Welcome to Legal Research Best Practices (LRBP)! I’m Mark. I’ll be your Editor in Chief!
This blog does not have a Mission Statement. It has attitude! The goal of this site is to make you an elite legal researcher. My credentials? To begin with, I have a little something called a high school diploma. Take that G.E.D. recipients!
After seeing my 90 minute, award-winning, political-dramedy, Fool For A Client, a reviewer at NYTheatre.com declared me “the foremost amateur attorney in the history of the United States.”
Besides that, for more than a decade I have served as President of TheLaw.net Corporation, a company I founded on January 1, 1999. Among other things, my company has the best case law search engine on planet earth.
As an American Entrepreneur for nearly 30 years, I’ve been sued civilly a couple of dozen times and never lost. I also noticed there's nothing civil about a civil suit.
As a pro-se litigant, I’ve won multiple appeals and motion hearings in Federal court against the largest law firm in the world – the United States Department of Justice.
My legal research, analysis and documentation once resulted in a $400,000 malpractice judgment against F. Lee Bailey.
I was the first to notice that this skunk at then Hale & Dorr, lied about Federal jurisdiction so his bank client could fraudulently pursue state claims in Federal court against a defrocked bank president. So much for that $8 million judgment!
My best credential is that I've spent the last 10 years talking to lawyers. Phone. Email swaps. Web conferencing. I even meet them in person when they come to see my show - which they do in droves. Approximately 400,000 of our nation's attorneys are on my corporate mailing list.
I am the best. There is no question about it.
As a result of talking to all of these lawyers, I know what they know and what they don't know. What they don’t know is computers. Many arrogantly and foolishly take great pride in the fact that they don’t even know how to operate a computer.
I remember this one day I go, “Open your browser."
“Don’t get technical with me!” the lawyer snaps.
Guess what? I can tell whether you are a good legal researcher based on how you give me your phone number. If you say, “Call me on my cell phone” - not an advanced legal researcher. It’s just a phone. But, you're so enamored with the technology, you make a distinction between the phone and the cell phone.
What’s that? You call your phone a cell phone, yet you still fancy yourself an elite compusearcher? Why? Because you know how to browse key numbers, headnotes and annotations? You know how to click your way through directories? That’s called book research.
You're like my Dad. Ten years ago we move west from New England. My Dad goes to a yard sale. Finally buys an answering machine. To this day, it still plays the previous owners greeting.
Mom sends an email. Writes the entire message in the subject line.
The point is that when we browse browse casefinders like annotations, headnotes and key numbers that's not search. . If you're using the computer to do what you used to do with books you are missing cases. I'm not talking a case or two here and there. I am saying that you are systematically missing citable opinions that construe the item of information driving your search for the factual and/or legal reasons you care about.
Opposing counsel misses cases, too. Because you both use the same old pathfinders that partially index the nation's judicial opinions.
Manmade indexes were great when all we had were books. It's the best we could do. It was the only way you could avoid finding opinions that might be helpful, without reading all of the cases in the library.
But, these manmade summaries provide only a partial index don’t they? I said, “Don’t they?!” Y(You should be nodding in agreement.)
Isn't it also a fact that computers index the entire opinion?
So, which is the superior index? The partial index written by propellerheads at Westlaw or the entire index compiled by a foolproof robot?
The correct answer is the entire index. But, only if you have a set of easy-to-learn best practices in place so that you can find everything you need - and nothing you don't - with precision.
Onec you do know how to ask for what you need with precision, well that creates a competitive situation doesn’t it? Because now you know something opposing counsel doesn't know. You know something about what the gatekeepers of the legal research industry have been hiding from you to keep you dependant on their outmoded pathfinders.
When you become a lawyer you check a bit of your First Amendment rights at the door, huh? For example, you're not meant to speak ill of a fellow lawyer.
You learn that the Honorable Donald Thompson of Oklahoma gets caught presiding over a trial wearing nothing under his robe but a penis pump, you don't say, "They charged him with taking the law into his own hands!"
He gets four years and you think, "Wow! Stiff sentence."
But, you keep your thoughts to yourself. You don't even publicly note the irony that when all is said and done, even his lawyer can't get him off!
