RIPS Law Librarian Blog - The Skills Needed for Summer Associate Research

-
Lexis released a new report outlining the time that summer associates spend on legal research. The report also highlights where additional research instruction is needed.

Check out the full announcement over at the RIPS Law Librarian Blog.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

For The Love Of Archives

-
On a night out last month, I was on my way to a R. Buckminster Fuller documentary at the Detroit Institute of Arts when my friend asked me, "why do we need libraries and librarians when everything is online?" I hardly had a moment to answer because the documentary was about to start, but I did rattle something off about the slow process of digitization and the need to organize the world's information. Then something magical happened. During the beginning of the documentary, the narrator went into great detail about his visit to the Dymaxion Chronofile . "The Dymaxion Chronofile is Buckminster Fuller's attempt to document his life as completely as possible. He created a very large scrapbook in which he documented his life every 15 minutes from 1920 to 1983. The total collection is estimated to be 270 feet (80 m) worth of paper. This is said to be the most documented human life in history." And the very reason that we still have this wonderful piece of rec
Read more

Law Library Lessons in Vendor Relations from the UC/Elsevier Split

-
Image
In early March, the University of California , one of the largest research institutions in the world, blew up negotiations with Elsevier, one of the largest publishers of research articles in the world. The university would no longer pay Elsevier millions of dollars a year to subscribe to its journals. It simply walked away. Despite months of contract negotiations , Elsevier was unwilling to meet UC’s key goal: securing universal open access to UC research while containing the rapidly escalating costs associated with for-profit journals. UC's goal of open access is something that every institution should move toward because: (1) At the same time academic institutions are paying for access to journals, their employees are providing labor to journals for free. AND (2) journals pay for the research that they publish. In the United States, research funding often comes from government agencies—in other words, from taxpayers. Yet if members of the public tried to read new acad
Read more

Rombauer Method of Legal Research

-
Instead of getting bogged down trying to instruct on the nuts-and-bolts of each database, it is more important to emphasize a research process that works in any database. To that end, I've always taught a version of the Rombauer Method of legal research . Preliminary Analysis – developing search strings and searching secondary sources for an overview of the topic Codified Law – searching constitutions, codes, court rules, and regulations Binding Precedent – searching case law that the court must follow from a particular jurisdiction Persuasive Precedent – searching case law that the court may follow from other jurisdictions The beauty of this research process is that it can be geared toward any database. As long as the user can maneuver the database to find relevant secondary sources, he or she will be able to fulfill the first step of the research process and so on. If students use this research process to keep their research strategic and organized, they should fee
Read more