An empirical study on the research and critical evaluation skills of law students

Legal Reference Services Quarterly

Volumn 31, Issue 3-4, 2012, Pages 205-238

  Wu, Michelle M ^a   Lee, Leslie A ^b  

^a GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER   (United States)

^b GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Empirical research data; Law student research

Indexed keywords

EID: 84874297277     PISSN: 0270319X     EISSN: 1540949X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0270319X.2012.723571     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. Ian Gallacher, 'Who Are Those Guys?': The Results of a Survey Studying the Information Literacy of Incoming Law Students, 44 Cal. W. L. Rev. 151 (2007).
2. Joan S. Howland & Nancy J. Lewis, The Effectiveness of Law School Research Training Programs, 40 J. Leg. Educ. 381 (1990).
3. Robin K. Mills, Legal Research Instruction in Law Schools, the State of the Art or, Why Law School Graduates Do Not Know How to Find the Law, 70 Law Lib. J. 343 (1977)
4. Suzanne E. Rowe, Legal Research, Legal Writing, and Legal Analysis: Putting Law School into Practice, 29 Stetson L. Rev. 1193 (1999-2000).
5. Heidi Senior et al., Three Times a Study: Business Students and the Library, 14 J. Bus. & Fin. Lib. 202 (2009).
6. By the end of October 2010, ninety-seven schools had access to WestlawNext. E-mail from Pedro de Lencastre, Academic Account Manager, Thomson Reuters, to Catherine Dunn, Ref. Libr., Georgetown Law Library (Nov. 2, 2011, 11:51 EST) (on file with author).
7. As of September 2011, about fifty law schools had access to Lexis Advance. E-mail from Lori Sorenson, Account Rep., LexisNexis, to Michelle Wu (Feb. 10, 2012, 14:52 EST) (on file with author).
8. Am. Assn. L. Libr., AALL Biennial Salary Survey 8 (American Association of Law Libraries 2011).
9. The suggested sample size for this population would be 663 for a 99 percent confidence level and a 5 percent confidence interval (margin of error); note that a much larger sample size of 4,051 would achieve the same confidence level of 99 percent and would narrow down the confidence level to 2 percent. For determining confidence levels, we used a sample size calculator such as the one found at http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm
10. This number, derived from 2009 data, counts all law students, including 1Ls, who were deliberately excluded from this study. See L. Sch. Admis. Council & ABA, ABA/LSAC Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools 870 (Law School Admission Council and the American Bar Association 2011).
11. Though thirty-nine schools participated, in the end, we used data from only thirty-eight schools as we discounted one of the schools' results after collection. See Part V: "Lessons Learned", pp. 234-235, for an explanation.
12. Am. Assn. L. Libr., AALL Biennial Salary Survey 8 (American Association of Law Libraries 2011).
13. Even with the understanding that rankings are controversial and do not necessarily provide the most accurate picture of any given school, we felt that there was some value in using U.S. News & World Report tiers. We deliberately used an older definition of tiers-four tiers with fifty schools in each-as this was more useful for our purposes than the current tier definitions, as the former allow for slightly less clumping than the existing structure. For the purposes of this survey, we used the 2012 U.S. News and World Report rankings (released in 2011) and divided the tiers in this manner: 1 to 50 (Tier 1); 51 to 100 (Tier 2); 101 to 150 (Tier 3); and unranked (Tier 4).
14. We established these size designations; they were not drawn from any established source.
15. Only one school had mentioned to us, upon delivering the spreadsheet, that it did not have clear tags for different class levels. Instead, the school had created a formula to capture the students who would likely fall within our defined categories. We received only three remarks out of 3,599 responses with any indication that a 1L was completing the questionnaire.
16. Elizabeth Deutskens et al., Response Rate and Response Quality of Internet Based Surveys: An Experimental Study, 15 Mktg. Letters 23 (2004).
17. Question 2 asked respondents if they could recognize when a resource was available to the public versus available to them only through a library subscription. Only those students who answered in the affirmative were presented with Question 2a, which asked if respondents could distinguish between resources available to them by their law library as opposed to other campus libraries.
