All About Information: 2010 Solo, Small Law Firm Conference
David Whelan - Welcome - Updates @ O'Faolain.com
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Welcome to my online home. I'm a lawyer and information professional and this is where I have gathered together resources reflecting my interests, specifically the intersection of law, information, and technology. I blog and post news about things that catch my interest relating to open source, content management, legal research, and other related topics.
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Kill Loose-Leafs. Use Wikis.
Susannah Tredwell's post at Slaw.ca about the future of loose-leafs has gotten me thinking more about that expensive mainstay of the law library collection. For those of you who do not know what a loose-leaf is, think of a binder (usually multiple volumes) that gets updated periodically. They initially met a need for keeping information current between full releases of an edition of a given law book. The benefit to the legal researcher is currency. The benefit to the publisher can be revenue, since many publishers charge for each release. In some cases, the releases are weekly.
Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Susannah Tredwell's post at Slaw.ca about the future of loose-leafs has gotten me thinking more about that expensive mainstay of the law library collection. For those of you who do not know what a loose-leaf is, think of a binder (usually multiple volumes) that gets updated periodically. They initially met a need for keeping information current between full releases of an edition of a given law book. The benefit to the legal researcher is currency. The benefit to the publisher can be revenue, since many publishers charge for each release. In some cases, the releases are weekly.
You can read Susannah's post here.
Secondary Materials Are Underutilized
The problem with loose-leaf publications is that there are electronic databases. Some legal publishers have migrated their loose-leaf texts into their database offerings but they don't seem to be very effective. Usage of online databases in Ontario law libraries seems to be heavily focused on primary law (no surprise) but secondary content makes up a small minority (10-15%) of all usage.
There remains an ongoing discussion about why lawyers do not seem to use secondary materials. We're taught to use them as a starting point in law school but somewhere between learning and practicing, lawyers appear to shift their focus. Librarians continue to harp on the need to train, as if we had some holy insight into the problem. I could be wrong (surprise surprise) but my guess would be that lawyers know the secondary materials are available and they generally don't find them to be useful. As the practice of law becomes specialized, lawyers are probably less likely to find themselves in unknown territory.
Paper Looseleafs Are Poor Resources
Other legal publishers have not even made the transition, so they continue to churn out new pages for library staff to file. Some problems with this ongoing collection method:
- The cost per page of staff time is probably not recoverable in the value that the supplemental pages actual provide;
- Loose-leafs enable publishers to hide behind the unknown of changes in the law. If there are significant changes in the middle of the year, you may find a sudden flurry of updates. These have obvious budgetary implications where the legal publisher has chosen to charge per release, rather than all you can eat like CCH Canadian does. If libraries have reputational problems with their organizations, it's in part because we cannot say, we will spend $X this year. At the start of the year, you have no idea what your print loose-leaf activity is going to be.
- Theoretically, new content for loose-leafs is generated in an electronic format (word processor, whatever). It should then be uploaded to its online home. It is also printed, packaged, sorted, and shipped to a library. It seems crazy to pay for a product that has this sort of delay if an electronic equivalent is available online.
- A constant concern, sometimes confirmed, is that these updates do not actually reflect any new commentary. Instead, they cause repagination of the valuable commentary with additional citations to cases, legislation, or other information. Much of this is accessible electronically and would appear to anyone researching primary law. Other than creating make work for library staff and extra revenue for the publisher, it probably does not have any substantive value to a researcher.
Drop the Format, Grab the Content
Few people would argue that the content created by authors of these volumes is not valuable. But it's time to drop the loose-leaf, print and binder format. If I was to think of a current online analog to the loose-leaf, it would be the wiki. It enables content consumption a section at a time, it can be organized in a hierarchical way so that it can be browsed, and it can be searched.
It can even replicate some of the serendipity that books provide, where related links or taxonomic metadata can enable aggregation of information from beyond adjacent pages.
If a loose-leaf was truly read like a book, rather than harvested for a section or a chapter by itself, this might not make sense. But that doesn't seem to be the future of the secondary text, if it was ever the past. Which is not to say that authors don't need to write in a linear way or with some coherent form, as the comments to this post by Gary Rodrigues, also on Slaw, suggest. But just because it is created that way doesn't mean that it will be consumed that.
Using wikis does not even mean that the publisher needs to create a resource segmented apart from its other legal research databases or services. If a publisher can aggregate content from multiple sources in response to a search query, or to enable browsing of aggregate resources, the wiki should be able to fit within this environment.
