Googling Like A Madwoman

I have a new class this term called Legal Research. They use terms like "information literacy" and it is only an hour a week, but it is the longest hour ever. Basically they teach us how to Google. The only difference is that we use Westlaw and Lexis instead of Google and Wikipedia. Although I don't know anyone who doesn't at least start with Google or Wiki when researching anything.

We also get nice little "what if" lessons. What if you don't put quotes around your phrase, for example "attractive nuisance?" You could get hits for every document with either the word attractive or the word nuisance. In other words, we could perish from too many search results, or worse, we could get the dreaded "your search returned more than 500 documents. Only the first 500 results are displayed." They can't let us loose in the big, bad legal world if we are going to go around getting over 500 search results with reckless disregard for the little hard-working hourglass icon that becomes my cursor.

Then they give us lessons about how to use real books in the library to research. In case Google goes bankrupt and Wikipedia doesn't get enough donations, I'll be hoofing it up Terwilliger to find case law on trespassing. They tell us old stories about when lawyers had to use books for everything and walk to school uphill both ways in the snow. It makes me thankful for each and every one of my 500+ search results.

I spent the class period Googling "boring legal research class."

Wikipedia has a great little article on legal research. Just don't forget the quotation marks.