Way Beyond Legal Research: Understanding the Research Habits of Legal Scholars

How do legal scholars seek, discover, and manage information while conducting scholarly research? While the methods of legal research have been well-covered in the literature, few studies have explored the habits and practices that legal scholars actually employ when doing scholarly research. For librarians who support scholarly work through collection development, instruction, and personalized services, understanding scholars' research practices is vital. This article addresses gaps between models of legal research and actual research practices, and urges movement toward an empirically grounded understanding of the research habits of legal scholars in order to bridge some of those gaps.