I’ve been a huge fan of a teaching website called Khan Academy for a while now, and have pointed it out to a number of teachers and students to the site who are looking for tutorials on math, science, finance, history and more. One of the ideas that has been mulling around in the back of my head ever since I saw my first Khan’s Academy video on linear equations, was that this simple teaching style could easily be adapted by the law library or legal research and writing community to help students, lawyers and lay people understand some of the basics of legal research citation. 

You should really go and watch this 20-minute video of Salmon Khan explaining how he started the academy and how it works… but, since you probably don’t have 20 minutes, I’ll try to explain it in a few sentences.

Perhaps the best method of tutoring someone is through a one-on-one session where the student sits down with the tutor with a sheet of paper and the tutor talks the student through the process. The session should be short and should be narrowly focused on one topic. If the student gets stuck on something, they should be able to get the tutor to go back to that concept and show it to them again. Unlike a classroom method, the student is focused on the material, and not the professor teaching the subject. Here’s a nine-minute long video of Salmon Khan explaining Dividing Fractions (you don’t have to watch the whole thing… just view it for the process of how a simple blackboard and Khan’s voice explaining the concepts work, and then I’ll explain my idea of how this process could work in legal research and writing.)

In many of his interviews, Salmon Khan explains that this type of instructional method works because the student is focused on the concept being taught and the instructor simply becomes a voice inside the student’s head. Khan even mentions that he’s received comments that when students take a test, it is Khan’s voice they hear when they start recalling rules on how to work the problem on the test.

This same type of method could be used to teach something like The Greenbook (Texas Rules of Form) here in Texas, or The Bluebook (A Uniform System of Citation) for most of the US Courts. These books lay out the rules for citing cases and statutes, but quite frankly, they aren’t exactly the easiest things to follow, and you probably learned how to use these books in a class with a hundred other students, taught by a Teaching Assistant who was a 2L and barely knew it himself.

Here’s the opportunity for some forward-thinking law librarian or legal writing instructor… why not take the concepts that are used in the Khan Academy videos and adapt them to explaining these citation rules? Once you’ve made the video of a specific rule, you can share it forever (or until someone decides to rewrite the rule in a significant way.) Brand these videos with your school or association’s brand and suddenly you’ve got yourself a resource that not only helps researchers understand the rules, you’ve also made yourself or your organization a leader in teaching how to properly cite legal documents.

Adapting this style of teaching isn’t limited to proper citation methods. It can be expanded to other legal concepts such as legal research concepts, cite checking, searching a specific database and more. Now it is just a matter of finding the right people to pull something like this together. 

Any suggestions on who that “someone” might be?? Any suggestions on other topics that could benefit from this style of instruction??

[Guest Blogger – Ryan McClead] 


