INTRODUCTION
Middle Temple is one of the four Inns of Court which have exclusive right to call members to the Bar. It is a professional society and membership organisation which educates and trains barristers, and provides a modern law library to members of all four Inns of Court.
Inns of Court members comprise a diverse group of people at any stage of their career, and all are welcome to use the Middle Temple Library:
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• Students, mainly those studying for their Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) but also the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL)
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• Pupils – which is the on-the-job training for barristers – this could be within a set of chambers or an organisation as part of the employed Bar
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• New practitioners – those who have completed their year-long pupillage and who are practising in a set of chambers or employed in-house in another organisation
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• Experienced practitioners and QCs
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• Judges
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• Other members who do not practice as barristers, such as academics or even solicitors
One of the services we provide is legal research training which can be attended by members at any stage of their careers. We also provide services to clerks on behalf of their barristers, and other people employed by barristers and judges as assistants, support staff and librarians.
Bearing this diverse user-base in mind, it is not always straightforward designing legal research training which combines elements which appeal to this diversity, with differing skill sets and backgrounds. In this article I describe the legal research training I have developed at Middle Temple Library and discuss the challenges and successes. Throughout I offer advice to law librarians and legal information professionals when thinking about their own legal research training sessions.
PROMOTION
Librarians and legal information professionals spend a considerable amount of time planning and delivering legal research training sessions, so it is important to promote them in the most effective way possible. When working for an organisation such as an Inn of Court, it can be difficult to make your members aware of the training you have on offer – I am not offering training to anyone directly employed or studying for an accredited qualification at Middle Temple. Our Members will be studying for their GDL or BPTC in one of the Bar schools, undertaking pupillage or a tenancy in a Chambers anywhere in the country or working as a direct-access barrister, working for an organisation as an employed-barrister or in-house counsel, working as a judge or working as a paralegal or other form of support staff. Because of this breadth, both in terms of role and geographical location, there is no single audience to capture or any single way to promote sessions to ensure reasonable levels of uptake.
It is important to start promoting training as soon possible to maximise the amount of time available for promotion. The simplest method I use is to prepare posters and flyers which are distributed around the Library and the Inn advertising the upcoming sessions. I will also post on social media, particularly Twitter. To maximise the amount of likes and retweets your promotional post will garner, it is useful to include an image. There are number of free and easy-to-use websites which allow you to create graphics that are suitable for social media. I have used Easelly (https://www.easel.ly/) and Canva (https://www.canva.com/).
Middle Temple also has a regular e-news which is distributed to members. The e-news features updates from all departments of the Inn, and I will include an item advertising any upcoming training sessions.
I also send emails to the Bar associations which represent barristers working in particular practice areas, such as the Chancery Bar Association and the Bar Association for Commerce, Finance and Industry. The associations can then distribute the details to their members. Similarly, I contact the Middle Temple Students’ Association and the Middle Temple Young Bar Association.
LEGAL RESEARCH TRAINING OFFERED AT MIDDLE TEMPLE LIBRARY
Throughout the year, I run a number of sessions:
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• Introduction to Legal Research
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• Introduction to Practical Legal Research
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• Advanced Electronic Searching
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• Navigating the Free Legal Web
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• European Legal Research
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• American Legal Research
I am primarily responsible for the design and delivery of all sessions, with some assistance from colleagues – for example I work closely with the librarians responsible for the EU and US collections regarding the preparation and delivery of those particular sessions, more of which later.
I run most sessions in the evening, when barristers are more likely to be available, and I like to keep them to an hour in length. I find that this fits the interest-level threshold and is not too arduous for busy professionals to fit into their working lives. This can sometimes be a challenge, and depending on the levels of audience participation and engagement, sessions can overrun. I always divide material into different categories so that I am able to manage the time effectively:
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1. Essential
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2. Should know
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3. Useful to know but not essential
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4. Interesting, somewhat useful but not essential
If I am running behind schedule, I can cut some of the material which is useful but not essential so as not to neglect the really essential information. This might include going over the basics of Boolean logic but not demonstrating, or prioritising primary legal materials over the commentary sources, which are less essential for practising barristers. In this way, I can adapt sessions depending on the interests of the delegates, and I know I will always have enough material to fill at least one hour. Some sessions will include curious and questioning delegates, so I will need to cut non-essential material as I go, whereas other sessions might include delegates who have fewer questions so I will have more time to go over material which does not fit my essential categorisation. This level of flexibility is an important attribute when delivering a training session to practitioners.
