With widespread consideration for bar exam changes to emphasize research skills, universities and law programs need to make sure their students can navigate both a law library and a Web site, said panelists at a conference over the weekend.
Law professors from across the U.S. and Canada joined for a three-day conference, "Teaching the Teachers" at the UT School of Law to discuss how law students research and how they can improve these methods.
"The national bar examiners are thinking of putting a component of questions on legal research in the bar exam and we have to become more effective teachers," said professor Roy Mersky, director of research at the law school.
With easily accessible search sites on the Internet, such as Google and Wikipedia, many of the professors expressed concern that prospective law students are not prepared for the extent of research that is required to become a lawyer.
Virginia Wise, senior lecturer at Harvard Law, said that up until 2001 she could remember a few students looking to old articles or books when they started researching, but she said in all of her classes after 2001, her students said they went to Google to start their research.
"That was the turning point for me," Wise said. "That there was a generation who had literally never used a print source and a generation that believes that everything is online was just wrong."
Wise said she feels the writing requirement at many schools is insufficient, adding that many teachers grade on theory rather than fact. She said she has had students who do not know the dates of the Civil War.
"We've taken all of the details out of the learning picture," Wise said
Many other professors said their first-year law students had never written a paper longer than five pages
Paul Woodruff, dean of undergraduate studies, said the University passed a new research requirement last year that every undergraduate must satisfy in order to receive a diploma.
"There will be in every degree plan a requirement for independent inquiry," he said.
Woodruff said the requirement will be phased into each degree audit over the next few years.
"Hopefully we can say in a few years that our graduates know what they can and can't do with Wikipedia," Woodruff said.
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