I have seen the future and there is no IT. Oh, there will be people called IT personnel and there will be external IT corporations, but the corporate IT operations and development departments as we know them today, will cease to exist…and soon. A few wise souls may realize that the end is out there in some amorphous distant future, but in the meantime they slog away at the daily minutiae, oblivious to the quickly approaching cliff off of which they are about to plummet. I predict it will happen suddenly and within the next few years.
There are a number of factors leading to this inevitable demise of corporate IT, but three in particular will be sufficient to bring on the end:
•             The corporate acceptance of SaaS.
•             The explosion of consumer technology.
•             The US economy.
Software as a Service, or SaaS, is software made available through the web for which corporations or individuals contract with an outside provider. The benefits of this are ease of use, ubiquitous access, continual maintenance and backup, and single, budget-able cost of “ownership”. Most of the concerns against using SaaS can be summed up as Security Fears. Many companies are not ready to put their proprietary data up in the cloud for fear that others will be able to access it. Most SaaS data is fully encrypted and unavailable to anyone other than the contracted company. Encryption schemes are only getting stronger and the security argument will largely fade within a few years. I believe SaaS is now where online banking was in 1995. A few people were starting to do it, but it was not widely adopted due to security fears. Eventually, the cost of not doing it will greatly outweigh the security concerns. Today online banking is a necessity because the cost of not doing it is significantly greater than the risk. This is true to the point that even after a major financial security breach occurs, corporations and consumers might change their methods, but they would never consider discontinuing their usage of online banking altogether.
Consumer technology and services have exploded in recent years. With the development of powerful smart phones and the ubiquity of network access, consumers are now connected to the internet all the time, in a way that they used to be connected only at work. This has given rise to all kinds of tools and services designed for consumers to make their lives easier. Social networking, knowledge transfer, contact management, document management, storage, and backup, are all services that corporations provide to their employees at work, but that employees use for themselves at home without the need of an IT department. Consumer services provide all of these services faster, better and cheaper than corporate IT, meanwhile, corporate IT stands in the way of employees adopting consumer technologies in the enterprise, ostensibly to protect the corporation, but the perception is quickly emerging, that we’re actually protecting ourselves. We are becoming obstructionists, preventing people from using the tools that they are familiar with, and forcing them to use outdated tools that we can control. Furthermore, as the older generation of employees retire, the younger employees will require less assistance with technology, and will insist on using the newer technologies that they already use for their personal information management.
The two factors above will continue apace and eventually lead to the downfall of corporate IT on their own, however, they are being helped along by an increasingly poor US economy, in which corporations are cutting back on every conceivable extraneous expense. Many SaaS providers are currently perceived to be more expensive than their internally hosted counterparts. However, that is only because IT personnel and internal infrastructure are still considered requirements. If you remove those requirements, suddenly SaaS is a bargain. As prices of SaaS come down, this will only become more apparent. Economic pressures also come to bear on the enterprise adoption of consumer technologies. Consumer services like social networking (LinkedIn) are free to use and provide much greater functionality than many similar internal services like contact and relationship management applications (InterAction).

Today the office building pays an electrician to walk around changing light bulbs. That is the future of corporate IT. Gone are the sys admins, help desk personnel, and developers. They will all work for external companies. In the future, the corporate IT department is a guy who unwraps a new interface module when one breaks and plugs it into the network conduit, and if the network goes down, he places the emergency call to the ISP. If he’s lucky he will also serve as an integrator for the corporation, a go-between who can speak techno-babble with the companies who provide the actual services, but eventually even that function will go away, as Google and Amazon and Microsoft all provide their one stop plug-n-play IT solutions for enterprise, fully accessible via consumer devices and integrated with consumer services and all available for the price of a handful of IT personnel.  

Some of the best and brightest people in the legal research world will be presenting a live podcast on the “Future of Interface Design today at 3 PM Eastern Time – oh, and Jason Wilson will be there too.  (Sorry, Jason… couldn’t resist that one!)

So, take a minute and register for the podcast by going to https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/537047386, while the podcast is going on, you can follow along in the chat room http://lawlibcon.classcaster.net/chat. If, for some reason (like happy hour started at 3:00 and) you can’t make it live, you can listen to the recorded episode through the LawLibCon’s iTunes channel http://u.cali.org/2jwf.

I’ll wait while you go ahead and register…

Back?

Rich Leiter from University of Nebraska Law School is hosting this podcast and has pulled together my fellow Houstonian Jason Wilson, VP at Jones McClure Publishing, along with Loyola Law School, and blogger Tom Boone, and Fastcase’s Ed Walters – both of whom I consider friends (I hope they feel the same about me!!)

This group will cover what they see as the future of how legal research and information products will look, feel, and react to the end-user. To help prep you for the podcast, Jason and Tom have both put out blog posts this week to help get you started on the concepts they’ll discuss today.

