a little break for a cold

I've not been around blogging, but I've been enjoying a quiet house to myself for the last few weeks and I've been recovering from a cold, so that has kept me mellow.
I should have kept a daily log of the last few weeks to see what it is I do when I'm alone. Mostly I cleaned the house, watched a little TV, read a few books, surfed the Web, and I have been working late way too many nights. It's easy to stay late when you have no reason to be home at a specific time.

I have also been brainstorming about teaching legal research to associates. How to do it, how to make it relevant, how I am failing in some ways, succeeding in others, and what I can do to improve.

I probably need to find a powerful partner to be on my side. Am thinking of approaching someone if I can carve out a few minutes of his/her attention.

As for legal research writ large - I have had ideas, and am using my most wonderful VooDooPad to keep my thoughts organized. I should publish it all to the Web, but I want to wait until I have more things to say. I realized that if I want to have anything important to say, I have to see what else has been said and done and published. The only thing I know for sure is that most summer associates and 1st year associates are ill-prepared for legal research in a law firm, and it usually doesn't improve. Perhaps I'll have an article or two at the end of this. I don't care about publishing to get something "published" I'm not in Academia (thank God!) so I just want to help other law librarians with this if there is something worthy to share.

Here's one of my brainstorming sessions, only partially complete, and it surely needs to be edited, but just a taste, here it is for your reading delectation:

LEGAL RESEARCH - MAIN POINTS
• In a law firm, you should always start with a treatise or a practice guide. This will save you enormous amounts of time. Practice material will give you the bearings on where to begin with your research, tell you where an issue has been, where it is now, direction it is heading. Point you to all important statutes, regulations and cases.
• You should never be searching in cases until you have a firm understanding of your issue. Cases update the treatises, and other research, you should only need to search caselaw on Wexis to supplement and update what you have already found elsewhere.
• If your issue is a procedural question, you should be looking in procedural resources.
• Statutes are the law. Always go to the relevant statute and read it/them.
• Find out if there are regulations related to your statutes. Agencies are empowered by statutes to create rules to enforce the statutes. This is called rulemaking. Your Federal rulemaking sources are the CFR and the Federal Register.
• Know what the Federal Register is and when you need to use it.
• Know what a final rule is.
• Know why you might sometimes need to look at a proposed rule.
• Know what the CFR is.

(At this point I quit, and realized I should look back at the MacCrate report inspired Legal Research material posted at AALL.)

Here was a bit about librarians...

• Librarians are a resource.
• Librarians save time.
• Librarians should be able to help you find all of the available resources on a topic.
• Librarians should know or be able to find all the relevant treatises, databases, articles, etc., that cover your topic so that you don't miss anything.
• Librarians usually know the fastest way to find the answer to a discreet question.
• Librarians are experts at formulating complex search strategies.
• Librarians should help you think about an issue in a new way.
• Librarians do not judge. Okay, we only judge if we never see you. Then we judge that you are not using your resources wisely.
• Librarians do not judge you if you do not know the answer.
• Librarians do not judge you if you have made a mistake, they just want to help.
• Librarians are here to save you time and money.
• Librarians know that when you succeed, the client succeeds, and we succeed. We want to help you succeed - that is what makes our day. Every interaction with a librarian is based on the fact that a librarian wants to help you succeed.
• The more information you give a librarian about your issue, the better job the librarian will do and the better the results will be.

So, that is where my head has been. Lots of work to do. Have been perusing the literature. Continuing to brainstorm GAMES as a way to make this STICK.