First year legal research is like reading Herodotus,
it just doesn't make any sense the first time through.
Since hardly anyone studies classics anymore a modern
translation--it's like reading a stream of conscious-
ness novel, it won't make any sense unless you already
know the plot.
The entire law school experience is fraught with this
problem, you can't understand the picky details until
you can see the overall structure, but the overall
structure is unintelligible without some mastery of
the details.
I can remember spending most of my first year first
year in long discussions with my classmates trying to
understand the difference between "procedure" and
"substance."
Because the whole process is so frustrating, it is
crucial to find a way to demonstrate to the 1L's why
it is important to spend some of their valuable time
trying to learn how to do research. Over and over
again I hear them say, "why are we wasting our time
over this, we're never going to need it again."
The only thing I have been able to come up with is to
try and put the fear of god into them by telling horror
stories about what happens to summer clerks and new
associates who don't know how to do this stuff.
I have the same problem in trying to teach advanced
CALR. I bend over backwards to schedule and individual
session with someone at a time that is good for them,
but when the day arrives they call to say that something
more important has come up and they have to cancel.
How can we make them understand that this stuff is every
bit as important as anything else they are studying?
More questions than answers I'm afraid.
Heather Simmons
Wayne State University Law Library
hsimmon@waynest1
hsimmon@cms.cc.wayne.edu
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