Really, it's not terrible, and I think it's very useful to know how to do legal research in a library, as many of us will work in jobs where our employers can't afford to use the online legal research systems (they are extraordinarily expensive).
We're in the middle of our second research memo now, and we're allowed to use the two research systems, LexisNexis and Westlaw, to do our research. The process is all the same, but it's so much faster when you don't have to run all around a library to find the different books. Click, click, click!
This new ability to use online research has enabled me to do my legal research from the comfort of my bed. This development is both good and bad: I love being able to snuggle into for a bit of reading on the requirements for administering psychotropic drugs to patients against their will, but how will I get my exercise without having to lug all of those books all over the place?
Should've bought a carton of ice cream at the grocery store that I could do some lifting with.
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6 comments:
I've been working on a module that automatically delivers briefs and other items to Westlaw and LexisNexis. This is not interesting, but mildly applicable to your post.
mmmm....ice cream.
When I worked in collections I used a program called LexisNexis. I dont think its the same one. We used it to skip trace people. It was pretty cool. Anyway. I definately encourage the ice-cream. Not only because of the exersize benifits but because it's delicious. I recommend something chocolate. It seems to be the best out of all.
It's a shame that we can't ALWAYS use computers for everything. I always loved being able to do my research (while in college) online from home. Now that I am a mother, every answer to any parenting question or concern is only a few clicks away! Whenever our internet is down, I am totally lost :)
I'm sure that ice cream has some attributes in it that improve memory retention, so I would be sure to load up before the next research session! Good luck!
I am pretty sure the ice cream is not a good idea for exercise unless you use an eating utensil with only a handle and no part to pick up the calories to be transported to your mouth.
Good luck with the working from your bed, next thing you know it will be morning and your neck will hurt.
No don't go complaining about the cost of the software. It would be very hard for us to charge our "very reasonable" rates if they didn't charge their "very reasonable" licensing fees. It's like a game of chicken. As soon as one cuts the cost, we're all gonna have to. So, long live ridiculously expensive enterprise level software!
They really should offer that stuff for fee to Pro-Bono workers though. Seems like a given from a humanity standpoint. Let'em make their money on the criminal defense teams :).
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