All the sessions I design and deliver make use of PowerPoint, which although not perfect does the job. In future, I would be keen to utilise other presentation software to create more interactive training sessions.
Introduction to Legal Research
Amongst the training sessions I run, the flagship course is ‘Introduction to Legal Research’ which forms part of Middle Temple's Pupil Advocacy course. This is a compulsory programme which barristers doing pupillage must complete, and takes place seven times a year. It is divided into advocacy and practice management training.Footnote 1 I have one hour for my session, and it forms part of the compulsory six hours of practice management pupils must complete before the end of their pupillage.
This can be a tricky session to pitch as attendees come from different backgrounds with differing levels of experience and expertise in legal research. In this session I cover the basics of legal citation for case law. As a large proportion of the legal material a barrister requires is needed for court use, it is important to go over the hierarchy of law reports – not all reports are created equal! Citations are not the most interesting or exciting things to teach, but they are important and it helps to get sessions started with them.
Case law research is a massively important part of a barrister's work, and I demonstrate where to find and how to search for reported and unreported cases. Because of time constraints and the sometimes large number of attendees (up to 30) it is not possible to make the session particularly interactive, despite my best efforts.
I do not neglect hardcopy sources. I touch on the main hardcopy case law digests; Current Law Yearbook and The Digest, as well as hardcopy sources of legislation, Halsbury's Statutes and Current Law Statutes Annotated.Footnote 2 It's important to use training sessions to promote your library and the resources you have spent considerable sums on – I have a captive audience in front of me, some of which might not have visited the library, so it is imperative that I showcase the resources effectively and demonstrate how the library is invaluable for their research needs during pupillage and beyond. It is always gratifying to see pupils who attended the sessions working in the library, making practical use of the resources and techniques I have highlighted and demonstrated.
Plenty of delegates will be aware of how to search legislation on Westlaw, but do they know that they won't find legislative provisions repealed before 1991? Do they know that the best place to find those repealed pieces of legislation is on Justis? Also, many delegates will be unaware of the advanced searching functions of the databases, so it is important to go over those features.
I also go over general tips on internet searching – I cover alternatives to Google and stress the need to evaluate sources online. These are things I go over in more detail in other training sessions – ‘Advanced Electronic Searching’ and ‘Navigating the Free Legal Web’, more of which later. I will touch on less familiar resources – everyone knows Google, but are people as aware of the advantages of using DuckDuckGo on a shared library computer? I also look at other less well-known sites, such as Wolfram Alpha and Google Scholar.
I adapt this session to provide an introductory course for students beginning their BPTC. One of the advantages of working for a professional law library is the ability to pitch our training to appeal to those transitioning from academic legal research to a professional course. In my session to BPTC students, I emphasise the difference between academic legal research and research of a more practical nature, and utilise the experience we have working with practitioners. The pupils' courses can range from between 15–30 participants, whereas for the non-compulsory courses for students I limit to ten people and aim to foster a seminar-like atmosphere, with greater levels of interaction – the library has five iPads which we use for training, more of which later.Footnote 3 Although primarily aimed at students, all members at any stage of their careers are welcome to attend – a legal research refresher is never a bad thing.
One of the things I am able to go over in this session is how to navigate the quirks of practitioner texts such as Archbold and the White Book, which can be daunting to students more used to general academic material. I bring a selection of these texts along to the session and encourage delegates to interact with material and compare them with any available online versions.
Advanced Electronic Searching
A further session I run is titled ‘Advanced Electronic Searching’ and this goes into more detail about how to make the most out of subscription databases by utilising Boolean logic as well as other advanced searching techniques. There is definitely a demand for this type of course, which looks at techniques that can be applied to various databases and to different research problems. The techniques demonstrated here can be employed whether the researcher is using Google to search for treaties or using Justis to search for cases. This is a heavily interactive session.
There are a number of studies which have examined students’ web-based search strategies and their knowledge of effective search techniques. Ford, Miller and Moss found a link between, for example, low levels of Boolean searching and older individuals, amongst other differences in search behaviour based on cognitive and demographic features.Footnote 4 This demonstrates a need to offer training sessions on search techniques to a broad-based user group.
I like to break the ice in this session by starting with Google's Quick, Draw! online game (https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/#) I use this to demonstrate how delegates need to transfer the legal problem at hand into research terms that the database will understand, just as in the game I need to draw things which the computer programme has learnt to understand. It also raises a laugh or two as I struggle to draw a duck which the game can recognise. In the same way that the Quick Draw game software understands certain visual cues to mean certain words, legal research databases understand connectors, fields and language.
