Lexis Advance debuts today!

The long-awaited Lexis Advance platform officially debuted today.  Bob Ambrogi gives a good review of the new interface at http://goo.gl/W6IbE while Greg Lambert provides a more technical review of the launch at http://goo.gl/p8ugR.

 

The “Car Parts” Theory of Legal Research

A Theory

For a while now, I’ve been working on a theory about how legal research works. Using legal research tools is a hard paradigm to share with new law students, even ones who have experience with undergraduate research. It may be, as Anne Elk, A. Elk [Miss], put it, “My theory, that I have, that is to say, which is mine, is mine,” (Cough. Cough, cough), but I’d be thrilled if you steal, uh, borrow it, use it—and tell me what you think.

Cars

Every make of car—Honda, Toyota, Chevy, Ford—has parts that do the same things: alternators, starters, fuel injectors, fuel pumps, for instance. But parts from a Toyota won’t work in a Chevy, and so on. That’s because the parts do the same things, with different shapes and sizes and connectors. And remember: All those parts are supposed to connect: fuel injector, fuel pump, gas tank. But if you want your car to work right, all the parts have to connect together properly.

Research tools

There are a lot of different projects you might be doing legal research for. You might be working on a memo for LSV; a pleading or brief for an employer, moot court, or mock trial; or a seminar or law review paper or research for a professor. Like cars, all of the projects are similar, and go forward in similar ways. But, also like cars, they look different (trucks, economy cars, sports cars, SUVs) and have different uses.

And you will find a lot of different “things” (sources of law, or just “sources”) when you do legal research: constitutions, cases, statutes, regulations (kind of “junior statutes”), and lots of different types of secondary sources, like law review articles, legal encyclopedia articles, digest summaries, and case annotations.

These “things” are found in different research tools, in books and online: annotated statutes, case reporters, journals, legal encyclopedias, digests, and American Law Reports.

All of these research tools have the same parts. The books have tables of contents, indexes, and tables of cases. The Web resources have basic and advanced search functions, tables of issues and articles. But the parts don’t work exactly the same way… because just like an alternator from a Chevy and a fuel pump from a Honda, neither the resources nor the parts themselves are interchangeable.

But—and this is important—just like a working Honda’s fuel pump and gas tank, the parts are also connected, forward and backward, by the references and citations.

Connections

Use connections. The alternator connects to the battery. The connection runs both ways—and won’t work either way unless there is a connection.

Citations aren’t just something you have to use the Bluebook to figure out how to format. Look at the citations in the “things”—sources—you have, and use them to find other sources. Looking at citations in your sources, and the different sources they cite to, lets you figure out what all the sources you have to say about each other. Sources are written by people (obvious, I know). People disagree. Some disagreements get resolved—when a higher judge disagrees with a lower one. But some don’t—when two judges at exactly the same level, or in different states, disagree.

Reverse Engineering

Oh, about the Bluebook. Think of it as being the shop manual for your car. One use for a shop manual is to figure out how to put a new fuel injector in your car. But you can also use the shop manual to take the car apart, or find a part number for the new cylinder-head gasket or fuel-tank float you need.

You’ve been taught, or learned, to use the Bluebook to look up how to format a Georgia Supreme Court citation, for example. But if you have a citation that you can’t completely figure out, but you’re pretty sure is from Michigan (because it has “MI” or “Mich.” in it) or Colombia (“Colom.”, ditto), use the Bluebook’s tables to look up the citation format. (There’s a general rule of thumb here: As a favorite writer of mine put it, “[W]hen faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand, then look at it again.”)

Other Places to Look

There are different shop manuals for different cars, right? Some jurisdictions have their own “shop manuals.” Florida, for instance, has two: An official one, Fla. R. App. P. 9.800, “Uniform Citation System,” and a semi-official one, the Florida Style Manual, that Fla. R. App. P. 9.800(n) tells you to use if Fla. R. App. P. 9.800 doesn’t have the citation style you need.

