Tuesday, March 25, 2008
How to test Internet Legal Research Skills
A long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away ...), when I was in law school, legal research was done in the old fashioned ways. Either:
1) Spend hours in the library hunting through textbooks, case digest books, law reports, legal periodicals, clippings of Times Law news etc.; or,
2) Ask someone who already knew the answer.
Today, our Pupils and Associates have access to fancy internet legal research databases like Kluwer, LexisNexis and LawNet. In theory, the answers are just a few search strings and mouse clicks away - provided you crafted the right search strings and clicked the right links of course. Anyhow, its much easier and faster than the old fashioned roll-up-your-sleeves-cancel-your-dinner-date-order-pizza-delivery-and-camp-out-in-the-law-library-till-midnight days that I used to go through.
So it came as a surprise to me when a Pupil asked if I still had the case he showed me some months back because he doesn't have a copy and can no longer remember the case name.
"Can't you find it again?"
"Yes well, probably, but I recall it wasn't easy to locate online the last time."
"What do you mean it wasn't easy? It's just search strings and mouse clicks! In my time, we had to do the old fashioned roll-up-your-sleeves-cancel-your-dinner-date-order-pizza-delivery-and-camp-out-in-the-law-library-till-midnight thing!"
"Yes, I see."
"And it got so bad that eventually, one of my colleagues dumped his girlfriend and wanted to marry the pizza deliverer!"
"Oh, I see."
"You should have seen how shocked the pizza delivery guy was!"
"Oh, ok ..."
But maybe I was too hard on the boy by scolding him. Maybe it's just that his internet search skills aren't very good. In which case, instead of scolding him, I should have just fired him. But how would I find out whether his internet search skills aren't good or whether he just hoped to save some minutes looking for the case by getting the hardcopy from me?
Fortunately, I came up with the perfect way of finding out. Tomorrow we're launching a competition for all Pupils of the firm to search for all pictures and videos of the Edison Chen sex scandal they can find on the internet. It's not strictly legal research but it's still internet search skills. Of course, the Partners will have to spend hours sifting through the pictures and videos to determine which Pupils have good enough search skills but extra workload is just sometimes the price we have to pay as Partners if we want to train the next generation of lawyers in this firm.
The Pupil who finds the missing Maggie Q pictures and videos wins.
A long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away ...), when I was in law school, legal research was done in the old fashioned ways. Either:
1) Spend hours in the library hunting through textbooks, case digest books, law reports, legal periodicals, clippings of Times Law news etc.; or,
2) Ask someone who already knew the answer.
Today, our Pupils and Associates have access to fancy internet legal research databases like Kluwer, LexisNexis and LawNet. In theory, the answers are just a few search strings and mouse clicks away - provided you crafted the right search strings and clicked the right links of course. Anyhow, its much easier and faster than the old fashioned roll-up-your-sleeves-cancel-your-dinner-date-order-pizza-delivery-and-camp-out-in-the-law-library-till-midnight days that I used to go through.
So it came as a surprise to me when a Pupil asked if I still had the case he showed me some months back because he doesn't have a copy and can no longer remember the case name.
"Can't you find it again?"
"Yes well, probably, but I recall it wasn't easy to locate online the last time."
"What do you mean it wasn't easy? It's just search strings and mouse clicks! In my time, we had to do the old fashioned roll-up-your-sleeves-cancel-your-dinner-date-order-pizza-delivery-and-camp-out-in-the-law-library-till-midnight thing!"
"Yes, I see."
"And it got so bad that eventually, one of my colleagues dumped his girlfriend and wanted to marry the pizza deliverer!"
"Oh, I see."
"You should have seen how shocked the pizza delivery guy was!"
"Oh, ok ..."
But maybe I was too hard on the boy by scolding him. Maybe it's just that his internet search skills aren't very good. In which case, instead of scolding him, I should have just fired him. But how would I find out whether his internet search skills aren't good or whether he just hoped to save some minutes looking for the case by getting the hardcopy from me?
Fortunately, I came up with the perfect way of finding out. Tomorrow we're launching a competition for all Pupils of the firm to search for all pictures and videos of the Edison Chen sex scandal they can find on the internet. It's not strictly legal research but it's still internet search skills. Of course, the Partners will have to spend hours sifting through the pictures and videos to determine which Pupils have good enough search skills but extra workload is just sometimes the price we have to pay as Partners if we want to train the next generation of lawyers in this firm.
The Pupil who finds the missing Maggie Q pictures and videos wins.