18. ABA, ABA Legal Technology Survey Report 2011 (American Bar Association 2011). For a visual and brief comparison of the two surveys, please see the presentation of Michelle M. Wu at the Capital Area Legal Writing Conference 2012, 54-73, available at http://www.law.georgetown.edu/cle/materials/ CapitalAreaLegalWritingConference/2012.pdf
19. ABA, ABA Legal Technology Survey Report 2011 (American Bar Association 2011). For a visual and brief comparison of the two surveys, please see the presentation of Michelle M. Wu at the Capital Area Legal Writing Conference 2012, 54-73, available at http://www.law.georgetown.edu/cle/materials/ CapitalAreaLegalWritingConference/2012.pdf
20. S. Shyam Sundar et al., Authority vs. Peer: How Interface Cues Influence Users (CHI 2009 Spotlight on Works in Progress Session 2, Boston, Mass., April 4-9, 2009), 4233, 4235, available at http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1530000/1520645/p4231-sundar.pdf?ip=128.164.135.250 &acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&CFID=80362878&CFTOKEN=38851988&__acm__=1336530360 _a772464ee3409575d8acc5f5630c73fa (showing a "bandwagon effect"-that the crowd usually trumps authority if there is a consistent statement about a product or service, and only when the statement is inconsistent does authority play a role in driving user or consumer behavior).
21. Edelman Digital, Trust Shifts from Institutions to Individuals, available at http://www.edelmandigital.com/2012/01/24/trustshifts-from-institutions-to-individuals
22. "At 77 schools, LRW faculty teach research. At 75 schools, both LRW faculty and librarians teach legal research, and in 27 schools, teaching assistants and other students also teach research. " Assn. Leg. Writing Directors & Leg. Writing Inst., ALWD/LWI 2011 Survey Report (Association of Legal Writing Directors and Legal Writing Institute 2001), at iv.
23. Molly Warner Lien, Breach of Trust: Legal Education's Failure to Prepare Students for the Practice of Law, 1 J. ALWD 118 (2002).
24. Patrick Meyer, Law Firm Legal Research Requirements for New Attorneys, 101 L. Lib. J. 297, 299 n. 8 (2009).
25. ABA, ABA Legal Technology Survey Report 2011 (American Bar Association 2011). For a visual and brief comparison of the two surveys, please see the presentation of Michelle M. Wu at the Capital Area Legal Writing Conference 2012, 54-73, available at http://www.law.georgetown.edu/cle/materials/ CapitalAreaLegalWritingConference/2012.pdf
26. Dennis Dillon, Climbing Out of the Box: Repackaging Libraries for Survival, 51 J. Lib. Admin. 18 (2011).
27. ABA, ABA Legal Technology Survey Report 2011 (American Bar Association 2011). For a visual and brief comparison of the two surveys, please see the presentation of Michelle M. Wu at the Capital Area Legal Writing Conference 2012, 54-73, available at http://www.law.georgetown.edu/cle/materials/ CapitalAreaLegalWritingConference/2012.pdf
28. ABA, ABA Legal Technology Survey Report 2011 (American Bar Association 2011). For a visual and brief comparison of the two surveys, please see the presentation of Michelle M. Wu at the Capital Area Legal Writing Conference 2012, 54-73, available at http://www.law.georgetown.edu/cle/materials/ CapitalAreaLegalWritingConference/2012.pdf
29. David H. Kaye & David A. Freedman, Reference Guide on Statistics, in Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence 124 (Fern M. Smith, ed., 2000).
30. David H. Kaye & David A. Freedman, Reference Guide on Statistics, in Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence 124 (Fern M. Smith, ed., 2000).
31. Heidi Senior et al., Three Times a Study: Business Students and the Library, 14 J. Bus. & Fin. Lib. 202 (2009).
32. CITI courses can be found at https://www.citiprogram.org/Default.asp? (last visited March 1, 2012).
33. 20 U.S.C.A. § 1232g (West 2010, Supp. 2011).
34. It should be noted, though, that the exception for directory information (name, address, e-mail, telephone, etc.) is conditioned upon providing students with a mechanism to opt out of the directory if preferred, and this additional requirement may be what hindered some schools' efforts. 34 C.F.R. § 99.3 (2012).
35. Andrew T. Norman & C. A. Russell, The Pass-Along Effect: Investigating Word-of-Mouth Effects on Online Survey Procedures, 11 J. Computer-Mediated Commun. 1085 (2006).
36. Sara Lipka, Want Data? Ask Students. Again and Again. Chron. Higher Educ. (August 7, 2011), available at http://chronicle.com/article/Want-Data-Ask-Students-Again/128537 (last accessed April 11, 2012).