Jason put out a post that discusses the future of interface design and breaks it down into:

  • Interactive Search
  • Brief Packaging
  • The Knowledge Network
  • Visuals
  • Adaptive Networks
Tom put out the post entitled From interface to extinction: law school librarians beyond Thunderdome (I felt it should of had a subtitle of “Two Interfaces Enter, One Interface Leaves”), where Tom takes the academic view of interface and talks about the Native App vs. Browser-based future of interface.
Ed Walters also posted his preparatory highlights on his Fastcase Blog with a post titled Discovery Without Search, where he says the interface enhancements and changes in the way we do research is still in its infancy. Ed has discussed innovation and design before. You should go watch a very interesting presentation that Ed did with the DC Law.Gov meeting on how taking a different approach, and think of things in a different way helps shape the future for the better.
If you weren’t swayed by my initial argument to go sign up for today’s podcast, I’m hoping that you have now changed your mind. So, once again:
Follow and Chat along here – http://lawlibcon.classcaster.net/chat
iTunes recording (available sometime next week) here – http://u.cali.org/2jwf
See you there!
Locke Lord Splash Screen

Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell (Locke Lord) released their own iPhone app this week. Although there are only a handful of BigLaw firms that have created iPhone apps, I think that most of “wow” factor faded at this point. These apps are still very useful, but tend to be more of a mobile version of the firm’s website, along with a few bells and whistles that take advantage of things like one-touch phone calls or emails, or GPS tracking of the firm’s locations. Since the “wow” factor has worn off, it is important that firms that create iPhone apps set them up for the convenience of their clients. It looks like that is what Locke Lord is doing with this app.

I downloaded it on my iPad (since I don’t own an iPhone), and here’s what I thought about it.

The Locke Lord app covers the basics that you’d expect in an iPhone app:

  • Roster of Attorneys
    Alphabetical and searchable roster that allows you to see the attorney’s contact information, picture, education, practices, and everything else you expect to find on the roster and bio.
  • List of Practice Areas
    All of the practice groups are listed and you can get some additional information on each of the groups. When I tested out this feature, I found that it was very slow in loading, and the Professional as well as the News/Events tabs were not loading any information. I’m assuming that this is a “feature” and will be fixed at some point.
  • News/Events
    Exactly what you would expect to find. Client Alerts, News and Firm Events listed. You can sign up for one of the events directly from the phone (although, when I tried it, the page wouldn’t load correctly – possibly an AT&T 3G issue and not the app’s.)
  • Location
    Here’s where the convenience of a GPS enabled device comes in handy. Get directions and it will launch your GPS navigation app and show you that it is right across the street!
  • About
    More general information about the firm, including the Executive Team, Mission Statement, etc.
If you’re a client of Locke Lord, then perhaps this would be a very convenient app to have on your phone. Here are some more screenshots of the app. If you want to test it out yourself, then you can visit the Apple App Store. 
Attorney Roster
Practice Groups
News/Events

Location
About – Executive Team

What Surprised You The Most About Your Profession?

Whether you are new to your profession, or are about to retire, there were some expectations you had when you came in that turned out to not be as you thought it would be. For example, I thought that working in a Law School as a law librarian would be free of politics… only to quickly realize that politics ran wild. So, I left that to join a court library… only to find out that it was even more political (the fact that I worked for elected officials should have clued me in.) Luckily, I’m now in BigLaw… oh crap…

Well, enough of my experiences, let’s hear from a number of other that have their own perpectives on what happened when they entered their professions.

Law Librarian Perspective
The Flexibility of My Profession
Pat Orr
Throughout my 30 year career I’ve worked in: high school and elementary school libraries, special / research libraries; academic libraries, and now a law firm library. I’ve had plenty of surprises but two stand out: how flexible my MLS degree from the University of Michigan has been, and that library users share the same basic needs.

Virtual Assistant Perspective
That no one would know what I do 10 years later.
Andrea Cannavina
I have been a Virtual Assistant for almost 10 years. I thought by now everyone would know what a VA is and what we do. Best of both worlds really – someone to help; but no need to provide guaranteed work, physical space, benefits or even coffee.

