Cost Effective Legal Research Guide (2014): “We conduct research orientation programs for each class of Summer and Fall Associates. At these sessions, we explain how what they do in a Lexis or Westlaw research session results in the costs that appear on a client’s bill. We also tell them about alternative legal research sources (i.e., Fastcase, Intelliconnect, BNA, our print collection, etc.) that they can use without generating costs.The handout entitled “2013 Cost Effective Legal Research Choices” was distributed at the orientation for our 2013 Summer and Fall Associates. It lists various research tasks and sources in chart form (for example, finding research already done on your topic, reading an unannotated statute, learning if a case is good law, etc.) to indicate whether a given source is a good and cost effective choice for a given research task. The goal of this handout is to help new hires make sense of the information we give them about costs and research sources. Thanks to Gwen Friedman, Dave Webster, and David Proctor of the Research & Information Center at Ballard Spahr LLP for the helpful comments they made during the development of this handout.” -Carol B. Mundorf
Research Checklist (2014): “This checklist serves two purposes for our candidate journal members who are writing notes and comments: (1) to organize for them a list of useful resources generally relied upon for scholarly research; (2) to memorialize the resources they cover in individual meetings with librarians concerning their particular topics.I provide a lecture on useful resources for all journal students in their Scholarly Writing class. In addition, each student is required to meet individually with a librarian to discuss his or her research for the required note or comment. My lecture follows the outline of this checklist. Then, when students meet with a librarian, the librarian uses the checklist, highlighting useful resources as they are discussed, “x-ing” out any resources that aren’t useful to the particular student’s note or comment, and providing any unique or special resources that the student will find helpful for the particular note or comment by adding them to the checklist. The students leave the meeting with a structured checklist of materials to consult. We find that many students have already been working with the checklist before their meeting with the librarian. This enables the student and librarian to focus on any particular difficulties the student is having.” -Melanie Knapp