A wiki can also provide the necessary break from trying to replicate, often poorly, the linear path of a secondary text in an online format. Again, it's not that the content cannot be read linearly, but that doesn't appear to be how lawyers actually use it. So why emulate an environment that doesn't enhance use of the content?
My ideal future for loose-leafs would be to see them go away. LexisNexis (US) has already started selling some of its multi-volume loose-leafs in cheaper, perfect bound editions. As Susannah's posting suggests, many libraries have started going to annual contents, which is essentially to buy a single copy of the loose-leaf, skip updates, and then buy a new edition in the future. If that's the pattern, then publishers may want to convert these loose-leafs into permanent volumes. Leave the updating to electronic resources that enable the content to stay in its original format, can reduce overall operating costs (and hopefully operating expenses for libraries). Even better, ditch the print entirely for these texts and find a better way to provide them online. Look at how they are being consumed, not just how they have to be created.
Legal Research Texts Should Stay Out of the Databases
I have recently written a text intended for lawyers and others who need practical information about online research. The experience has perhaps made me more thoughtful about texts than I might have been in the past. As a library manager, I often deal with secondary legal research (commentary, texts) from the perspective of cost and usage. Both of the US versions of the Westlaw and LexisNexis databases are stuffed with secondary content. My experience at subscription libraries suggests that these resources are rarely used when compared to the primary legal materials. So perhaps they shouldn't be there.
There are good reasons for texts and commentary to be in the databases. First, the texts are digital anyway so putting them into a larger aggregation of information is a minor issue. Second, lawyers want comprehensiveness. The legal publishers databases are not comprehensive but the more content, the closer their claim is to the truth. Third, they can charge more for access to a larger aggregate, regardless of the actual usage.
Legal research databases operate on the long tail principle. There is no way every resource is going to be heavily used. The most heavily used content - recent cases and legislation, which are often available for free elsewhere - accounts for the vast majority of usage. The secondary resources may be extensive, but they are more likely to be accessed a handful of times a year rather than daily. You pay for the convenience of access, and pricing is not scaled to reflect your lack of use of these resources.
Another argument against electronic texts is that, by putting them in a database, you lose the context and arc that the author is creating. A practice oriented book like mine probably doesn't suffer from this; it isn't written with an argument in mind. So accessing a text like mine in a database would be easy enough, with relevant chunks appearing when they match a search query. That is how the texts are accessed. If they are not browsed (and in some databases, the lack of thought to navigation and browsability makes many texts difficult to browse), they pop up based on a search query. The text is accessed, then in chunks. There is no need for the text to be cohesive in a database, because it is never going to be read that way.
Let's get anecdotal then. The electronic usage data with which I am familiar shows low use of electronic secondary materials. Lawyers are often quoted as saying they prefer the print to the databases. But publishers can't get caught with that argument. Failing to put their texts online create a perception that their resources are shallower than their competitors. So they need to continue to make print books available AND provide electronic alternatives.
The database has been the default dumping ground for these materials. It may be that the future will be and should be e-book formats instead of databases for texts. That is not to suggest that the content isn't available in a database. But if publishers are not going to treat the texts in a way that makes them consumable like an e-book (or, worse, make them consumable in just the same way as a case or statute), then that should be reflected in the pricing for those licenses. Anyone licensing that secondary content will probably need to purchase a couple of print volumes in specific areas if they really want to have a usable research tool.
I am interested to see what happens with my book, which was designed to be an e-book, with a print option and a companion blog; I'll post something about writing it when it is finally published. But authoring a text for lawyers hasn't given me any new insight to suggest that putting it, or any other text, in a database, is something that a researcher should be paying for and that really provides value.
A Perspective on Professional Education
I have just returned from two conferences, one for librarians and a second for solo and small law firm lawyers. The two experiences reinforced my pre-existing expectations for the types of education I expect when I go to professional conferences. At its core, I expect a professional development conference to provide educational content that has some value to me. There are obviously benefits to being able to network, but the cost of getting to and attending a conference means that there has to be some value that I can turn around and say to my customers and my employer, look, we can do this better because I participated. The librarian conference I attended was lacking in that type of education. The lawyers conference was chock full of it. It comes down to different approaches for how organizations create their conference programming.