The focus of the sessions is to demonstrate how using Boolean logic and database connectors can make searching more efficient, bringing up more relevant results. I also emphasise the importance of language, and when to use broader and narrower terms. At first I demonstrate the techniques required to construct an initial search – what key words and search terms do you need to enter into the database? I then demonstrate the different techniques that can be employed to both narrow and broaden search results.
After this it's over to the delegates. I will suggest a legal research problem and ask them to find ways of narrowing and broadening the results using the techniques I have just demonstrated, as well as combining different techniques in a single search enquiry. We are not able to offer a suite of networked computers in which to train delegates, so I advise attendees to bring along their own laptops or tablets so that they can engage with the material.
The Library also has five training iPads which I make available to delegates. In the future I would like to use these more by utilising ‘flipped-classroom’ style teaching – I can upload various training materials and resources to the iPad, loan it to members overnight and during the session go over difficulties and discuss any research problems. A virtual binder tool, such as LiveBinders (www.livebinders.com), would allow me to do this. I can collect multiple sources of information, such as websites, videos and other documents, and compile them into a virtual binder that I make available to delegates before they attend the session.Footnote 5 As Nicola Sales has described, ‘flipping the classroom’ allows delegates to study at their own pace with a diverse range of learning materials.Footnote 6
Some of the benefits of using iPads and tablet devices in legal research instruction have been described by Nussen Ainsworth, such as their high levels of mobility, how they allow all materials from many sources and formats to be readily accessible, and the touch screen allows for high levels of interactivity.Footnote 7 I can certainly attest to these virtues. iPads also allow the trainer to engage in more fruitful ways with learners whilst they get to work on the exercises set. It is also important to integrate the use of the iPad in ways which reflect how delegates would use tablets in their own practice, as well as prepare students, a point made by Alex Berrio Matamoros and Mary Ann Neary when they piloted using iPads in legal research instruction at Boston College Law School.Footnote 8 Other uses of mobile technology include the use of real-time electronic quizzes.Footnote 9 There are many of these on the market, including Socrative, Kahoot and Mentimeter.Footnote 10
This session is aimed primarily at practising barristers and qualifies for one CPD point, although any member is welcome to attend and I have promoted it to members from all career-stages.
There is evidence that following library instruction, students’ belief in their ability to perform certain search tasks was enhanced. Findings by Wen-Hua Ren suggest that following library instruction which involved a combination of “lecture, demonstration, hands-on practice, and an assignment of library electronic searching”, learners were more confident in their own abilities to search for and retrieve the desired information.Footnote 11 In my own experience, I have certainly received very positive feedback from the sessions, and I endeavour to include a wide range of the teaching methods described by Ren.
Teaching European and American resources
The Inns of Court libraries collaborate so as not to unnecessarily duplicate material which results in each Inn library having one or more jurisdictional specialism – Middle Temple Library specialises in both EU and US legal material, and this is also reflected in the legal research training I provide.
European Legal Research
The vast majority of official and authentic sources for EU law are available on the internet for free via EUR-Lex and Curia. The focus of the EU sessions I deliver is on the free sources. The sessions are also highly interactive, allowing delegates to work with the websites being demonstrated and to ask questions about their own research experiences. I also highlight sources of Members States' national legislation and case law, and sources for European Court of Human Rights legal information.
The session is divided in four main parts: searching for EU legislation, searching for EU case law, searching for ECHR resources and searching for the national law of EU member states. EU legal decision making can be a complicated process involving many different steps and including different political actors – to counter this, I attempt to keep this training session as simple as possible, boiling it down to the basics of searching EUR-Lex and Curia, how to use N-Lex, Eurovoc and the EU's E-Justice Portal, as well HUDOC for ECHR legal information.
What do English practitioners need to know?
Based on my experience, practitioners are often unfamiliar with the different citations for European legal material, so I spend some time going over what they mean. As these have changed over the years, it is important from the outset to clarify matters. Practitioners are also generally unaware of where to find the national legislation and case law of EU member states, something I go over in the final section of my training session. When I move on to the section on legislation, I feel it is useful to clarify our terms further by defining what we mean by EU legislation – for example, what is the difference between a regulation and directive?