Law Librarian Perspective
Our cutting edginess
Jeremy Sullivan
I started in the field in 1995, when we were all neck-deep in CD-ROMs and just starting to figure out what this internet thing was all about. In the ensuing 15 years I have been amazed and quite proud at my profession’s ability to identify, evaluate, utilize, champion and even enhance new technologies as they are introduced. There’s this old saw that law firms are late adopters, reluctant to introduce too much change too quickly. However, I have seen countless examples where law librarians have spear-headed new technology initiatives (small-scale as well as firmwide) that have improved legal research AND business efficiencies. True, sometimes we can push a little too hard for a questionable technology – I’m still not convinced that the managing partner will take me more seriously if I have the cartoon, fairy wing-adorned version of me deliver his caselaw. Yet I still think even that points to our eternal desire to innovate for the sake of providing continued exemplary service.

AFA Perspective
Lack of Knowledge About Firm Economics
Toby Brown
Two related items:
1) That law firm partners, who are owners, know so little about the economics of their firm and the industry.
2) That partners don’t seem to care much about the economics of their firm and the industry.
In their defense, until recently their industry was doing so well, why would they ask. But still …

Law Librarian Perspective
Most surprising? Law Students are Fabulous
Cindy Bassett
I have worked in a law school for 3 1/2 years now. I do not have a JD so I didn’t have the law school experience to change my perceptions of what I thought law students would be like. I expected the students to be wealthy, to feel entitled, to be rude, and generally bratty. I was shocked to find them to be extremely polite, funny, humble, and grateful for the help and instruction provided by the librarians. So much for stereotypes!

Lawyer Perspective
Solo Surprises
Chris Hill
When I first got out of law school, I never would have thought I’d end up a construction attorney, much less in solo practice. Through a longer story than this short post can speak of, I started representing contractors and subcontractors and realized I love to do it. I like my clients, and that makes the work worthwhile.
Recently (July 2010) I went solo and was surprised by the positive reaction. I have non0clients letting me know that they’re glad I’m now solo and will be using my services and clients glad to see me on my own. This has been quite a revelation.

Academic Support Professional Perspective
Youth and Technology
Chelsea Baldwin
I assumed that our younger students would be more technology proficient because they’ve grown up with the technology. Instead, they are the students who need the most instruction related to technology while our older students and our faculty are constantly impressing me with the tips and tricks they’ve discovered to use technology in more productive ways.

Knowledge Management
How good are KM people at sharing knowledge?
Mark Gould
I have learned a lot from many great KMers, and they are obviously exempt from this criticism. However, it always puzzles me how cagey many other KM people are about sharing their experiences or insights for the benefit of others.
In part (as with much else) there is a bit of concern about “what’s in it for me?” But I think there is more to it than that. KM tends to be a lonely job, and one can usually learn more from people outside one’s own organisation than from within — that means you have to give as well as take. I think, however, that there is a conservative streak in law firm KMers, which makes them reluctant to expose what they do outside the firm and also reluctant to engage with new technologies (which is where much great knowledge sharing takes place). Conferences and face-to-face meetings are a different matter — I have found people to be much more open in those protected environments.

Law Librarian Perpsective
Good morning and Welcome to Yesterday
Megan Wiseman
In library school, we often talked of how fast technology was changing and how one of the perks about our profession was being on top of such changes. (…how successful we are at that was a different discussion…) Us soon-to-be-librarians sat in lecture and nodded along, talking blogs and Library 2.0 like the geeks we were. Then I hit the real world and *wham* — did I see first-hand how technology is taking off!! Every day I walk into work and everything that was new yesterday is already old news.
Perspective: I did not know what a blog was my first year of grad school. Westlaw has had, I believe, three major interface changes since I first learned it my second year in library school. Smart phones and e-readers, enough said. The hours, the budgeting, the patrons, the fun of it all — pretty much exactly as I expected. The speed of tech changes and making the right calls? — A surprise. Time to get my geek on (and perhaps get some 3-D glasses for my tv.)

Information Technology Perspective
Collegiality
Scott Preston
While there have been many surprises in my profession, the one that surprised me the most is the level of collegiality between law firm IT departments. This is often a point of pride for me. If you have attended an ILTA conference you should know what I’m talking about.