Image from Freedigitalphotos.net; Photographer Renjith Krishnan
Image from Freedigitalphotos.net; Photographer Renjith Krishnan
I have just returned from two conferences, one for librarians and a second for solo and small law firm lawyers. The two experiences reinforced my pre-existing expectations for the types of education I expect when I go to professional conferences. At its core, I expect a professional development conference to provide educational content that has some value to me. There are obviously benefits to being able to network, but the cost of getting to and attending a conference means that there has to be some value that I can turn around and say to my customers and my employer, look, we can do this better because I participated. The librarian conference I attended was lacking in that type of education. The lawyers conference was chock full of it. It comes down to different approaches for how organizations create their conference programming.
Librarian Education
It was clear after attending the Canadian Association of Law Libraries annual meeting in Windsor that many people thought the quality of programming was very high. They were impressed by the speakers and inspired by the content. But I was not among them. Like the conferences in Halifax in 2009 and Saskatoon in 2008, the programming continued to be heavy in two areas that I don't find valuable. The first is in well-known speakers from outside law and libraries talking about some large topic. The other focuses on legal issues, current developments in substantive legal areas or in the courts.
I find the content very interesting. But I don't see its inclusion in a librarians conference - particularly one as small as CALL's, where there are only about 12 concurrent programs in 3 days, plus 2-3 plenary speakers - as a good use of limited time and resources. It was a stark comparison to the Ontario Libraries Association annual conference in February, which was overwhelming in the content related library management, operations, and staff growth. Not all content will be useful, depending on your role, but I ended up finding only 3 programs at CALL - over 3 days - that held any potential for my own development.
At the end of 4 days in Windsor, I reflected on my decision not to go to Calgary for CALL 2011 and realized that CALL conferences are geared towards the other types of programming. CALL members appear to want a generalist type of conference, like reading a newspaper. It will cover a wide variety of topics, but not necessarily topics related to libraries or even information. My expectation of a conference is one that is focused, so a library-oriented magazine rather than a general newspaper. There are clearly many people who get value out of the general perspective, so I realize my travel and education dollars will need to be spent in other venues in order to get the content and information I need to improve and grow in my role. There are many other law and librarian conferences - AALL, SLA, ABA Techshow, CALI Con - that come to mind and that is where my dollars will go in 2011.
For anyone who thinks I should put up or shut up, I proposed a program that was accepted for this conference and will be chairing the program committee for CALL 2012.
Favorites? Both had to do with change. Catherine Sanders Reach, from the American Bar Association Legal Technology Resource Center (a friend, former colleague, and the session I proposed) talked about aligning with a law firm's goals. Susan Gibbons is the vice-provost and dean at the University of Rochester River Campus Libraries. She was a fun speaker, but also hit on issues relating to how we serve our customers. Rather than designing our services, spaces, and Web products so that librarians like them, we should be focusing on what our customers want. This is a very interesting paper on their research, both what they found and how they found it.
Lawyer Education
The 5th Annual Solo and Small Firm conference held by The Law Society of Upper Canada and Ontario Bar Association at the end of the week was completely different. But not in scope. Like the CALL conference, it was small, only 250 attendees, 50 of whom were attending via Webcast. Instead of 2 tracks, they had 3 tracks of programming. Instead of 3 concurrent sessions in a day with one plenary, there were two plenary-type sessions followed by 5 concurrent sessions. 7 programs per day v. 17 programs per day. From the outset, then, there was a much higher likelihood that I could find content that would be of value. Admittedly, I was a speaker (and an employee) so I didn't spend anything on this conference other than my time. But there was a lot of valuable content, presented by Canadian lawyers and consultants (and a few Americans), and all of it was focused on the lawyers and their practices. Unlike CALL with its generalist focus, this conference was focused like a laser on providing practical information so that a lawyer, taking a day out of work, would go back with plenty to think about and apply.
The back channel at the Solo and Small Firm conference was great too. Using Twitter and the hashtag #soloTO, there was a lot of interaction between participants, speakers, and remote viewers. Here is a summary that I created using Twapperkeeper.
Photo Credit: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Information Literacy Is Stuck in My Craw
Yes, I know, it's really the "crop" or gullet but that doesn't give the rough edge I want to my phraseology! There is a lot of discussion about information literacy in libraries. I didn't really understand what the big deal was, although I was exposed to some ideas at a Canadian Association of Law Libraries dealing with "neteracy" and the need to educate law students on better online research habits. As I was digging around, I came across Stanley Wilder's 2005 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education and, of all the other materials I've seen on this, it was this article that resonated with me the most.
