Category Archives: Research process

My need for a “focus assistant.”

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Can technology offer us “continuous augmented awareness?”

An earlier post here, commenting upon an article a year ago in The Atlantic, asked, “Is Google making us stoopid?”  Now an article in the July / August 2009 issue of the same magazine asks, “Is Google actually making us smarter?”

The article, “Get Smart,” by Jamais Cascio, discusses how Twitter can help us move from a world of “continuous partial attention” to one of “continuous augmented awareness.”  I’m a fan of Twitter but I find it hard to quickly sift through tweets about pancakes to the ones that provide truly valuable and timely information (not that pancakes aren’t important, but I use Twitter mainly for work).  Here’s what Mr. Cascio writes:

But imagine if social tools like Twitter had a way to learn what kinds of messages you pay attention to, and which ones you discard. Over time, the messages that you don’t really care about might start to fade in the display, while the ones that you do want to see could get brighter. Such attention filters–or focus assistants–are likely to become important parts of how we handle our daily lives. We’ll move from a world of “continuous partial attention” to one we might call “continuous augmented awareness.”

The article suggests that:

The trouble isn’t that we have too much information at our fingertips, but that our tools for managing it are still in their infancy.

Legal Ontologies Spin a Semantic Web

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Legal Ontologies Spin a Semantic Web
By Dr. Adam Z. Wyner
Special to Law.com
June 8, 2009

“The Semantic Web, an extension of the current www, promises to make documents meaningful to people and computers by changing how legal knowledge is represented and managed. Dr. Adam Z. Wyner explains how legal ontologies will help complete the new Web’s design.”

From the article:

ONTOLOGY FOR CASE LAW

Consider an example ontology for case law. There are various approaches to find relevant case law — using text-mining software, search tools, proprietary indices or legal research summaries. These approaches can extract some latent linguistic information from the text but often require researchers to craft the results; indeed, successful information extraction depends on an ontology, and as there is not yet a rich ontology of the case law domain, much information in cases cannot be easily extracted or reasoned with. Moreover, none of these approaches apply inference rules.

Reading a case such as Manhattan Loft v. Mercury Liquors, there are elementary questions that can be answered by any legal professional, but not by a computer:

Where was the case decided?
Who were the participants and what roles did they play?
Was it a case of first instance or on appeal?
What was the basis of the appeal?
What were the legal issues at stake?
What were the facts?
What factors were relevant in making the decision?
What was the decision?
What legislation or case law was cited?

Legal information service providers such as LexisNexis index some of the information and provide it in headnotes, but many of the details, which may be crucial, can only be found by reading the case itself. Current text-mining technologies cannot answer the questions because the information is embedded in the complexities of the language of the case, which computers cannot yet fully parse and understand. Finally, there are relationships among the pieces of information which no current automated system can represent, such as the relationships among case factors or precedential relationships among cases.

In conclusion, the author remarks:

Legal ontologies are one of the central elements of managing and automating legal knowledge. With ontologies, the means are available to realize significant portions of the Semantic Web for legal professionals, particularly if an open-source, collaborative approach is taken.

 

About the author:

Dr. Adam Zachary Wyner is affiliated with the department of computer science at University College London, London, United Kingdom. He has a Ph.D. in linguistics from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in computer science from King’s College London. He has published on topics in the syntax and semantics of natural language, as well as artificial intelligence and law concerning legal systems, language, logic and argumentation. For further information, see Dr. Wyner’s blog LanguageLogicLawSoftware.

Source: Law.com – Daily Newswire

The Research Plan for Maximizing Effective Legal Research

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Hooray!  It’s Friday.  And that means I get to review the latest Hein Greenslips (a highlight of my week).  Today’s include a reference to a favorite book of mine:

Just Research, 2nd ed.

By Laurel Currie Oates and Anne Enquist

New York: Aspen Publishers, 2009.  $ 51.00

One of our students this past quarter reviewed Just Research, and liked it so much that she bought a copy for herself (we tell students about it, but don’t require it – our required text this coming year is Legal Research Methods, by Michael D. Murray and Christy H. DeSanctis.).  By the way, Aspen, I’d be much more inclined to tell our students to buy a copy of Just Research if you could get its price down to $ 35.00 or less.

Earlier we wrote here about the research log, which is related to the research plan.  Planning and documenting results are key steps for saving time.

