- Slaw - https://www.slaw.ca -

Reducing Research Anxiety in the Legal Research Process

Posted By Ted Tjaden On In Legal Information: Information Management,Legal Information: Libraries & Research | Comments Disabled

What follows in this post are some initial thoughts on what I think is a fairly important topic for law librarians and legal researchers: (a topic I might consider researching in detail if I ever were to pursue a doctorate in information studies): what, if anything, can be done to lessen the anxiety that legal researchers suffer during the research process?

That legal researchers suffer anxiety goes without saying. The researcher may be uncertain where to begin, they may be suffering from too much information, or they may lack confidence in concluding they have reached the “correct” answer (I myself have had these feelings several times in the last week alone in research I have conducted in addition to also regularly perceiving such anxiety in people I have been helping).

Studies suggest that these feelings of anxiety will rise and fall during the various stages of the information search process (see my SLAW blog post here [1] from almost 5 years ago discussing the research of Professor Carol Kuhlthau on this topic). Ideally, the research is concluded with the researcher being in the “confident” stage of their feelings (alas, this does not always happen in legal research due to some problems being unsolvable and other problems being terminated early due to a lack of time).

By better understanding the research process, law librarians can better identify possible “zones of intervention” to get involved in helping researchers at the peak of those moments when anxiety arises. Likewise, to the extent that much legal research is conducted online, it is surely in the interest of the major online legal publishers to better design their products to lessen the risk of this anxiety frustrating the researcher by instead providing alternative ways for the researcher to access and assimilate online information and put it into its proper context.

I would therefore welcome comments on this topic, especially if readers are aware of studies or work being done in this area (at the end of this post is a “quick and dirty” list of readings I compiled last night, some of which I read a number of years ago and others which I hope to read when I have more time).

Much of Kuhlthau’s early research was on the information search process of high school students, so I was interested to find out recently that she also studied lawyers – see: Kuhlthau and Tama, “Information Search Process of Lawyers: A Call for ‘Just for Me’ Information Services [2]” (2001) 57 Journal of Documentation 25 (PDF).

In this study, the authors interviewed 8 New Jersey lawyers from small to medium-sized law firms, all with mid-level experience. I found it interesting to note that their respondents actually seemed to welcome the challenge of uncertainty and did not necessarily regard it as a bad thing, unlike novice researchers (p. 31):

[These lawyers] did not respond to uncertainty in the same way as the novices in previous studies had. The novices interpreted their sense of uncertainty as indicating that something was going wrong, either with the task or with their ability to proceed effectively with it. But none of these experts expressed the feelings of anxiety and frustration related to uncertainty that the novices experienced. On the contrary, these experts expressed heightened interest and enthusiasm for more complex tasks that required considerable construction and creativity. Many of the lawyers actually related the sense of fun to more complex tasks that led to innovation and construction.

Most of the lawyers interviewed expressed a preference for the context that print resources provided and expressed frustration with the literalness and lack of context of keyword searching. I was also a bit disappointed that a few of the lawyers interviewed saw librarians primarily as “getters of the resource” despite a desire for more personalized systems and services (hence the “Just for Me” Information Services in the title of the article). In this study, the respondents described themselves as an “in between generation”, being a generation in between the print and online environment. I would be curious to study what impact generational differences now have on information-seeking behaviour of new law students and lawyers.

For now, then, I have several hypotheses I would want to test through further study:

1) Hypothesis #1: Legal researchers suffer less anxiety at the initiation stage of their research if they consult a trained law librarian to discuss the issue and identify a research strategy, including recommended sources.

2) Hypothesis #2: Follow-up and easy access in person and by email/phone to a law librarian will reduce anxiety in the legal research process.

3) Hypothesis #3: The use of legal research checklists will reduce legal research anxiety and improve the quality of research.

I also have several questions, the answers to which remain uncertain to me:

1) Do generational or age differences affect the level of research anxiety? (i.e., do millenials react differently to research anxiety than baby boomers? Does their anxiety differ depending on whether print or online resources are being used?).

2) How do you best test the effectiveness of using print versus using online resources? How do you measure the effectiveness of online user interface design?

3) What resources do legal researchers prefer using and why?

4) What factors inhibit legal researchers from seeking help? What are the greatest challenges researchers perceive? (e.g., lack of time, cost of resources, lack of knowledge of the law or research techniques, etc.).

I welcome any comments. The non-exhaustive list of “likely” readings for further study follows below (most recent to oldest).

Selected Bibliography on Information-Seeking Behaviours of Lawyers