ALL-SIS Advanced Legal Research Instructors Workshop

The first ALL-SIS Advanced Legal Research Instructors Workshop was a huge success. Wendy Scott and I (coordinators of the program) were amazed at the turnout. We were expecting 20 - 30 attendees and had close to 100! We had to make last-minute adjustments to the room setup, dividing the group into three circles, with Wendy, Gail Partin, and myself serving as discussion leaders.

Participants had many questions for the group about how advanced legal research is taught in the various institutions. We learned that there is a real need for us to get together and share ideas about teaching.

We had some prepared discussion topics for the three groups, which were:

• Integrating print and electronic research
• Teaching online commercial services: who does the training; do you include services other than Westlaw and Lexis
• The use of instructional technologies
• Interdisciplinary research instruction
• Reviewing material students should have learned as 1Ls
• Topic-specific research courses
• Determining students’ grades
• Team-teaching

Look for the workshop in San Antonio. This time, we’ll plan for a large turnout and have the room setup correctly from the beginning! Also look for several articles in Spectrum this year by the ALL-SIS legal research on topics of common interest that came up during the workshop.