"Hunting and Gathering on the Legal Information Savannah" by Susan Nevelow Mart

Law Library Journal Cover

Colorado Law's very own, Susan Nevelow Mart, Professor and Director of the William A. Wise Law Library, has just completed her most recent article: "Hunting and Gathering on the Legal Information Savannah"! The abstract of the article reads as follows:

Research in massive online legal research platforms requires entering a multi-faceted construct, where user-interface design and an array of algorithms guide the experience. What is it like for novice researchers to research real-world legal problems and attempt to come to a legal conclusion in these four platforms: Bloomberg Law, Fastcase, Lexis Advance, and Westlaw? Researchers struggled where they could not find relevant secondary sources. Researchers did not improve their time to complete their research in the second, third, or fourth platform once they had resolved the issue in the first platform. The implications for teaching legal research seem clear: instruction on meta-strategies for entering a research universe are a critical component of what law students and young lawyers need to learn. And legal research platforms need to keep improving user guidance through their research universes.

Susan Nevelow Mart, et al. Hunting and Gathering on the Legal Information Savannah, 113 L. LIB. J. __ (forthcoming 2021) (available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3812585). 

If you would like to learn more about Professor Mart's writings and research, be sure to visit her faculty profile page. Professor Mart also teaches Research and Writing in the Regulatory State with Professor Gabrielle Stafford.