Tips Tuesday

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on research, writing, and practice.

Practice

Learn to Leverage Your 80%: Practice – What is a “learning experience”?
Sharon VanderKaay

Merely “having an experience” does not guarantee how much we will learn from that experience. Lawyers are rarely trained to excel in the most basic skill required to thrive in today’s work environment: How to learn faster in action. A widely accepted rule of thumb is that 80% of the knowledge needed to do your job is gained informally, during routine work activities and interactions. Yet developing this valuable resource is typically left to chance rather than leveraged intentionally. …

Research & Writing

Rangefindr – You’re Doing It Wrong!
Law Society of Saskatchewan Library’s Legal Sourcery Blog

Rangefindr is a fabulous source for searching sentencing ranges in Canada. If you are a criminal lawyer I highly recommend you speak to your firm librarian or whoever is in charge of licensing online resources. I have had several people tell me that Rangefindr is difficult to use, and in particular that any search returns only a paucity of hits. So I came here to tell you that there is nothing wrong with Rangefindr – you’re just doing it wrong! There, don’t you feel better now? The problem isn’t with Rangefindr, it’s just your shoddy searching technique. …