Research in the Wild: CALR and the Role of Informal Apprenticeship in Attorney Training

Judith Lihosit, University of San Diego Legal Research Center

Abstract

Much recent scholarship has posited that computer-assisted legal research (CALR) will fundamentally alter the manner in which practicing attorneys conduct legal research, resulting in an overall change in the legal system itself. This paper reviews this literature, arguing that one of the reasons that these authors hold this view is due to their model of how attorneys conduct legal research when practicing, which assumes that legal practitioners do so in the same manner that they learned in their first-year legal research and writing classes, in which the West Digest system plays an important role. This paper will argue that, while the authors who hold this view are correct that we have been (and still are) undergoing a major transformation in the format of legal materials, and also that the influence of the West Digest system is waning, there will not be a resultant restructuring of the legal system. After a brief overview of American legal history, provided to show that apprenticeship training has always been present in the American legal system in some form, this paper uses an ethnographic study of practicing attorneys and law firm librarians to provide an alternative model of how attorneys conduct research. This paper argues that legal research (and practice) is not a process conducted with a limited set of reference tools, but rather a craft where one learns to shape arguments through some manifestation of an apprentice system, which is formed by informal networks and mentorships with other attorneys. Therefore, the shift from print to electronic materials can be seen as just another format change, although a major one, similar to others that have occurred throughout American legal history, in which the underlying structure of the legal system remained intact, due to the normalizing influences of this present-day system of informal apprenticeship.

A revised version of this paper appears in Law Library Journal, Vol. 101, No. 2 (Spring 2009), pp. 157-176 (http://www.aallnet.org/products/pub_llj_v101n02/2009-10.pdf)