Are legal research skills the equivalent of the Dodo? Students seem to think so, or do they? by Karen Rowe, University of Notre Dame

• The past 20 years has seen the way legal information is delivered change from paper based resources to searchable online repositories.
• The information highway has roared into our lives both at work and home and is available 24/7.
• Law librarians are facing unprecedented change [description of technological changes impacting on libraries since the 1960s]
• For law students, legal research is becoming very complicated for lawyers and law students.
• Once upon a time, legal research was limited to a finite world, the resources of the library's collection - now these limits are gone.  People get lost in all the information.
• As librarians, we need to teach them how to analyse and understand the information.  Legal research is a dry topic to teach
• Students in this "wired in" generation are technologically very savvy but does this mean that they are as capable in their ability to research in the online world?
• It's been a constant that students don't learn research skills very well when they're at uni.  One reason I that until they really need to use it, it is difficult for them to learn it.
• Surveyed first and fourth year law students to capture their perception of how they research and why they use particular strategies.
• Karen presented some compelling findings that highlighted Gen Ys inflated estimate of their own legal research ability. Good at using online apps, but not so good at evaluating info.
• They equate computer literacy with information literacy and analytical ability.  Since an online environment is familiar to them, they are out of their comfort zone in print.  They just use online resources, they don't understand the purpose of reference books.
• Were they familiar with the legal databases on uni intranet?
• First year students: most had one favourite (AustLII) and didn't use any others; for research, 30% used Google and the internet and nothing else, others did start with a text-book and then followed up in AustLII and Lexis.
• Fourth year students: 10% weren't comfortable with online databases; 90% of them thought they were competent researchers; were divided 50/50 thinking that legal research instruction was a waste of time, versus those who thought it was important.
• "Something is missing in the legal research education being delivered to (or uptaken by) students" and this has implications for how to teach legal research.
• Education processes need to be more effective in:

letting students know what info is out there;

how to analyse info; and

how to use legal databases more effectively.