Better Discovery

There is a tremendous amount of social science being applied to the concept of information hunting.

Here is a great article that examines the ways in which engineering and law students in Ireland go about finding information.

The conclusions and suggestions are both intuitive (from a practitioner’s point of view) and startling, because it is clear that lawyers have, by and large, missed the boat in a mandatory skill:

Law students, like legal practitioners, work in an information-rich environment which is in constant flux, with ongoing additions to statutes and other sources for legal research. As a result, those involved in the study and practice of law need to stay current with published legal literature relating to their area of study, or area of practice. This can encompass court rulings and judgements, legislation and regulations, as well as secondary material including research. Essential information skills required of legal practitioners include the ability to locate primary and secondary material, the ability to evaluate the relevance, applicability and value of that material to the task at hand, the ability to manage that material, and the ability to use the information for a specific purpose (Carroll et al. 2001). Consequently, these are likely to be information skills that are required of law graduates on completion of their formal education.

In other words, lawyers need to re-learn how to find information and law schools need to teach students how to find information, n ot just use outdated reference tools.

Source: Information Research Journal