Internet Marketing Perspective
Ground for Creativity
Lisa Salazar

I am learn something new every day. Working with such bright and innovative people in such a new space; we are constantly pushing the envelope to dream up new solutions, new work-arounds, new methods. The web provides all the ability to create and dream up new ways to approach old problems. But the best surprise? Is who teaches me; where I get my best lessons. My sources come from the most unexpected places …

Next Week’s Elephant Post:


How Is Social Media Changing Your Profession… Or, How Should It Be Changing Your Profession?

We’re big fans of social media here at 3 Geeks… blogging, twittering, LinkedIn’ing… all of that. Whether it is making connections, finding information on obscure topics, or keeping up with the latest rumors, social media is one of the best communications tools available today. Let us know how it has helped you in your profession, or how you think it will help someday in the future.

As we did last week, we are making this easy (on my at least) by creating a form which anyone can add their answer.
Go and fill out this form to add your answer.
To see other perspectives, you can go here to see their answers.

We’ve been using Google Docs to collaborate on our weekly Elephant Posts, and the more I use it, the more I love it. With real-time collaboration, combined with easy access to the cloud-based documents platform,  Google Docs is an amazing place to work on projects with others in your office, or across the world.
I’ll give you a couple of examples of projects I have worked on using Google Docs, and then I’ll even show you how you can collaborate with me on this week’s Elephant Post.


Real-Time Collaboration
A couple of weeks ago, I was prepping for a presentation for Ken Adams’ contract drafting class at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. I had a loose draft of what we were going to cover, but I really wanted to flesh it out, so I contacted a couple of friends by phone, and I pointed them to the Google Docs page and gave them both editing rights. We spent about 45 minutes over the phone working out the draft and discussing the different aspects that I should cover. After that 45 minutes, we were done. I had a completed outline, and was ready to go. If I had attempted to do this via email… I’d probably still be working on it and sending the current version back and forth for edits. Because I was able to talk with the collaborators, and actually see what they were writing, in real-time, we were all literally on the same page.

Multi-Part Collaboration
One of the crown-jewels of 3 Geeks is the Elephant Posts we do each Thursday. We ask the readers of this blog, along with our friends and peers (who for some reason, may not read our blog) to help answer a question from their own personal perspectives. The first few weeks, I would have them send me an email with their answer, then I would start piecing those emails together on Wednesday nights and Thursday mornings. It was tedious and easy to make mistakes. There were times when a post would go out, and then I would get an email from someone asking why their answer was left out. Toby suggested that Google Docs might be a better way to compile the Elephant Post, and he was right!

We started drafting a Google Docs page with the following week’s question, and then we opened up the document to allow anyone with the link to that page to edit it. It made it so much easier for me to manage, and prepare for posting. Here’s an example of what one of the collaborative pages looks like.

I loved the way everything flowed together, and it made it very easy for anyone to contribute. It also made it easy for me to make sure I didn’t leave anyone out! The only thing that I didn’t feel comfortable with was the lack of security that was involved in the process. Anyone with the link could edit it. As the popularity of the Elephant Posts grew, the more I was afraid that someone would delete the post (either by accident, or maliciously), or someone might edit another person’s contribution without permission. I thought about restricting the access to the Google Docs page by making everyone sign in to Google Docs, but I wanted to keep things simple. Andrea Cannavina came up with the best suggestion that allowed for openness, security, and the simplicity of Google Docs – using the Google Docs forms.

Multi-Part Collaboration – Using Forms
Andrea showed me a template I could use for the form, and the way that Google Docs placed the results of the form into a spreadsheet. This type of collaborative process allows for others to collaborate very easily – I just give them the link to the form. It keeps the results secure – I lock the editing rights to the spreadsheet containing the answers. It also allows me to get complete answers from the contributors – I can require that fields get filled out and nothing gets left off… like their name.

Here’s Your Chance To Play Contribute
Of course, now that I’ve piqued your interest in collaboration using Google Docs, you’ll now want to see for yourself how it works. Well… I’ve got just the thing for you! We’re still looking for contributors for tomorrow’s (12/9/2010) Elephant Post on the question of “What Surprised You The Most About Your Profession?” The instructions are simple, so I expect a number of you to take a couple of minutes and try it out for yourself. You’ll even get the added bonus of seeing your name tomorrow on the post!

