Building Proficiency: Approaches to Teaching Legal Research at the College of Law

Abstract

Tony Simmonds describes the initiatives taken at the College of Law to assist students to perform effective practical legal research including a Legal Method foundation course; a vocational course for the Legal Practice Course and additional in house learning activities devised by the information professionals.

How Can Law Librarians Most Effectively Provide Legal Research Training?

“…The majority of the literature available comes from law librarians working within the academic sector; this isn't particularly surprising, given that the overwhelming majority of journal articles of all disciplines, are generated by those working in universities. There are a range of papers which present different approaches to teaching legal research (Donaldson, 2010; Eaton, 2010; Pope, 2009; Sales, 2013; Simmonds, 2010; Wakefield, 2007; Wieland, 2010).…”

“…The majority of the literature available comes from law librarians working within the academic sector; this isn't particularly surprising, given that the overwhelming majority of journal articles of all disciplines, are generated by those working in universities. There are a range of papers which present different approaches to teaching legal research (Donaldson, 2010;Eaton, 2010;Pope, 2009;Sales, 2013;Simmonds, 2010;Wakefield, 2007;Wieland, 2010). Sales (2013), found that it was necessary to overhaul the delivery of legal research training at the University of Salford due to two problems, firstly, that the timetabling of the sessions in lecture rooms resulted in a passive audience experience; and secondly, that during practical sessions, students were following demonstrations of how to search "on automatic pilot", and were neither retaining the knowledge, nor transferring it to their own research.…”