Our student concludes her review of Just Research by writing:

I think the biggest takeaway point from the book and the most useful nugget of wisdom is to develop a research plan ahead of time.  This is analogous to setting up logic games on the LSAT.  You can delve right in without a plan, thinking it will take less time, but the setup and planning is key to maximizing efficiency.  I think the same holds true here.  The book presents a number of excellent roadmaps for categorizing, planning and implementing legal research.  I definitely intend to use it as a guide.

Going Behind the Scenes of Empirical Legal Research

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A new book crossed my desk today, Conducting Law and Society Research: Reflections on Methods and Practices, and here’s its description from the publisher’s website (Cambridge University Press):

Conducting Law and Society Research: Reflections on Methods and Practices

Series: Cambridge Studies in Law and Society

Simon Halliday
University of Strathclyde

Patrick Schmidt
MacAlester College, Minnesota

Through interviews with many of the most noteworthy authors in law and society, Conducting Law and Society Research takes students and scholars behind the scenes of empirical scholarship, showing the messy reality of research methods. The challenges and the uncertainties, so often missing from research methods textbooks, are revealed in candid detail. These accessible and revealing conversations about the lived reality of classic projects will be a source of encouragement and inspiration to those embarking on empirical research, ranging across the full array of disciplines that contribute to law and society. For all of the ambiguities and challenges to the social “scientific” study of law, the reflections found in this book – collectively capturing a portrait of the field through the window of the research efforts – individually remind readers that “good research” displays not an absence of problems, but the care taken in negotiating them.

A very candid look at research methods from the leading scholars in the field - Approachable conversations appropriate for all levels, from students to scholars - Topics range very broadly across the leading approaches and speciality subjects in law and society

Contents
1. Beyond methods: law & society in action; 2. Stewart Macaulay and Non-Contractual Relations and Business (1963); 3. Robert Kagan and Regulatory Justice (1978); 4. Malcolm Feeley and The Process Is the Punishment (1979); 5. Lawrence Friedman and The Roots of Justice (1981); 6. John Heinz and Edward Laumann and Chicago Lawyers (1982); 7. Alan Paterson and The Law Lords (1982); 8. David Engel and The Oven Bird’s Song (1984); 9. Keith Hawkins and Environment and Enforcement (1984); 10. Carol Greenhouse and Praying for Justice (1986); 11. John Conley and William O’Barr and Rules versus Relationships (1990); 12. Sally Engle Merry and Getting Justice and Getting Even (1990); 13. Tom Tyler and Why People Obey the Law (1990); 14. Doreen McBarnet and Whiter than White Collar Crime (1991); 15. Gerald Rosenberg and The Hollow Hope (1991); 16. Michael McCann and Rights at Work (1994); 17. Austin Sarat & William Felstiner and Divorce Lawyers and Their Clients (1995); 18. Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth and Dealing in Virtue (1996); 19. Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey and The Common Place of Law (1998); 20. Hazel Genn and Paths to Justice (1999); 21. John Braithwaite and Peter Drahos and Global Business Regulation (2000); 22. John Hagan and Justice in the Balkans (2003); 23. Conclusion: “Research is a Messy Business” — An Archeology of the Craft of Socio-Legal Research – Herbert Kritzer.

 

And the book makes a good case for why PACER data should be free or at least less expensive for law schools:

From chapter 23, Conclusion: “Research is a Messy Business” — An Archeology of the Craft of Socio-Legal Research:

THE MESSIEST MESS IS THE RESEARCH PROCESS: COLLECTING ORIGINAL DATA

. . . Imagine that you want to study something about trials in federal court.  You could turn to the statistical reports published by the Administrative Office (AO) of the U.S. Courts and extract information from the Reports’ well-digested tables.  Or, you could obtain from the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) the case-level data reported to the AO and deposited with the ICPSR (these data form the basis for the published tables); you could then process these data to create whatever summaries you need.  Or, if you have adequate resources, you could access raw case files through the federal court’s Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system; you would then extract and code the information you want from raw case file data. . . .

Westlaw rises to legal publishing fame by selling free information

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From the Minneapolis City Pages:  “Westlaw rises to legal publishing fame by selling free information,” by Erin Carlyle.