Step One: Fill Out The Form – go to this Google Docs Form page and give us your perspective. Short and sweet answers are the best!
Step Two: See the Results – you can see your answer, along with the other contributors’ answers by going to this Google Docs Spreadsheet page. You won’t be able to edit that page (because I’m the editor!!), but you’ll be able to see what others have contributed to the post.

I think once you start doing collaborative work in Google Docs, you’ll come to appreciate how easy it can be to work on collaborative efforts and wonder how you were ever able to do this type of work before using Google Docs.

The Geeks are always pestering me to post something here and I always weasel out of it claiming I don’t have time or that Mark Gediman can do it instead. Today, however, totally on my own accord, I am writing to ask that you support this wonderful, entertaining and, above all, informative blog by voting for it in the ABA Top Blawgs of 2010 (see story and shameless plug: https://www.geeklawblog.com/2010/12/vote-geek-3-geeks-selected-at-aba.html).

Admit it. You read their tweets and click on the blog posting links. You forward blog postings on to friends or colleagues or both. You take a five minute break with the beverage of your choice to troll the blog for the latest insights and happenings. You secretly wish you’d submitted a blurb about why Bones McCoy from Star Trek would be great in a law firm. Why not show your love by helping the Geeks get the recognition they deserve?

It’s quick and painless. Vote Geek!

“VOTE GEEK” INSTRUCTIONS:
If you have an ABA Journal online account (username/password), you can go here to login:http://www.abajournal.com/login
If you’ve forgotten your password, go here to recover it:http://www.abajournal.com/forgot_password/
If you do not have an ABA Journal online account, you can get one for free here:http://www.abajournal.com/register
After you’ve logged in, you can go here to “Vote Geek” (of course, we’re the 3rd on the list)http://www.abajournal.com/blawg100/2010/lawbiz .

I’ve mentioned before how much I love Ted.com.

Well, today I watched one that is worthy of your time.

“The Walk from No to Yes” by William Ury. Ury is a Harvard anthropologist who has been involved in important negotiations all over the world.

Out just today, I think it is no small coincidence that this comes on the heels of some rather tumultuous times.

And he proposes a new way of looking at negotiations when you are stuck in what seems an unstuckable position.

Many of you may have heard that I have been elected to the American Association of Law Libraries Executive Board. Although I don’t officially start until after the July conference, I am happy that the current board has created an award to recognize newer law librarians. 

If you know of someone that’s been a law librarian for less than 10 years, but is a strong leader, please nominate them for this award!

Here’s the announcement:

The AALL Executive Board has approved celebrating the contributions of newer law librarians by providing “The Emerging Leader Award.” The award honors members of AALL in their first 10 years of law library experience who have made a significant contribution to the Association and/or the profession and who show outstanding promise for continuing service and leadership to AALL. The award carries a $500 cash prize. Up to three recipients may be honored in any one year. 

For more information about the nominations process go to:
http://www.aallnet.org/about/award_ela.asp


This is an opportunity to highlight emerging leaders. Those of us in the profession owe it to the next generation to recognize those young leaders that are making a difference in PLL/AALL.


DEADLINE: February 1, 2011

Description:
The Emerging Leader Award recognizes newer members who have already made significant contributions to the Association and/or to the profession and have demonstrated the potential for leadership and continuing service.
Selection Process:
The Leadership Development Committee will solicit nominations for the award. They should target the call for nominations to entities that serve as an entry point for member service – the Special Interest Sections, the GenX/GenY caucus, chapters, and other committee chairs or any other group that may be applicable in the future. More than one award may be given, but no more than three awards may be given in a single year. The deadline for nominations will be February 1 with a selection deadline of March 20.
Nominations should include evidence of the nominee’s contributions to AALL or the profession and may include up to 3 supporting letters, which must be submitted with the nomination. Petitions and letter writing campaigns (beyond those letters included with the application) are discouraged and will not be considered in the evaluation process nor will they influence the Committee. The Emerging Leader Award carries a $500 cash prize.
Selection Criteria:

  • The nominee must be a member in good standing of AALL
  • The nominee must be in his/her first 10 years of law library experience
  • The nominee must not have previously received an Emerging Leader Award
  • The nominee must have made a significant contribution to the Association and/or the profession.
  • The nominee must have shown outstanding promise for continuing service and leadership. Specific examples of his/her continuing activities must be provided

Specific examples of his/her continuing activities must be provided.
Application Information:
Download Emerging Leader Award Nomination Form
Nominations must be received by AALL no later than February 1 of each year; self-nomination by members is acceptable. A subcommittee of the Leadership Development Committee will complete its deliberations and the selection process by March 20.
The subcommittee of the Leadership Development Committee will review the nominations and make a final decision on who will receive the award. Each nominee shall be considered individually and confidentially and will be judged according to the criteria listed above. The award may be presented annually, but there is no requirement that the award be given each year. For more information, please contact Leadership Development Committee Chair, Gail Warren at gail.warren.56@comcast.net.
Nominations and all accompanying documentation for this award should be sent to:

    American Association of Law Libraries
    Leadership Development Committee Chair
    105 W Adams Street
    Suite 3300
    Chicago, IL 60603-6225
    Phone: (312) 205-8010
    Fax: (312) 205-8011
    Email: vcastillo@aall.org
    (Please include Email Subject Line: Emerging Leader Award)

Award Presentation
The award shall be presented during the AALL Annual Meeting, and it will be given in name of the Association. The recipient will receive a certificate and a $500 cash prize.
Previous Winners:

  • 2010
    Sarah K.C. Mauldin, Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP

When I first saw the WestlawNext (WLN) product back in January, there were two things that I thought were going to make WLN shine when it came to legal research. One of those features was available at launch, and the other just became available this week. The ability to build upon existing user reaction to searches in a way that improved future searches was something that impressed me, and showed that WLN could leverage the experts using the database as a way to improve the database. The second feature, released this week, is the ability for researchers to share folders amongst each other, and collaborate on research directly in WLN. Many firms have struggled with ways to improve collaboration on legal research project, and the WLN folder sharing option could create an easier way of cutting down on duplicative research, or multiple copies of research results that reside in multiple locations. Here are some screenshots of the WLN Folder Sharing feature.

For Law Librarians that conduct research on WLN, this could be one of those “golden opportunities” to be on the forefront of improving how legal research results are shared, and be seen as the leader of this improvement. Instead of researching for an individual attorney and emailing those results to him or her, a librarian could help organize the research folders on matters and share those results through the WLN folder sharing process, adding notes to the results and attaching the librarians name to those results. Now the librarian is not just a person “down in the library” but is actually a person on the team for that matter.

I discussed this with Mike Dahn, VP for WLN product development, and he agrees that this this not only helps put the librarian on the research team, but also for a “potential rebirth opportunity for the type of pathfinders and research starting guides that librarians used to put together all the time.” Dahn sees those types of materials in a way that makes them active learning resources where “librarians can not only help with the current matter, they can help with future matters proactively.”

Dahn expanded the “proactive” discussion to include the knowledge management angle as well. I poked at KM a few weeks ago and said the focus was now on making cool looking interfaces rather than leveraging existing work products, and even Toby talked about how lawyers don’t like the initial work that is involved in making KM a success (AKA “the hard work”). I think that Dahn must agree with our accessment of KM when he told me that his “experience has been that if knowledge management is something the end user has to ‘do’ – then it tends not to be very helpful. But if knowledge management is something that occurs naturally as part of the user’s workflow, then it can be incredibly useful.”

It will be interesting to see if librarians can use the new WLN Folder Sharing resource as yet another way to show the benefits of having quality library researchers on staff in law firms. Let us know if you’re already doing something like this at your firm, or plan to implement it in the future.