Postscript

I really like this “theory” (an extended metaphor, really), for its usefulness and concision. I also think it’s very pedagogically interesting. I plan to do some research on that aspect for a follow-up blog post. Anyway, that’s my theory. Please let me know what you think—post a comment, or email me at silvermanmi@nsu.law.nova.edu.

Resource of the Day: The Bluebook Online

Today's resource of note is the interactive online version of the gold-standard citation tool The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation.  Not only does the Law Library & Technology Center keep several print copies of the current edition in Reserve readily available for patron use (see Novacat entry for holdings), the LLTC also maintains an organizational subscription to online versions of the 18th (2005) and 19th (2010) editions. 

Easy to navigate and updated to reflect immediate changes, the online Bluebook provides users with great search functionality and allows them to bookmark often-used sections.  To learn more, visit http://www.legalbluebook.com/Public/Tour.aspx.



Access is restricted to Shepard Broad Law Center faculty, students, and staff.  Please contact your friendly neighborhood Law Librarian for the login details.

Law School Exam Tips: A Followup

As a follow-up to my post about exam tips, a quotation from an article about law school education I had intended to use to introduce my previous blog post:

"Studies have shown that the best way to learn is to have frequent exams on small amounts of material and to receive lots of feedback from the teacher. Consequently, law school does none of this."

 – James D. Gordon III, cited in Lynn C. Herndon, Help You, Help Me: Why Law Students Need Peer Teaching, 78 UMKC L. Rev. 809 (2010).

Law School Exam Tips

Two 1Ls here at NSU asked me the other day for tips for dealing with exams. I felt like I didn’t have a lot of insight. Law school was a long time ago for me, and I didn’t deal with exams too well myself.

So I consulted my awesome colleague Becka Rich, the NSU law library’s new Reference/Faculty Services Librarian. She provided some links and some advice, which I am passing on here.

First, some blog links to blog posts about exams.  Most of the posts (the first post is a collection of links) are very short, so don’t stress over reading them:

CALI’s Law School Exam Advice Post — CALI gives a list of links to essays and podcasts on how to do well on both essay and multiple choice law school exams.  There’s also a lot of great advice from good sources linked to.

A Common Law School Exam Mistake — The Volokh Conspiracy blog is helmed by a number of very down-to-earth law professors.  This post talks about how to organize your exam answers and how not to organize them.  If you’re only going to read one link, Becka suggests this one.

Law Career Blog’s Exam-Taking Advice:  Law Career Blog provides a list of their own best advice and a couple of other links. Very short, but helpful.

Lawyerist’s Tried and True Advice for Law School Exams: This is a round-up of their best posts on taking different types of law school exams.

Jurist’s Law School Exams page: The Jurist has a round-up of advice from law professors while noting that the best advice on your exam will come from your professor.

Beyond IRAC: Law School Exam Taking Tips (Law Profession Blog):  Advice from a law professor grading exams on how to write law school exams.  

University of Washington Law Library Law School Exam Page: Includes a bibliography of exam prep sources.

Law Crossing: Grade A Advice on Acing Law School Exams:  A recent grad shares law school exam tips.

Becka also said that candy and toys (which she and Carol Yecies, library associate director, both have) are useful if you need to sit and play for a minute. “But in all seriousness…. Tell them to take a deep breath, if they’ve been paying attention all semester it’s not that bad.  Eating and sleeping and showering are as important, if not more so than studying.  Get some exercise.  I meant it about the sleep.“

So, break a leg on your exams–and don’t stress or obsess!

Your Law School’s Ranking? Not as Important as You Think!

Law
school success, as measured by grades, is more important for lawyers’
career success and satisfaction than the ranking of the law school they
attended, according to a recent study reported by the ABA Journal’s blog.

The study was encouraging news for lower-tier law schools and their students. The ABA article said:

[T]he
salary boost for achieving high grades more than makes up for the
salary depreciation associated with attending a lower-ranked school. The
study also found that lawyers who left law school with the lowest
grades felt the least secure about their jobs.

