Do New Attorneys Have The Skills?

1. Do New Attorneys Have The Skills? Tobin A. Sparling Associate Professor South Texas College of Law

2. 2007 ABA Legal Technology Survey ■ Percentage of attorneys who regularly use ... ● Print Resources – 52%. ▪ 40% under age 40. ▪ 60% over 50. ● Fee-Based Internet Resources – 58%. ▪ 73% under age 40. ▪ 46% over age 50. ● Free Internet Resources – 48%. ● CD-ROM (or other removable media formats) – 11%.

3. Competency of Summer & First-Year Associates - 1988 ■ Howland & Lewis’ survey of law firm librarians in eight major cities: ● Basic Research Skills ▪ Over 50% of summer associates less than satisfactory. ▪ At least 34% of first-years less than satisfactory. ● Specific Subject Matter Research Skills ▪ 64% of summer associates less than satisfactory. ▪ 48% of first-years less than satisfactory. Joan S. Howland & Nancy J. Lewis, The Effectiveness of Law School Legal Research TrainingPrograms, 40 J. Legal Educ. 381 (1990).

4. ABA’s MacCrate Report - 1992 ■ Purpose: To refocus legal education from teaching students to “think like a lawyer to teaching them to act (or function) as a lawyer.” ■ Result: The creation of formal legal research & writing programs in law schools nationwide.

5. Competency of First-Year Associates - 2005-2006 ■ Strubbe & Stiverson’s survey of attorneys and law firm librarians in the Chicago area: Are new attorneys able to research effectively and efficiently prior to in-house training? ● Overall research - 59.6% cannot. ● Print research - 68.8% cannot. ● Electronic research - 57.4% cannot. Mary Rose Strubbe & Keith Stiverson, The Future of Legal Research, Law Librarian Survey, handout accompanying Laurel Oates & Mary Rose Strubbe, Legal Research in the 21st Century, Legal Writing Institute Conference (2006), available at http:www.lwionline.org/publications/documents200…

6. Competency of First-Year Associates - 2005-2006 (continued) ■ Skills found lacking: ● Defining or narrowing issues with secondary sources – 88.6%. ● Finding relevant sources efficiently – 65.9%. ● Recognizing irrelevant sources – 36.4%. ● Awareness of authority hierarchy – 43.2%. ● Updating research accurately and effectively – 47.7%. ● Other – 22.7%.

7. Why The Continuing Problem? ■Legal Education Generally. ● Continued undervaluing of skills instruction.

8. Why The Continuing Problem? (continued) ■ Legal Research & Writing Instruction Specifically. ● Emphasis upon legal writing at the expense of legal research. ● Emphasis upon one medium of legal research at the expense of another (electronic vs. paper or paper vs. electronic). ● Teaching hampered by lack of uniformity of electronic media. ● De-emphasis of law librarians as providers of legal research instruction.

9. Why The Continuing Problem? (continued) ■ The Google Effect. ● Law students’ unfamiliarity with paper media, their features, and search methodology (indexes, tables of contents, etc.) ▪ 73% of college students use the internet more than they use the library for information retrieval. (Pew Internet & American Life Project.) Pew Internet & American Life Project, available at http:www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_College_Report.pdf.

10. The Google Effect (continued) ● Ease and seductiveness of the quick key-word search and corresponding unattractiveness of more thought- or labor-intensive media, notwithstanding the results. (Peoples’ survey of 28 second- and third-year law students’ research preferences.) ▪ Students rated electronic key-word searching more highly than other techniques even when the results were less successful. ▪ Digests were ranked lowest even when students had the greatest success using them. ▪ Students ranked KeySearch lower than electronic key- word searches due to difficulty of use. Lee F. Peoples, The Death of the Digest & the Pitfalls of Electronic Research: What Is the Modern Researcher to Do?, 97 Law Libr. J. 661 (2005).

11. The Google Effect (continued) ■ False confidence in search results and in the comprehensiveness of the search engine. ● Students’ correlation of quick hits with the validity of the search results. ▪ Failure to dig deeply. ▪ Tendency to give up if they don’t quickly find what they are looking for. ▪ View of the law as a system based on unique factual situations as opposed to one founded on identifiable rules and principles.

12. Why The Continuing Problem? (continued) ■ Lexis and Westlaw Instruction. ● Difficulty in conveying a realistic sense of the costs of Lexis and Westlaw research. ● Difficulty in monitoring what students are doing. ● Over-dependence on vendors for instruction.

13. What to Do? ■ Recognize that the current generation of attorneys approaches research differently than prior generations and comes with different expectations. ■ Realistically appraise our (teachers’, librarians’, senior attorneys’) expectations. ■ Clearly convey our expectations to law students / junior attorneys. ■ Emphasize electronic search methodology in legal research courses and strike a better balance between paper and electronic media.

14. What to Do? (continued) ■ Enthusiastically embrace and master new developments in legal research and promote them to law students / junior attorneys. ■ Develop clear and arresting examples to show law students / junior attorneys the benefits as well as the shortcomings of all of the research media we expect them to use. ■ Promote law school reference librarians as resources for aid in electronic search methodologies. ■ Maintain and enforce standards.