Comments on: legal research class is going to be like stubbing my toe, over and over and over again http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/09/27/legal-research-class-is-going-to-be-like-stubbing-my-toe-over-and-over-and-over-again/ Ramblings on law school in New York, free software, and the spaces in between. Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:27:18 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Luis http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/09/27/legal-research-class-is-going-to-be-like-stubbing-my-toe-over-and-over-and-over-again/#comment-2814 Luis Fri, 29 Sep 2006 03:12:59 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/09/27/legal-research-class-is-going-to-be-like-stubbing-my-toe-over-and-over-and-over-again/#comment-2814 Thanks for commenting, Thomas. [His employer is one of the companies mentioned in the post; that isn't publicly visible but I thought I'd clear up the 'not for my employer' comment.] I would think (having read the paper today myself) that the tertiary sources are the real locus of the long-term cost problem- most of the secondary sources have external, non-pecuniary incentives to get assembled (i.e., journals have ~free labor and are only printed on paper for vanity reasons), or are now easily/cheaply automable (<a href="http://www.lectlaw.com/files/lwr17.htm" rel="nofollow">Shephard's</a>, for example, should require basically no manual labor anymore). The problem is the secondary/tertiary sources that aren't automable and which aren't produced by cheap or academically-oriented labor- summaries, for example. That needs some sort of revenue source, obviously- I don't think google ads would cut it, since I can't imagine what you'd advertise on such a thing, but maybe there is more of a market for intra-legal advertising than my poor 1L mind can picture right now. Legal writing is the most densely cited writing I've ever read, and the citations are obsessively regularized, so I'd think (if anything) that legal writing would be more amenable to link analysis than most scholarly text. Isn't one of the primary complaints of most legal academics that journals reject things with too few footnotes? :) The paper as a whole definitely felt sloppy and meandering to me; I'm not surprised that there is a mistake in the legal analysis. Thanks for pointing that out. Still, it had some interesting pointers, so I'm glad I read it. Thanks for commenting, Thomas. [His employer is one of the companies mentioned in the post; that isn't publicly visible but I thought I'd clear up the 'not for my employer' comment.]

I would think (having read the paper today myself) that the tertiary sources are the real locus of the long-term cost problem- most of the secondary sources have external, non-pecuniary incentives to get assembled (i.e., journals have ~free labor and are only printed on paper for vanity reasons), or are now easily/cheaply automable (Shephard’s, for example, should require basically no manual labor anymore). The problem is the secondary/tertiary sources that aren’t automable and which aren’t produced by cheap or academically-oriented labor- summaries, for example. That needs some sort of revenue source, obviously- I don’t think google ads would cut it, since I can’t imagine what you’d advertise on such a thing, but maybe there is more of a market for intra-legal advertising than my poor 1L mind can picture right now.

Legal writing is the most densely cited writing I’ve ever read, and the citations are obsessively regularized, so I’d think (if anything) that legal writing would be more amenable to link analysis than most scholarly text. Isn’t one of the primary complaints of most legal academics that journals reject things with too few footnotes? :)

The paper as a whole definitely felt sloppy and meandering to me; I’m not surprised that there is a mistake in the legal analysis. Thanks for pointing that out. Still, it had some interesting pointers, so I’m glad I read it.

]]> By: Thomas Lunde http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/09/27/legal-research-class-is-going-to-be-like-stubbing-my-toe-over-and-over-and-over-again/#comment-2812 Thomas Lunde Fri, 29 Sep 2006 00:00:48 +0000 http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/09/27/legal-research-class-is-going-to-be-like-stubbing-my-toe-over-and-over-and-over-again/#comment-2812 That paper is interesting. Google (or someone) may provide primary case law for free but, as one of the sources quoted in it notes, "secondary sources are the principle locus of the cost problem." Google won't change that. One significant difference between the web and academic legal writing is state by the paper but not commented upon: the density of linking (or, in context, citation) in academic legal writing is much lower than on the web. This makes using that citation information much less of a win than on the web. Lastly, the paper is suspect: it gets the copyright status of West's pagination wrong. (N.b. I'm _definitely_ speaking for myself and not for my employer here.) See: Matthew Bender & Co., Inc. v. West Pub. Co. 240 F.3d 116 C.A.2 (N.Y.),2001. That paper is interesting. Google (or someone) may provide primary case law for free but, as one of the sources quoted in it notes, “secondary sources are the principle locus of the cost problem.” Google won’t change that.

One significant difference between the web and academic legal writing is state by the paper but not commented upon: the density of linking (or, in context, citation) in academic legal writing is much lower than on the web. This makes using that citation information much less of a win than on the web.

Lastly, the paper is suspect: it gets the copyright status of West’s pagination wrong. (N.b. I’m _definitely_ speaking for myself and not for my employer here.) See:

Matthew Bender & Co., Inc. v. West Pub. Co.
240 F.3d 116
C.A.2 (N.Y.),2001.

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