West makes its money by selling free, public information — specifically, court documents — to lawyers. On this simple model, the company raked in $3.5 billion in revenue last year, placing it on a par, sales-wise, with retail giant Abercrombie and Fitch. But its operating profit margin really impresses: At a whopping 32.1 percent, West outpaces that of tech giants like Google (19.4 percent), Amazon (3.4 percent), and eBay (20.8 percent). Westlaw excels at one simple task: saving lawyers time by making legal information more readily accessible. The company charges a firm of six to ten lawyers as much as $30,000 a year to access its state and federal databases. But since attorneys’ time is worth a lot of money, the service pays for itself. After all, the more work they can do, the more money they can make.

How did it do this?  According to the story, by following these eight rules:

Rule 1: Find a niche with growth potential

Rule 2: Organize information to make it useful

Rule 3: The internet is a distribution channel — not a product

Rule 4: Turn words into math

Rule 5: Separate the signal from the noise

Rule 6: Computers can’t do everything

Rule 7: Treat content like patented material

Rule 8: Print’s not dead, it just needs online help

The Next Generation of Legal Citations Survey, and Authentication and Link Rot Issues

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Link rot is a pet peeve of mine.  A posting I made on June 11, 2008, “Law School Laptop Bans,” already has a broken link to a news story and the posting isn’t even a year old yet.  And I can’t count the number of times I have found a terrific-sounding right-on-point resource in a law review footnote, only to find its URL leads to the dreaded “404 Not Found.”  But it’s more than a pet peeve issue, as this survey makes clear:

“The Next Generation of Legal Citations: A Survey of Internet Citations in the Opinions of the Washington Supreme Court and Washington Appellate Courts, 1999-2005″

Journal of Appellate Practice and Process, Vol. 9, No. 2, Fall 2007

TINA CHING, Seattle University School of Law

As more legal research is conducted online, it is reasonable to conclude that there will be a corresponding increase in citations to the Internet by judges in their opinions. With the widespread public use of the Internet to access information along with the constant changes and impermanence of websites, citing to the Internet should be an issue of increasing concern to the legal community across the country. This paper surveys the types of Internet sources the Washington state Supreme Court and Appellate Court justices are citing. It discusses the interrelated issues of link rot and the impermanence of web pages, citation format, authentication and preservation of online electronic legal information.

 

Source:  LSN Legal Information & Technology Vol. 1 No. 11,  04/29/2009

Researching Across the Curriculum: The Road Must Continue Beyond the First Year

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“Researching Across the Curriculum: The Road Must Continue Beyond the First Year”


Oklahoma Law Review, Vol. 61, 2009

BROOKE J. BOWMAN, Stetson University College of Law

In the ever growing movement to integrate skills and values across the law school curriculum, research instruction cannot be overlooked or forgotten. Research serves as the fulcrum upon which “skills and values” such as ethics and practical application of doctrinal studies, rests. Therefore, research instruction cannot be limited to what the students learn in their first-year legal research and writing classes. A concentrated effort must be made in all classes to ensure that what the students learn in the first-year research and writing classes will be further developed, refined, revisited and reinforced. This Article, Research Across the Curriculum: The Road Must Continue Beyond the First Year, offers a new paradigm for how research instruction should change in the upper-level classes from requiring all students to take Advanced Legal Research courses, for example, to integrating research instruction into specialized areas such as international law and tax courses.

Source:  LSN Law Educator: Courses, Materials & Teaching Vol. 5 No. 5, 03/06/2009

Web Searches That Really Bear Fruit

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Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article by Katherine Boehret in which she reports on her test of “two free tools that attempt to make your Web searches more relevant by learning from users’ reactions to search results: Google’s SearchWiki and Surf Canyon Inc.’s namesake tool . . . “

It’s on page D6, on the “Gadgets” page in The Mossberg Solution feature, edited by Walter S. Mossberg:

“Web Searches That Really Bear Fruit

New Free Tools Aim to Make Online Results More Relevant by Tracking Your Reactions.”

By Katherine Boehret

Google’s SearchWiki lets users promote or remove search results; Surf Canyon uses bull’s-eyes to denote related links based on users’ search patterns.

The author’s conclusion:

Google’s SearchWiki is asking users to do extra work, which may not be practical for many users.  But if you do use it, this tool’s personalized, saved results could be a real boon.  Surf Canyon worked well for me with multiple surf engines, retrieving data from result pages I likely wouldn’t have opened.  Either way, your days of futile Web searching are numbered.

