Articling Student Training

The Spring 2006 Issue of Perspectives contains two short but helpful articles. Thomas Keefe’s “Teaching Taxonomies” reviews the author’s experiences in trying to explain to law students why they should think twice before relying on full text searching. Rather than merely lamenting the reliance on electronic over print, the author suggests a focus on the benefits of structured sources.

Stephen Armstrong and Timothy Terrell’s “The Perils of E-Mail” is a very practical look at how to send emails that are likely to be read by the recipient.

These articles will, of course, join my rather voluminous file on “articling student orientation”. There is so much content that could be covered in orientation, from “pure” legal research techniques to the more practical realities of working in a law firm. Of course, the feedback from our students each year is that we attempt to cover way too much material in their initial week at the firm. We have experimented with scheduling some “orientation” sessions in the weeks following their start at the firm. At that point, the problem is the conflicts with “real work”.