Looking back at my objectives and activities for this independent study, I think many objectives were accomplished despite not completing some of the activities I originally planned. Actually conducting legal research and preparing a memo for even a relatively uncomplicated research question was much more time-consuming and involved than I imagined - and I had already imagined it to be both. I have gained an even greater level of respect for anyone NOT an attorney trying to research the law in the interests of representing themselves, and a greater level of respect for the work that lawyers do, especially those practicing solo.
As a result, I found it necessary to refocus my activities on the following: the two preliminary analysis exercises, reading the Suzanne Rowe text, reflecting on what I learned from the text here in the blog, conducting the research project and memorandum and documenting that in this blog, preparing a Powerpoint presention and other materials for a legal research and law library resources workshop (which I have scheduled to present for public reference librarians in January), and of course, this final self-evaluation post.
I hope to pursue the question of evaluating law library service at some later point in my professional life; I would at least like to take some time to look at what kind of literature in the field is or is not there. I also plan on taking some time to use the lemon law research project as a starting point for looking into the State of Washington's codes as an exercise in both how their laws address the subject differently (or similarly), as well as how Washington's code is published and organized in comparison or contrast to Oregon's.
Accomplished Objectives
Reading and reflection
I became much more informed through reading the Oregon Legal Research text about first, the various governmental branches and agencies in Oregon and their publications of primary legal material; second, the secondary sources surrounding those materials; and finally, the legal research process and strategies. I had encoutered many of the resources outlined there through my past year working as a law library assistant, but reading the text filled in several resources knowledge gaps, helped me make connections and see existing relationships among and within resources, and gain a far more in-depth understanding of how to best utilize them.
Exercises
The two exercises I completed helped give me some introductory hands-on idea of what the legal research process entails. I also was able to put into practice actual searches and search techniques, both print and online with Westlaw and LexisNexis, that are described in the Rowe text but perhaps are not really fully understood until actually using the resources. Because the individual questions in the exercises were relatively narrow and brief in scope, I was able to get some initial experience with conducting searches in a wide variety of legal resources without yet contending with the need to organize and make sense of the large quantity of information and research process tracking that is required by a full-blown research project.
Project
Researching Oregon's Lemon Law was really the cornerstone eye-opening event of this course of study. As I have documented elsewhere in this blog, I gained a great respect for the kind of daunting tasks pro se litigants in particular are up against when engaging in legal research to represent themselves, even in relatively straightforward cases. While I would not describe the research process itself as difficult to understand, this is partly a function of my pre-existing familiarty with using legal resources in a brief and superficial way - and that would not be the case for most public law library non-attorney patrons. What I would describe it as is time-consuming, laborious (at least, if there is an attempt to be thorough as one who is hoping to win a case or exhaust their legal options for action would want to be), and at times difficult to understand the results of one's research, written in a legalistic style, often either lengthy, or alternatively, barely mentioned, and potentially infinitely interconnected with other areas of law. This can make it hard to know what boundaries to place on your research - how wide to cast your net, and when to call it good. Using a research strategy and organization helps to give some shape and avoid repetition, but for those new to the process, I can conceivably see how someone might spend a large amount of time going down one road only to find out that that area is ultimately not of much use to their question. All of these realizations gained by going through the process myself should improve my own ability to assist and guide law library patrons as they move through their own research processes.
Workshop
Finally, I designed a workshop giving an overview to both our law library and the basic legal research process I learned in this study. I was unable to implement the workshop prior to the end of this term, but I have one scheduled to give for the Hillsboro Public Library reference staff on January 27, 2011. I am excited to give this workshop as a way of cementing the knowledge I gained in this class, as well as helping me flesh out my portfolio as I near graduation. To prepare, I put together three main components: an outline of the workshop, various workshop handouts, and a corresponding Powerpoint presentation to be used in the workshop.
Deciding what to include and exclude in the workshop outline constituted a large portion of my design; how to cover introductions to both law library resources and the legal research process that was useful and thorough for public librarians without overwhelming with too much or too disparate information? Another goal of mine is to give workshop attendants a feel for what working in a public law library is like. I also wanted to emphasize those aspects of legal reference that they might most commonly encounter and then present the potential resources in a manner that they would find memorable in the future. I hope to accomplish this by providing workshop handouts and highlighting such resources (including the law library itself). Finally, I tried to imagine what might be most interesting and useful - but not for a public librarian to discover about law libraries and legal research and incorporate those aspects into the design. For instance, what are our most common questions? What is unauthorized practice of law and how do we not do it while providing excellent reference service? How do we approach different types of patrons and what are pro se litigants in particular up against in terms of legal research and navigating the court system? What sorts of current issues - relevancy, funding, etc. - are we facing as a law library? Putting together a workshop also helped me express what I have learned in this study, and both distill and organize that information into a useful format.
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