Responsibilities of a Lawyer: Complete, up-to-date legal research

“As advisor, a lawyer provides a client with an informed understanding of the client’s legal rights and obligations and explains their practical implications” (Preamble:  A Lawyer’s Responsibilities,  Model Rules of Professional Conduct).

The primary task of a lawyer is to explain to clients how the law applies to their case.

After passing the Bar Exam, and becoming a lawyer, how will you know the practical implications “of the client’s legal rights and obligations” (MRPC)? You will have to research it. In order to be sure that you are correct in your assertions to the client, you need to be sure that you know all the law applicable to the situation. This could mean finding a statute and the relevant cases interpreting it, and then ensuring that the information is complete and up-to-date.

How will you know whether the research you have done is complete and up-to-date?

Research Strategy and Research logs

You need to have a research strategy and a research log so that you can tell what research you have done, and what you still need to do to be sure your research is complete and up to date. For billing purposes, you will want to log the time spent doing research, in addition to the cost of the legal research. For cases that take place over a long period of time, it helps to log the date of your research, so that you will know when enough time has passed that you may need to update your research.

Ways to Improve Research Skills

There are several ways to build your legal research skills. One way is to do an internship with a law firm, often partners will give you legal research tasks related to actual cases. It is a good idea to consult reference librarians to get help with your research.

At TJSL, the law librarians teach brief workshops and full length courses that you can take to improve your legal research skills. Look for advertisements for these brief classes at the Fourth Floor Circulation Desk, in the Advisor and on the touch screens.

• June Mac Leod’s mini-classes
• Hadas Livnat’s – Working Tour of Library Resources
• Catherine Deane’s – General Tour of the Library

TJSL also offers an Advanced Legal Research course for two credits. It will be offered this Fall 2011, and the sections will be taught by Interim Director Patrick Meyer, and Reference Librarian Catherine Deane.

If you are unable to attend any of these classes, you can still brush up on your legal research skills by taking CALI Quizzes. These Quizzes vary in length, and cover a wide range of topics. Maybe pick a short one to start with, some are as brief as 20 minutes. Start to work this into your routine. For instance, when you are working on something challenging and you want to switch to something else while still being productive, do a short Quiz on a legal research topic and improve your skills. Alternatively, you could set aside one hour a week to take a quiz or two on a legal research topic.

Email Reference Librarian Catherine Deane to get the Student Registration Code to access the CALI Quizzes.

 

Which class will you work into your schedule to improve your legal research skills?

 

The Next Mini-Classes are offered on Tuesday July 19^th at 10:30 am and cover:

• How to Research

And

• How to Find Cases

Legal Research Help for TJSL Law Students: When to Ask, Who to ask, How to ask, What to ask for?

Click Image for Video on How to Ask Questions at the Reference Desk. Image (courtesy Kristian D.)

When to Ask?

When you:

• are doing an Internship and you are asked to research something.
• are doing a course that requires you to write a paper or a memo, ask early on in the semester, as soon as you have your writing assignment.
• are getting ready to propose an independent study class and you need to do preliminary research on your topic
• are writing a note for the Law Review
• are doing a moot court competition and you have just received the question
• don’t know where things are in the library

Who to ask

First contact the reference librarians

• By email
  • Catherine Deane, Full-time Reference Librarian, and Professor of Law (Advanced Legal Research)
  • June Mac Leod, Part-time reference librarian and Professor of Law (Advanced Legal Research)
  • Phone (for urgent questions)
    • Catherine Deane – 619.961.4339
    • June Mac Leod – 619.961.4335
    • Reference Desk – 619.961.4351
  • AskThom Virtual Chat (for questions that can be answered in one sentence, eg. What time do you close? Do you have an economics news database?)
  • In person at the 4^th Floor Reference Desk

If the reference librarians are not available because it is after normal business hours then ask for:

• Hadas Livnat, the Evenings/Reserve/Circulation Librarian
  • By email
  • Phone – 619.961.4292
  • In Person – ask for her at the 4^th Floor Circulation/Reference Desk

If the reference librarians are not available during normal business hours because they are on vacation/out sick, etc. then ask for:

• Torin Andrews, Circulation Librarian
  • By email
  • Phone – 619.961.4206
  • In Person – ask for him at the 4^th Floor Circulation Desk

If none of these are available you may contact the Acting Director of the Library:

• Patrick Meyer, Interim Library Director and Professor of Law (Advanced Legal Research)
  • By email
  • Phone – 619.961.4296
  • In Person – ask for him at the 4^th Floor Circulation Desk after you have asked for any of the other public services librarians listed above first.

How to Ask

Please be polite when asking for help.

Ask the student library assistants if what you need is:

• office supplies – look in the copy room
• directions to the bathroom or copy room – look at the touchscreen map
• help with printing or wireless issues –contact IT on the 3^rd floor
• a known book on course reserve – 4^th floor circulation desk
• to reserve a room – 4^th floor circulation desk

The student library assistants are available at the circulation desk to help you with these matters.

What to Ask For

Ask for:

• a tour of the library
• help using Practice Guides or other print items to do research
• help navigating Westlaw/Lexis or other databases
• help finding and researching your paper topic
• help coming up with a research strategy for a particular research problem
• guidance doing research in general
• help learning how to use Google more efficiently to find items
• help evaluating the validity of an information source (can I use this in my paper/memo?)