 

Four scholars look at Google

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Today’s Financial Times includes a review essay by James Harkin, “Net prophets – Incorporated just 10 years ago, Google predicts and shapes our view of the world.”  The essay is a review of these three books:

Planet Google: How One Company is Transforming Our Lives
By Randall Stross
Atlantic Books

Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View of Europe
By Jean-Noel Jeanneney
Translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan
University of Chicago Press

Search Engine Society
By Alexander Halavais
Polity Press

And the author of the piece is James Harkin and his book Cyburbia: The Dangerous Idea That’s Changing How We Live and Who We Are will be published in February by Little, Brown in the UK and by Knopf in Canada.

In the piece, Harkin writes,

Google is now 10 years old, and in that decade it has become one of the world’s most recognisable brands. There’s no doubt that Google is everywhere in our lives. But how exactly has Google changed us, and what lessons can we really draw from its success? Three recent books – one by a professor of business, one by a cultural historian and one by a technology academic – all attempt to answer that question in different ways.

and concludes:


Jeanneney is right to insist that any culture needs to organise its information to reflect its priorities, and that it’s not enough to leave this to an automatic device. The classification system of the traditional library, he reminds us, is evident in books’ arrangement on the shelves, which encourages readers to browse those books in certain ways. It is possible that our facility with search technology will encourage new, looser ways of categorising books which encourage us to take our own path through libraries. It will not, however, be enough to leave readers to rely on pointers from their anonymous online peers. For institutions, the trick will be to adapting to changed cultural sensibilities – our determination to forge our own path through information and make our own associations between things – without surrendering ourselves entirely to Google’s algorithm.

In September last year, Google announced that it had digitised and indexed about a million of the world’s books – not bad, but well short of its target. A couple of years before that, according to Stross, Google’s chief executive Eric Schmidt was asked how long it might take for Google to organise all the world’s information. “Current estimate,” he replied, “300 years.” Only a company with Google’s Promethean ambitions could think with such extravagant time-horizons. With 300 years’ notice to organise our response, we can’t say that we haven�t been warned.

The Research Log, and other great ideas for successful research

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We tell our students to always keep a little log of their research projects and to jot down things such as important numbers as they come across them — for example, a statute’s bill number, Public Law number, title and chapter sites from the U.S. Code, and etc., etc.  A new book that just arrived at the law library offers “A More Complete List of Lists Every Researcher Should Keep” and it includes some wonderful information ideas for our students to include in their research logs.   The book, The Elements of Library Research, has a bit of an eye-rolling title, but it is deliciously written and includes “Mary’s Maxims” (tips from the author, Mary W. George, such as Mary’s Maxim #14 – “Curiosity Begets Serendipity”).  Anyone who wants to give a new student — be it high school, college, or graduate school — a head start would be wise to give this little gem of a book, perhaps packaged with Elements of Style. 

 

A More Complete List of Lists Every Researcher Should Keep

1. Keywords from thinking, brainstorming, background reading, or a thesaurus

2.  Relevant call numbers, to use for both shelf and online browsing purposes.

3.  Subject headings from the fullest display in an online catalog and subject descriptions from every relevant article database

4.  Authors and scholars whose work is repeatedly mentioned by others

5. Titles of peer-reviewed journals and popular periodicals

6. Titles of relevant reference tools related to the research project

7. Publishers that seem to specialize in the field

8. Insitutions, associations, societies, or government agencies that focus on the area of interest

9. Dates, such as the life span of key people, the exact date of a major event, or the publication year of primary sources

10. Order of the steps taken to obtain background information and discover souces, including the navigation path leading to electronic resources and the address of useful Web pages

 

Now that’s some great advice!

Here’s the book’s catalog record.

 

Author: George, Mary W., 1948-
Title: The elements of library research : what every student needs to know / Mary W. George.
Imprint: Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2008.
Physical Description: xiv, 201 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [191]-194) and index.
Contents: Introduction to research as inquiry — From research assignment to research plan — Strategy and tools for discovery — The fine art of finding sources — Insight, evaluation, argument, and beyond.
          Subject (LC): Library research–United States.
                  ISBN: 9780691131504 (acid-free paper)
                  ISBN: 0691131503 (acid-free paper)
                  ISBN: 9780691138572 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
                  ISBN: 0691138575 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
LAW CALL NUMBER:                             
Z710 .G44 2008