Last month I posed the following question, the answers to which will
eventually be summarized in my column appearing in Perspectives: Teaching
Legal Research & Writing (in the Fall 1993 issue). I am still interested in
responses so I present it one more time:
"Bob Berring says that 'it is easier to instruct second- and third-year
students because they have context and vocabulary.' How can you successfully
teach legal research to first-year students in spite of these knowledge
deficiencies?"
Feel free to share even just a few sentences with me on this topic. (By the
way, if you think it is not possible to overcome these deficiencies, don't
hesitate to say that too.)
Thanks for your help.
Frank G. Houdek, Law Library Director************(618) 453-8788
School of Law Library**********************FAX: (618) 453-8728
Southern Illinois University************Bitnet: HOUDEK@SIUCVMB
Carbondale, IL 62901*********Internet: HOUDEK@SIUCVMB.SIU.EDU
Frank, of course you can teach legal research in the first year. Schools
even teach legal writing, contracts, torts, procedure, and other things, in
the first year. If you mean can you teach students everything they will
ever need to know about research in the first year, probably not. Neither
can you teach them everything they need to know about research in one
advanced course in the 2d or 3d year.
You can teach the BASICS of legal research in the first year and, coupled
with assignments from their writing course, give them a couple or more
writing assignments that require library research so they can begin to
practice and improve those basic legal research skills.
Some students clerk in law firms during the summer of the end of their first
year in law school. Others become research assistants for law faculty
during the summer of the end of that first year. Some "write on" for law
reviews during the summer of the end of their first year. Can we possibly
be living up to our responsibilities to these students if we did not at
least teach them the basics of legal research before they are required to do
some research and writing during the summer of the end of their first year?
The legal writing people don't think it is fair to the students to do so
(and heaven knows their jobs would be easier in the second year of law
school). The contracts professors don't think it is fair to the students.
Maybe what some are saying is that legal research is not important enough to
learn in the first year of law school. That these students can accomplish
their first clerking, being research assistants, writing on for law reviews,
etc. the summer of the end of their first year without any formal training
in the basics of legal research. If so, that seems to be underscoring what
many lawyers and law faculty have said for years -- that legal research is
really not really all that important. I don't agree with them.
Personally, I also think their is an enormous amount to be gained by getting
some of the attention of the first-year students directed at the law library
and the law librarians. How sad to think law students would spend the
entire first year of law school around all these books and computers and
not have a clue how they might help them in their first year study of
law (headnotes of the legal principles in a case they are discussing in
class, etc. etc.). The students should learn from day one that law
libraraians know all the answers to the use of books and computers. I think
academic law librarians have the opportunity and obligation to influence
these students early so the law firm librarians inheriting them as summer
clerks and eventual associates will inherit students who think of law
librarians as the people to turn for the answers to all information
questions.
Do I think a first year course in the basics of legal research is in the end
all be all. No. There is much additional legal research that can be taught
in an advanced research class, especially one that is really "advanced" not
just the student's first legal research class.
Thus endenth the epistle.
Albert Brecht, USC.
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