The Best of Both Worlds: Computerized and Manual Legal Research

by David L. Lee

Lawyers today live in an era in which legal research is in flux. We have traditional law libraries with traditional, manual legal-research tools, and we also have computerized legal research available right in those same law libraries or even on the lawyer's desk at the office or at home. In fact, computerized legal research is further developing, with "traditional" computerized legal-research tools such as Westlaw® and Lexis® facing competition from even newer computerized legal-research tools, such as bill-tracking on the Internet and administrative codes on CD-ROM.

As the stage we're now at in the computer age, lawyers must be prepared to use both manual and computerized legal-research tools. An older lawyer who takes pride in not knowing how to research by computer may not be providing the client with the best work-product. A younger lawyer who takes pride in never cracking a book is not only making the same mistake, but also may someday be in a situation where the only available legal-research tool is a book. Both lawyers are also missing out on something that in many situations will make their lives easier, because the more adept a lawyer is at both computerized and manual legal research, the easier and quicker that lawyer can research.

Being "adept" in this sense means not only being comfortable using both manual and computerized legal-research tools, but also knowing how and when to choose between them. Once you learn the basics of both manual and computerized legal-research tools and have access to both types, the trick becomes choosing among them. To pick the right tool for your legal-research job, you must understand how the differing research strategies used by books and computers affect how you research.

The basic problem of legal research, which both books and computers share, is that law exists in a great mass and mess of undifferentiated sources, both primary (constitutions, statutes, cases, etc.) and secondary (treatises, Restatements, and law-review articles, etc.), but that to simply start pulling sources off the shelves and begin reading does not work. How far would a legal-researcher go by grabbing random volumes of F.2d and F.3d and reading random cases? Thus, the goal of any legal-research system, whether manual or computerized, is to get the researcher from that undifferentiated mess of sources to the relevant ones.

Manual legal-research systems try to move the researcher to relevant sources by having some human being digest, index, or gather the sources, while computers typically give the researcher access to the materials without an intermediate indexer. Each approach has its strong and weak points. To have someone else begin gathering the sources for you, as is typical of manual legal-research, makes sense if that someone else can be trusted and if you and that someone else are thinking along the same lines. But if either of those two conditions breaks down, then you may be no better off than when you started. On the other hand, not having someone gathering the sources for you, as is typical of computerized legal research, means that you are back at the basic problem of legal research: how do you get into the relevant sources?

The upshot of this conundrum is that books are better for some legal-research jobs, computers for others. In addition, the costs of using books and using computers are generally different, so if costs are important you should know what you're paying and make a deliberate choice.

These general considerations give rise to the following strategies for the following typical legal-research tasks:

