advanced legal research
Post on 20-Aug-2015
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Agenda
• Modern Search Engines – 20 minutes• Crowdsourcing – 10 minutes• Academic Publishing – 5 minutes• Alternative Sources – 10 minutes• Research Plan – 5 minutes• Questions – 10 minutes
What is Crowdsourcing?
Opening labor, decision-making, or information gathering to an undefined public.
- Wikipedia
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Crowdsourcing
• Old vs. New– Stock market– Sports betting– American Idol– Kickstarter
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Crowdsourcing Professional Knowledge
• Programming• Design• Research/Science/Data• Architecture• Medicine
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Crowdsourcing Law Knowledge
• What’s new is old: common law = crowdsourcing
• Collaboration is heart of lawyers’ work– Colleagues– Online/offline groups – Blogging/commentary– “Moot” arguments– Amicus briefing
• Crowdsourced legal research/analysis is the next step
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How Crowdsourcing Works
• Applications– Q&A– Annotation– Curation
• Contributor Incentives
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Crowdsourcing
Advantages• Quality• Efficiency
Limitations• Tool in the toolbox• Responsibility remains
with lawyer• Ethics and
confidentiality• Field still developing
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Academic Resources
• “There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content.” – Professor Fred Rodell, “Goodbye to Law
Reviews” (1936)
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Academic Resources
1970-80s 2000+0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Academic Source Citation
Source: New York Times, “Lackluster Reviews that Lawyers Love to Hate,” 10/21/2013
Social Science Research Network
SSRN eLibrary Statistics:• Abstracts: 525,956• Full Text Papers:
431,203 • Authors: 244,094 • Papers Received in
Last 12 months: 66,308
Citations:• Papers with Resolved
References: 249,640• Total References:
8,855,914• Papers with Cites:
238,195• Total Citation Links:
5,911,972• Papers with Resolved
Footnotes: 86,465• Total Footnotes:
8,931,406
Alternative Sources
1. Source Materials2. Local and State Resources3. Non-Profit Sources4. Non-Academic Writing5. Non-Legal Search Engines
Source Materials
• Legislatures and Courts publishing their own materials– US Office of the Law Revision Counsel– Bound Volumes of the Supreme Court– State Court Opinions– Regulatory Opinions
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Local and State Resources
• Libraries– Courthouses– Law Schools– Bar Association Headquarters
• Bar Association Resources– Member Benefits
Photo by Dan Cronin on Flickr under Creative Commons License
Research Plan
• Use Academic Sources and Non-Academic writings to maintain subject matter competency
• Turn to Alternative Sources for basic research
• Confirm results using Modern Search Engines
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