Demonstrating EUR-Lex and Curia
EUR-Lex (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/homepage.html) is the indispensable website for European legal information and it is a resource which every UK practitioner should be aware of. When working with this free database, I make sure I demonstrate the following points:
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• How to search for EU legislative instruments by citation as well as title
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• What other preparatory material is available
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• How to trace national implementing measures for directives
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• Where to find ECJ cases affecting the legislative instrument
Once I have demonstrated methods of finding what you need on EUR-Lex, it is over to the delegates to attempt some exercises. One of the trickiest thing to do is create exercises which reflect the sorts of research delegates will be conducting in the course of their career. Figuring this out comes with your experience of your clientele. I ask them to find a directive based on citation or title; find any ECJ cases affecting the legislation; find the implementing SI in England; locate the proposal for the directive. These exercises touch on the wide range of information contained alongside the full text of the directive itself on EUR-Lex. Asking delegates to spend a bit of time exploring this information will help to create more confident legal researchers and emphasise the breadth of content available.
The next part of the session focuses on EU case law by going over citations and demonstrating how to find cases on Curia, the ECJ's own website. I do not demonstrate how to find cases on EUR-Lex here because the same search principles apply from the earlier demonstrations of legislative material. Once this is demonstrated, I ask delegates to find the same EU case on both Curia and EUR-Lex, to compare results and judge for themselves which they find easier.
My obvious tip here is to make sure you are confident in the examples you use to demonstrate searches. The examples you use should be able to illustrate, as far as possible, the comprehensive functionality of a database. There is little use in demonstrating how to find the national implementing measures of an EU directive by selecting a directive which has not yet been implemented.
American Legal Research
Middle Temple Library specialises in American legal resources, so it is important that we promote our collection and expertise by offering training in the same area. It is also important because American precedents can have persuasive authority in the UK courts, and it is very useful for UK practitioners to have a good grounding in where to look and how to find American legal materials.
Because the US effectively has two legal systems (state and federal), a session on US legal resources is also effectively two sessions, and therefore there is a lot to squeeze into a training session of around one hour. Time constraints have hampered my ability to add more interactive elements to this session. I contemplated splitting the session into two – either one wholly on case law and one wholly on legislative materials, or one wholly on federal materials and one wholly on state materials. Because barristers are very busy professionals, I decided that it was unlikely I would get reasonable levels of uptake with sessions divided in this way, so I went ahead with a single one hour session, reducing it down to the essentials of American legal research which would be useful for a UK practitioner.
By my reckoning, those essential aspects comprise:
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• Where to find the US Constitution
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• Where and how to find Federal statutes, regulations and cases
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• Where and how to find State constitutions, statutes and cases
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• How to use American digests and commentary materials
I demonstrate where to find this information on subscription databases, but I also emphasise the vast array of free sources of US legal material, from accessing the official US code online (http://uscode.house.gov/) to the many and varied sources of case law to be found via Findlaw (http://www.findlaw.com/) and Google Scholar.
American commentary sources are also useful to UK practitioners as they can summarise the common law on a particular topic which might not have been heavily dealt with at the UK level yet, or where the law might be ambiguous. I alert delegates to useful sources such as Corpus Juris Secundum (framed as something akin to the American version of Halsbury's Laws), the vast multi-volume Words and Phrases and the Restatements of the Law.
Navigating the Free Legal Web
Training library users in how to navigate the free legal web will provide them with invaluable skills for their research. Inn of Court members practice with a wide variety of resources, and small chambers and solo practitioners will not necessarily have ready and easy access to the major subscription databases.
My session always starts with an overview of the difficulties of finding good quality free legal research resources online, as well as offering some general advice. I provide advice and also link to guidance prepared by the Virtual Training Suite, which provides free internet tutorials on internet research skills for university students: http://www.vtstutorials.co.uk/
Delegates will come to the session with a whole range of previous experience – from those already relatively adept at internet searching to those who are new to many of the tips and tricks on getting the most of surfing the web. Because of this, it is best to pitch the session at a relatively basic level to begin with, leading up to more advanced searching tips as you go along. I find that after a few minutes it is not difficult to gauge the previous knowledge and experience of delegates by how they react to the information I relay, and then I can tailor what I demonstrate accordingly – and it is always a good idea to ask attendees if they are familiar with a particular online search technique or finding tool.
I emphasise general internet searching in this session. A particularly useful site to demonstrate is WayBackMachine from the non-profit Internet Archive, which a number of delegates will not have even heard of. This service allows you to see archived versions of websites across time. I demonstrate how to find archived versions of The Guardian's online content at various points in time. I frame this as part of general tips about saving research results and checking changes to website content – the free web is not necessarily the most stable resource, and websites can be taken down and changed without warning. I also demonstrate how to use a Google Cached link if a website relied upon is unavailable for whatever reason.
