Essential Research Skills for New Attorneys: A Survey of Academic and Practitioner Law Librarians

Abstract

Legal research is generally regarded as an essential skill for attorneys. Despite this fact,research skills of new attorneys continue to be regarded as poor by law librarians. As law schools attempt to address this deficiency, particularly by adding advanced legal research courses, academic law librarians are increasingly involved in legal research instruction. Given this, it is important to ascertain whether academic law librarians and law librarians in legal offices agree as to the most important skills and materials for new lawyers to be familiar with. This paper reports and analyzes the results of a survey conducted among academic and practitioner law librarians in the Southeastern United States and Washington, DC area regarding legal research skills and materials.

Keywords: Bibliographic Instruction, Law students, Legal research, Study and Teaching