The authors of the study, “The Secret of My Success: How Status, Prestige and School Performance Shape Legal Careers,” summarize how its findings contradict “conventional wisdom”:

The
consistent theme we find throughout this analysis is that performance
in law school–as measured by law school grades–is the most important
predictor of career success. It is decisively more important than law
school "eliteness." Socioeconomic factors play a critical role in
shaping the pool from which law students are drawn, but little or no
discernible role in shaping post-graduate careers. Since the dominant
conventional wisdom says that law school prestige is all-important, and
since students who "trade-up" in school prestige generally take a hit to
their school performance, we think prospective students are getting the
wrong message. (p. 2)

Those
of you who chose law schools to be closer to home, or because you
wanted more practical preparation for practice (a demonstrated strength
of NSU's), feel good about your choice! You're likely to be more
satisfied with your law school, and over a lifetime, you may well do
better.

The
yet-to-be-published study is by Richard Sander (UCLA Law) and Jane
Yakowitz (Brooklyn Law). It looked at beliefs about the effects of the
ranking of the students’ law school, grades in law school, and societal
position. It then reviewed the literature and statistics on the effects
of these three variables on lawyer career success. It also compared the
effects of the factors using a regression model.

Student Information Literacy: Reality and and Possibilities

Are
today’s college students prepared to be “digital citizens”? Do they
have the tools they need to find, evaluate, and use information in
today’s wired world? A Northwestern University suggests not, and a white
paper offers some minimum standards for information literacy.

A
recent study shows that while college students may be able to find
information online, they are not very good at figuring out what
information is reliable and authoritative. The study was released by the
Communications Studies department at Northwestern University (the press
release at http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2010/07/Google.html; the article that reports the study is at http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/636/423).
The students in the study relied on commercial search engines like
Google, and could not distinguish useful, unbiased websites from biased
ones. For example,  the students confuse search rankings with
authoritativeness (higher rankings meaning better websites), and they
assume that an “.org” web address gives a web site authority (when any
organization, even a well-known neo-Nazi group, can get an “.org”
 address).

A
recent white paper addressed this gap in information literacy. While it
does not present solutions to the problem of digital literacy, it does
propose some minimum standards that librarians and other educators can
rely on. Titled “Basic 21st Century Technology, Information &
Communication Skills for Successful Citizens,” (http://www.tblc.org/DigitalSkillsChecklist.pdf),
it was written by Paul Alford, the Learning Services Manager for the
Citrus County (Florida) library system. The ambitious list suggests
skills in three areas, Digital Skills, Information Resource Skills, and
Communication & Cognitive Skills, that are necessary for people to
be fully prepared to address their own information needs. The list
builds on basic skills to support more complex ones. It outlines the
sills necessary to make important decisions, learn for themselves, and
be engaged with society and government–very important for the law
student and lawyer.

A Uniform Bar Exam For Missouri

Via Betsy McKenzie at Out of the Jungle: A recent report in stltoday.com indicates that Missouri has become the first state to adopt a plan to create a single bar exam for lawyers who want to practice anywhere in the United States. Lex Universal also has a write-up of the story. Missouri plans to have the exam ready for those sitting for the bar in February 2011.

Both the American Bar Association and the National Conference of Bar Examiners have signed off on the idea. The test might be universal, but passing the new exam will not mean automatic admission to every state bar in the U.S. First, states have to affirmatively sign on to participate. Then, each participating state will be able to set its own passing grade, as well as other state-specific bar admission policies. According to the stltoday article, several states are considering adopting the uniform bar exam. Lex Universal, citing USAToday, names Arizona, Colorado, North Dakota, and Washington, D.C. as potential adopters.

A Life Transformed–By A (Prison) Law Library

Adam Liptak has an excellent piece in the New York Times about Shon Hopwood, who transformed himself in Federal prison from a bad bank robber to an excellent jailhouse lawyer. Hopwood, who is now working as a paralegal, got his job with a reference from former Solicitor General Seth Waxman.

Hopwood's next stop may be law school. A University of Michigan law professor has already talked to their admissions office about saving him a spot.

Requesting extra time on the LSAT

A prospective law student asked for double the standard time allotment for the LSAT based on an ADHD claim, and is now litigating the issue in Texas. Article

- By: Robert Hudson