Legal Research Pedagogy

I hear from a number of my fellow law librarians that they don't like doing research conferences with their students. The number one reason I hear for why is that they take up a tremendous amount of time--which is completely fair, given time is a commodity most law librarians are short on. For me, the benefits of research conferences far outweigh the time needed to perform them. Here are just a few reasons why I include them in my research courses: 1.  As I've already noted elsewhere , they are a great way for instructors to model for their students how to collaborate and communicate in a way similar to what they'll do in practice. Conferencing is a lawyering skill that students need to practice during their legal education. 2.  Individualized feedback is critical to student learning (and it's required under the ABA Standards for experiential simulation courses ).  Research conferences allow us to provide feedback in an atmosphere that all but guarantees that our ...

I remember being told at some point, either during law school or my early teaching days, that there was a study of law students where it was determined that 90% of law students believe that they will graduate in the top 10% of their class. Obviously, at least 80% of them are wrong, and that's assuming that none of the 10% who don't predict their top-10% success end up in the top of their class. As such, cognitive dissonance can be a huge detriment to student learning in law school.  When students don't receive the grades they believe they will--or should--receive, most are unable to process it. As Saundra Yancy McGuire puts it in Teach Students to Learn: Strategies You Can Incorporate Into Any Course to Improve Student Metacognition, Study Skills, and Motivation , If our courses are telling these students that they're not the smart, competent individuals they believed themselves to be, what do they do? Their normal psychological self-defense mechanisms activate. Th...

Studies show that humans forget most of what they learn. But, students acquire new knowledge better when we keep a couple of things in mind: 1)        Students learn better when they have a clear understanding of why they are being expected to learn new tasks and information . As such, it is critical that we explain to students why we are teaching what we’re teaching. Tying curriculum back to practical application can help students understand the importance of what they are learning.  For those of us teaching legal research, this is vitally important. We have to tell students why being strong researchers is central to their ability to be efficient lawyers—that they will be spending approximately 35% of their time conducting legal research in their first few years of practice. We have to explain to them that research is an analytical skill that they must practice in context so they can learn to do this critical lawyering skill effectively. It’s also impo...

There is disagreement in the academy about whether or not we should be teaching ethics in our classrooms. The truth is that ethics are in our classrooms--whether we explicitly discuss them or not. As one scholar notes: Teaching is always, first and foremost, a social encounter. But when human beings power up their ethical grids--both teachers and students--they do so with such quickness and immediacy that they are usually unaware of having done it at all. [1] The bottom line is that we are constantly making snap judgments about our students, and they are making those same judgments about us. Students quickly make judgments about whether we will treat them fairly and with respect, or not. Students may not realize they are making these ethical judgments, but all students judge us on whether we are fair, concerned, honest, willing to see them as distinct individuals—and these judgments have a profound impact on students’ and teachers’ classroom experiences and students' level of...