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24 TALL Newsl. 1 (2004-2005)

handle is hein.journals/tallquart24 and id is 1 raw text is: Vol. 24, no. I FaIl 2004 EJILITALL NeWL Legal Research on Bay Street: What Law Students Really Need to Know by Laurel Murdoch The members of TALL who are private law firm librarians have become increasingly concerned about what we see as a diminution of legal research skills among our incoming law students. Ted Tjaden, of the Bora Laskin Law Library at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, hosted a TALL Lunch and Learn session earlier this year (which was very well-attended by private law librarians), the object of which was to outline for us the methods they use in teaching legal research. This led tofurther discussions on the TALL listserv as to steps that might be taken, perhaps jointly by the law libraries at University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall Law School, to better prepare students for the research component of their summer and/or articling experiences. As the students who will be working in our Toronto firms are drawn from across Canada, I was pleased to have had the opportunity at the CALL Conference in May to take the concerns of private law librarians to a wider forum and describe to academic law librarians what the situation is in private law firms, and what students ideally should know about legal research at the outset of joining us. The following is an article based on my informal presentation to the Academic Law Libraries Special Interest Group. It reflects my own experience and opinions, developed over many years working in private law libraries in large firms, and as such should not be construed as the opinions of my employer, Heenan Blaikie LLP. The purpose of these remarks was to create a heightened awareness among academic librarians of the research tasks that are commonly assigned to students from their first day at a large law firm with the hope that this information would be useful to those in law schools who prepare legal research and writing courses or advise students in general on what they will need to know for their summer or articling experiences. As part of my preparation for these remarks, I took a poll-a quick survey of our summer and articling students on the topic of their legal research preparation in law school-and I want to share what they told me, along with my own observations. I hope that by describing to you the kinds of research that we really do in large firms (which may be nothing like what you would expect) and the constraints on our access to resources that you may think are virtually limitless on Bay Street, we can open up a dialogue and work together so that law students are prepared to do what we ask them to do-from Day One. (Continued on page 5) Inside... Continuing Education 17 @ Editor's Notes 3 From the Literature 14 * In the Loop 16 @ Inside the Olympics 13 * IRQs 15 President's Message 3 @ The Sarbane Oxley Act 12 Vol. 24, no. 1 Fall 2004

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