If you're dealing with words that have alternate meanings or whose meaning changes depending on capitalization or punctuation, use books: Words can be frustrating things, but never more so than when doing computerized legal research. Try, for example, researching a problem about a will, and you may get all the cases that use "will" as a verb or even the religion cases dealing with students reciting the Lord's Prayer ("Thy will be done"). Nor is "will" the only such trap: among the common legal words that have alternative meanings which make a hash of computerized legal research are "release", "trust", "minor", "judgment", "court" (which has meanings like "court a spouse", "pay court", "court yard", "food court", etc.) and many more. Thinking of alternative meanings is fun in crossword puzzles, but a pain in the neck for computerized legal research. Better to use a book with an index and table of contents. Maybe even worse than words with alternative meanings are the words that change meaning by capitalization or punctuation. AIDS and aids is one sad, modern example. Similarly, try researching the chemical DES and you may get all the cases that refer to the thriving metropoli of Des Moines and Des Plaines!
If you're dealing with a concept that can be phrased in many different ways or with legally-relevant words that have many synonyms, use books: This is the opposite problem to that given above. Try to research by computer an issue concerning minors, for example, and you quickly realize that an opinion may refer to the minor as: minor, juvenile, infant, child, youth, boy, girl, brother, sister, daughter, son, niece, nephew, ten-year old (to take just one age, and that can be with or without the hyphen and with "ten" or "10"), not to mention the minor's proper name ("Billy") or a procedural designation, such as "Respondent" or "MINS" ("minor in need of supervision" -- again with or without hyphens and/or capitals). Whew! Better to have some indexers read all that and -- we hope -- deal with them consistently.
If you're dealing with facts, persons, or entities that can be described with specificity and are normally described in a consistent way, use computers: On the other hand, indexers are traditionally and notoriously bad at indexing fact patterns. Here, if the facts can be described with some specificity and are likely to be described consistently, computers shine. Searching for the needle in the haystack -- not to mention the mouse in the Coke bottle -- is a lot easier on computer than it is in real life. Similarly, if your "facts" concern a particular person, place, or thing, use a computer. Discovering if a particular intersection has been the subject of an appellate opinion on negligence is virtually impossible by book, but a snap by computer. Institutional defendants, professional plaintiffs, opposing counsel, judges, trademarks, products, etc., are all easily researched by computer.
If you're dealing with well-defined issues with consistent, legally-relevant language that is transferrable into Boolean search terms, use computers: Just as computers are good for researching facts, persons, places, etc., they are good for researching a legal issue that is usually described in only one or two ways and is amenable to a Boolean attack. (Be careful, however, if your Boolean attack requires the word "not".)
If you want to find a case that says something in specific language, use computers: The other day, I wanted to find a case that denigrated the credibility of a witness because that witness "doth protest too much". I didn't know if there was such a case and I didn't care what the case was about; all I cared about was that my argument that a witness was not credible be supported by a cite to a case using that phrase. By manual legal research, such a task would have been hit or miss at best, impossible at worst. By computer, however, that research was a snap.
If you want to find a case or other document about which you have only partial information or only remember a snippet, use computers: Similar to finding a case that says something in specific language, computers are great if you have only partial information about a case (such as a newspaper clippingin your research file) or remember a snippet. Many of us, for example, have had the experience of remembering a "recent" case (subconsciously defined as "a case decided after I crammed for the bar exam" -- I myself am astonished to find that some "recent" cases are now almost twenty years old) in which court X said something like Y about Z. Finding such a case by computer may be a matter of minutes or seconds, compared to frustrating hours in the law library trying to find the case manually.
If you're dealing with a procedural or evidentiary question, use books: Expert computer users may be able to research procedural or evidentiary issues on-line, but for most of us, words and phrases like "jury trial", "summary judgment", "motion to compel", "relevant", etc., appear in so many cases in so many irrelevant ways as to make the task impossible. Compared to that difficulty, there are many good treatises and digests devoted to procedure and evidence (or even to procedural and evidentiary subissues, such as "summary judgment", "hearsay", or "expert testimony"), often written by recognized experts cited by the courts as authorities in and of themselves. Better and easier to use the books here.
If you're dealing with statutes, court rules, or administrative regulations, use books: Although computerized legal-research systems are getting better at dealing with statutes, most have not developed good ways to retrieve court rules and administrative regulations. Further, most computerized systems present difficulties in researching and browsing such sources, even statutes. In contrast, the manual tools here (annotated statutes, legislative history, treatises, etc.) are well-developed and easy to use.
If you know next to nothing about the area you're researching or want an introduction or a general overview, use books: If I had to research an admiralty problem, I wouldn't know enough to do much more on computer than input the word "admiralty", which would surely drown me in that area of the law. A good treatise, however, would introduce me to the basic concepts, provide me an overview of the law, and generally bring me up to speed to the point where I could formulate an intelligent strategy. You can do this on line, to some extent, by pulling up an ALR annotation or a law review article, but, even so, reading hard copy has many advantages, such as cost and ease of reading, which are discussed below.
If you're looking for current information, use computers: Because of the long lead-time in print publishing, most manual legal-research sources simply cannot keep up with current information. Computers, on the other hand, are usually as up to date as can be.
If you're dealing with new and emerging areas, use computers: My criminal-procedure teacher, the late Jim Haddad, once remarked that in the 1940's, before the great flowering of constitutional law on search-and-seizure, all the cases on that issue were indexed under the heading "poisons", and if you didn't know that, you'd never find the cases. Why "poisons"? Apparently, all the search-and-seizure cases were drug cases, which, in those days, were indexed under that heading, and the idea of "search and seizure" as a separate topic had not yet developed. When you're dealing with new, hot topics, computers not only have their typical speed advantage, but also lack the disadvantage of indexers who have developed neither a feel for the topic nor consistency among themselves.
If you're cite-checking, use computers: No jumping up and down to grab different volumes of Shepard's®, hypertext links into the citing cases (rather than having to run to different floors of the library), immediate printout or download of results. This is living!
If you're reading, use books: Most people simply find books easier to scan, browse, and read than a computer screen. It's almost always cheaper, too. On-line charges vary, but, unless you have some sort of free deal (like many law-schools have for students and faculty), a good, basic rule is that it's more expensive than you think. (If you're at a firm or agency, find out from your librarian or whoever is in charge of computerized legal-research what the various prices of the various services are.) Beyond on-line charges, printing charges can be surprisingly expensive. Printing ten monster opinions from F.3d, for example, can easily reach $500.

If these strategies prove helpful to you, please thank the following experts from Northwestern University School of Law, without whose help this column could not have written: Judith Ann Rosenbaum, senior instructor of legal writing (and also my wife), Steven R. Miller, computer services librarian, and Helene S. Shapo, director of legal writing (neither of whom are my wife).

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