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Legal Research Mash-Up in 3D
The Edmonton Law Libraries’ Association runs Headstart – an annual 2-day legal research bootcamp for articling students. The firms pay $70 per student (or the students can pay their own way) and the bench, bar, faculty, vendors, and Law Society Library support it.
We focus on the nuts and bolts of daily research tasks, such as locating regulations, and noting up cases. We are big on underlining the practicality of some paper resources. And the true beneficiaries are the librarians… they get intelligent, informed questions right from the start!
I’m happy to see that this event continues in full force. I worked with the (tireless) group of Edmonton law librarians who, on their own time and over brown bag lunches, planned this event in its first year. Of course a purpose was to tackle many of the student research problems that would otherwise become the inevitable repeat questions, but another explicit goal was to ensure that all Edmonton students ready to begin their articles would have the benefit of access to practice-focused research refresher or training, regardless whether they had yet secured positions or were with the larger firms or courts with their own inhouse programs.
Absolutely, Kim. It’s not only for our own benefit that we run Headstart. In fact, the event is also open to experienced lawyers, if they are interested, though we give priority to Edmonton-area students graduating this year. I think the broad support the program recieves speaks to its multi-faceted usfullness. Setting up Headstart was a real brainwave, and last year it was covered in the Lawyers’ Weekly: 25(02) pp. 1, 24.
I was interested to hear about Headstart in Edmonton: it looks like an excellent program and the goals are worthy. I’ve told others in the Research Lawyers section in Calgary about it, from your posting, Michael, and several seemed interested. At our most recent meeting, we had Prof. Anne Stalker talk to us about the Advanced Legal Research course she runs at the U of C; it’s the only compulsory advanced research in the country!! Many of us in large firms run our own versions of research training, and it would be interesting/more effective and efficient to run a city-wide one.