Stanley Wilder, who was at Rochester University in 2005 but is now the University Librarian at the University of North Carolina - Charlotte, titled his article, "Information Literacy Makes All the Wrong Assumptions". If you Google the title, you'll find plenty of discussion about why Wilder got it wrong.
But when I think about Google, or new products like Thomson Reuter's WestlawNext, or listen to people talk about usability (especially in the library context), it makes me wonder why information literacy is such a touchstone. Wilder says:
The premise of information literacy is that is that the supply of information has become overwhelming, and that students need a rigorous program of instruction in research or library-use skills, provided wholly or in part by librarians.
But why don't students need that sort of instruction in using Facebook? or Google? In fact, why is that we are asking our researchers to conform to our systems (whether it's our physical presentation of books or online Web presence) rather than doing more to conform to our researchers?
I am sure there is a mountain of scholarship to explain why. And I can certainly see that young, impressionable minds need to be taught what an index is (and more importantly, how it speeds up research) and other information-related concepts. It's like teaching a foreign language.
I'm not persuaded that's the case when you are dealing with special libraries and the specialist researcher. When I think of the average lawyer who walks into a law library, I can imagine a baseline of information literacy they already have. They don't need me to tell them about the legal system and explain what a case is or how to search for it. They have been doing that for years. Yes, even the older lawyers because I haven't seen any recent statistics that suggest that older lawyers don't do legal research online.
What they need from me is to reduce the amount of time it takes for them to get to the information. So that's my challenge. Not only do I need to provide value to their library experience if they ask a reference question, but I need to add value by getting them to the information faster if they don't need me to mediate their experience. And most don't.
So shouldn't we be thinking about the library experience from the stripped down point of view of Google? Just because it's a simple box to search in, doesn't mean that the results are limited to that simplicity. The search you put into Google is contemplated in a variety of ways (adding boolean logic, looking for plurals, etc.) even though the searcher doesn't have to know how to tell Google to do that. A hoary practice in libraries is the tour, where new researchers are shown the nooks and crannies, introduced to the arrangement of the physical information containers, etc. Once comfortable with the physical, they might get oriented to the online databases that contain the additional information they need.
But why should they have to get a tour? Given a simple map, why can't the average lawyer or paralegal (or even the public) navigate a law library collection? The onus should be on us to present that collection in a way that reflects how it is used and valued by the researcher. I am always surprised when I go into a law library and find that their law reports (case law) are the first thing I experience. That goes against the basic legal research education, which is that lawyers should begin their research with secondary (texts, commentary) materials. And yet, there they are, front and center. The researcher then has to orient themselves to locate the commentary, which may be on a different floor or location separate from where the library has provided research tables and space. Why isn't the commentary placed so that, when the researcher comes into the library, it is readily apparent that everything they need to get started is right in front of them.
We can't control what the publishers do with their online research tools but WestlawNext is an admirable future direction, if you can afford it. It looks to simplify the experience of getting in and finding information. It goes away from the current environment where each research tool requires specialized training and continual use or else you will be unable to find information and replicate your experience. The unnecessary complexity of the systems appears almost to be designed to ensure longevity of librarians as trainers rather than showing any attempt to reflect researcher needs.
Librarians can provide far greater value than ameliorating defective online experiences. Where they have control, they should shape their collections so that the researcher's experience is valuable. Put the content and services that the researcher needs as close to your entry point as possible. The content and services thus displayed may change, but your researchers will show you by their behavior what they need and what they don't. A law library reading room is likely to have a lot of secondary material lying around, because the lawyers are likely to use computers for their primary law. If that's the case in your library, get the print primary law out of the way.
Similarly, if you're a legal publisher, don't expect your complicated online system to get used. Lawyers want to deal with as few systems, and they will be the most comprehensive. After that, they are likely to flow to the ones that have the interface that is easiest to remember and use. If your company can't design an online product that is (a) comprehensive (all of your published content) and (b) easy to use, then expect your potential customers to use other products. I'm not sure that information literacy in law libraries makes much sense. I would expect the market of legal researchers to migrate to the environments, online and off, that best reduce the barriers to finding information, and avoid the ones that require an intermediary who provides no additional value other than clearing the brush from the path.
Laptop Switch Benefited from Heavy Clouds
