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Law of the Super Searchers:
The Online Secrets of Top Legal Researchers
by
T. R. Halvorson
(Series Editor) Reva Basch
Paperback - 200 pages (December 1999)
ISBN: 091096534X
Dimensions (in inches): 0.47 x 6.06 x 9.15
Reviewed by Jerry Lawson
"In a law library, everything is in one big room. The Internet is in a
million tiny rooms."
This is just one of the many insights contained in Law of the Super Searchers, a wonderful new book by Montana lawyer T.R. Halvorson. This book will prove to be extremely useful to those seriously interested in online research (mainly Westlaw/Lexis and the Internet). It consists of interviews with eight of the top online legal researchers in the country. Seven are law librarians:
 | Sabrina Pacifici, LLRX.com & with Sidley & Austin |
| Cindy Chick, LLRX.com & with Graham & James |
| Genie Tyburski, The Virtual Chase & with Ballard Spahr |
| Diana Botluk, Catholic University Law School & editor, recent editions of The Legal List legal bibliography |
| Roberta Schaffer, University of Texas; formerly with Covington & Burling |
| Catherine Best, Best Guide to Canadian Legal Research & with Campney & Murphy |
| George Jackson, University of Minnesota Law School |
Leigh Webber, acclaimed CLE lecturer, is the only non-librarian in the group.
Page after page of Law of the Super Searchers contains insights from the country's top legal research experts, making this book a must-have for those who are serious about efficient research through the Internet and Westlaw/Lexis.
If you are not a law librarian, you may find some of the material overly repetitious. For example, most non-librarians will not really care how often librarians do "reference interviews" (librarian jargon for narrowing a research request by asking someone who wants information questions), or care to hear them repeatedly complain about patrons who request that they find "everything" on a particular topic. After a while, I just started skipping over the repetitious sections.
On the other hand, the book contains wonderful insights on key issues like these that are of heavy interest to practicing lawyers:
| Which is better, Westlaw or Lexis, and why? |
| Which is better, the proprietary interfaces for Westlaw and Lexis or the Internet versions? |
| When should you use the Internet instead of Westlaw or Lexis? |
| Where do top experts usually prefer to start their Internet searches? (Search engines? NOT!). |
This is a great book if you are interested in questions like these. Despite having a great deal of online research experience myself, I learned plenty of new things from Law of the Super Searchers. In many cases, it wasn't so much that I learned something new or shocking, but time and time again I found that one of the interviewees reinforced a conclusion I had already reached, or articulated a concept I already knew, but did so more clearly, and in a way that made it more useful. One example was an observation from interviewer T.R. Halvorson:
Sometimes you are not really looking for the document on the Web. You are looking for the site. Once at the site, you are looking for the document.
This is not exactly a shocking revelation. It's an approach I had used intuitively over the years. However, now that the concept has been articulated, I will probably think about it and use it more effectively, and be able to teach it to others more effectively.
Here are some other examples from one of the interviewees I know best, Genie Tyburski, owner of The Virtual Chase site:
| On stock approaches to research taught in law schools: "It is like putting a square peg in a round hole, because it assumes that research is a science, and it's not. It's an art." |
| She uses the Internet [including its versions of paid services] "more than anything else," partly because there is a uniform interface, the browser. |
| When asked whether there are times when failure to use Internet research would be incompetent: "Absolutely." |
| On choice of finding tools: "I have a lot of known sources. ... I stay away from search engines." |
This book is valuable for anyone seriously interested in modern legal research. If legal research is part of your professional life, do yourself a favor: buy this book. It's a bargain at the discounted price of just under $20. It is available from Amazon.com.
Here's another another
review, from LLRX.