Starting your search on the free web
Although I extol the virtues of free legal web gateways as excellent starting points for web research, I also make delegates aware that sometimes the best place to begin is on a general open access search engine such as Google and one of the many alternatives – such as DuckDuckGo. I also mention the availability of metasearch engines and other search tools which allow you to search multiple platforms at once, comparing results.
A useful tip I mention when beginning research using a search engine is to frame whatever is being searched as an answer rather an question, for example not ‘what is an internationally wrongful act’ but ‘an international wrongful act consists of'Footnote 12 . This is likely to retrieve more relevant results by mirroring the kinds of phrases used to answer a query.
Google Advanced is, I think, rather underused, and I emphasise how to limit searches so you are only searching particular domain names and individual sites. Some very useful free legal websites do not necessarily have the most powerful internal search function, and using Google Advanced to search across that site will often retrieve better, more relevant results. I demonstrate how to use this function throughout the session. In this way I emphasise general internet searching skills and relate those back specifically to finding good quality free legal information online.
Another underused tool from Google is the ability to create your own custom search. A Google Custom Search allows researchers to create their own search engine, searching across multiple sites of their choosing. This can be particularly useful for practitioners specialising in a particular practice area – they can create a resource which only searches the websites they find most useful, speeding up their research and retrieving more relevant results.
Combatting fake news
In the era of so-called “fake news”, it is important to emphasise the pitfalls of finding reliable, authoritative and accurate free online sources of legal information. I highlight a number of humorous examples of fake, hoax or spoof websites to drive the point home: the site warning against the danger of Dihydrogen Monoxide, which is an “enabling component” of acid rain, a “causative agent in most instances of social erosion” and is present in “high levels in nearly every creek, stream, pond, river, lake and reservoir […] around the world”. What is Dihydrogen Monoxide? Water!Footnote 13 There is also a website dedicated to ‘improbable research’, and I have selected the example of ‘Feline Reactions to Bearded Men’.Footnote 14
These are all humorous examples, and there are many more, but the point is serious – almost anyone anywhere can put information on the internet, so it is of the utmost importance to make sure the information is reliable. Using humour to teach legal research skills has been described by Colin Fong, and he advises that delegates “will often remember something if they had a bit of a laugh about it.”Footnote 15 In my experience, sessions get off to a good start if you can break the ice and create a friendly and approachable atmosphere.
A tip: fake and spoof sites are being taken down as well as materialising on a frequent basis – keep an eye on anything new or for any changes. If the story is more current, then that is going to hit the point home with more force, so try to update your examples. Also be aware of your own experiences – have any of your patrons fallen foul of fake or disreputable sites? If so, use them! These kinds of anecdotes help to emphasise the point and demonstrate the importance of the training you are offering.
COLLABORATION
Legal research training is offered by all Inns of Court libraries, and it is important that we share our knowledge, experiences and ideas. I meet regularly with colleagues responsible for training at the other Inns to discuss what I have been preparing, as well to hear from their experiences. I learn a lot from discussions with experienced colleagues at the other Inns, and this can only help to improve the training I offer.
Based on efforts at first spearheaded by Inner Temple and Lincoln's Inn, the Inn libraries already collaborate in promoting our services to BPTC students. In the autumn, we visit the London law schools with BPTC students, and deliver a presentation on what we have to offer our student members, as well as having stands and stalls at ‘freshers' fairs’. This is also a good opportunity for each library to promote its training sessions.
FUTURE PLANS
In the future, I hope to build on the successes I have had so far in offering legal research training to Middle Temple and other Inns of Court members. Future plans include offering more sessions for students in the autumn; offering greater interactivity in sessions by utilising mobile technology as well as offering training on using legal research apps; collaborating further with the other Inns of Court libraries; offering a legal research training day; taking legal research training on tour to Middle Temple members on Circuit, in Chambers outside of London as well as within; creating online instructional videos and webinars that can be accessed by members not able to attend a training session in person, especially those outside of London.
I am also interested in offering ‘lightning’ training – thirty minute interactive talks on particular practice areas. These would be small group sessions which look at the major legal research resources for a practice area, discussing problems practitioners have in finding the information they need and offering potential solutions. These sessions could also be offered to members within their Chambers. I would also like to enhance the training we offer for barristers’ clerks and other legal support staff.
CONCLUSION
There is still a high demand and need for legal research training amongst members of the Bar. The challenge is to be able to pitch sessions to meet that demand and need. My experiences so far have shown that if you provide a diverse array of sessions, from the introductory to the advanced, and showcase the resources of your library, then you will be providing a valued and worthwhile service to your users. It is also an exciting time for legal research instruction, with new technologies and new research pitfalls to grapple with.