But, as a non-lawyer, who has spent more than 5,000 hours in the law library and trust me, has forgotten more about real legal research than you will probably ever know, I am free to tell it like it is.
Your reliance on headnotes is causing you to miss important law. You are missing cases with key numbers. You are missing cases and/or finding irrelevant cases in the way you construct search queries. The thought processes you use when you use KeyCite are stunted compared to what they would be if you had a reasonable grasp of advanced Boolean logic.
The processes revealed on this site will work with Westlaw and the Westlaw imitators. Before long, you will be so skilled at advanced Boolean logic and in defining and refining your search, that before long will say to yourself "Self, why am I wasting all of this money on Westlaw?"
Lawyers graduate from institutions. Upon graduation they take an exam allowing them to join another institution called the bar association. They are officers of institutions called courts. Their preferred infomediary - Westlaw - is an institution. Its users are institutionalized.
Westlaw users are book researchers. My clients are computer researchers. To them, a collection of headnotes amounts to information overload and tailchasing, compared to what we can do with advanced Boolean logic. An off-point headnote is time wasted. Seconds wasted become minutes. Minutes become hours. Hours become days – browsing. Browsing directories and missing cases you could be finding, if only you knew how.
To be fair, Westlaw doesn’t miss cases. Westlaw users do. Annotated statutes provide only partial redirect to opinions citing your statute. And, they rarely provide redirect to the opinions that cite your statute for the reason you really care about.
Not infrequently, the reasons you care about do not exist, even generically, among the headings created by West editors. The results provided by annotations feel arbitrary and incomplete, when compared to what can be accomplished by an elite researcher using advanced Boolean logic within the context of a self-defining matrix of search paths.
My advanced search strategies expose the gap between what you think you're accomplishing with Westlaw and what you've completely failed to accomplish.
For example, the West Key Number System does not provide redirect to the universe of opinions that cite your statute for the reasons you care about. My search strategies reveal the important law you've been missing as a result of your disproportionate reliance on Key Numbers.
West’s KeyCite is a cumbersome way to validate research. It leads to anecdotal research validation, that may or may not be related to the point of law you're focused on, when compared to what can be accomplished using advanced Boolean logic within the context of a search interface that allows you to individualize your results.
A primary function of today's KeyCite is to lure you back to the Westlaw Cash Register! “Can we get a cashier? Sucker on aisle two wants to click outside the plan!” Westlaw is like legal research roulette.
Headnotes, by definition, provide a partial characterization of an opinion. My strategies prevent you from slogging through irrelevant headnotes. If you like a case for a death penalty reason, you don’t want to waste time browsing through the 404(b) notes of that opinion. Nobody wants that once they know they have a choice.
Before the computer there was no way to know what you missed. There was no way to know what West attorney-editors disregard, overlook or misfile.
You use key numbers, annotations, headnotes, legal encyclopedias, law reviews, law journals and other casefinders and you find what you find. But, you don't know what you're missing.
Today you can actually compare book results with computer results. Your ability to individualize your search disintermediates the need for casefinders that offer an outmoded, mass-customized approach to problem solving.
The revelations and processes provided on this blog will cause you to question everything you think you know about legal research. You may well panic when I prove to you that by browsing Westlaw's toolset of pathfinders, you are missing opinions related to the facts and/or law driving your search.
You will marvel at the comprehensive results one can generate in a single mouseclick with pinpoint precision!
Importantly, you will learn that the terms “advanced” and “elite” do not mean difficult. They simply mean no one's doing it, because the gatekeepers of the legal research industry have taught you that browsing directories represents the gold standard of legal research. What a load.
I will show you how over-reliance on KeyCite, key numbers, annotations and headnotes leads to dangerously incomplete research. When I’m finished, you will want to stop browsing and start searching.
Along the way, I will introduce you to a new, better case law search engine. It's the centerpiece of TheLaw.net Equalizer 7.0. I will show you how to find the most cited opinion on any point of law in less than ten seconds. A click later you'll be looking at most recent opinion nationally that includes at least one reference to your search term(s).
I will show you how to sort results by court hierarchy when conducting a national search.
The strategies revealed on this site will make you a better Westlaw user, supercharging your results. But, they are secrets. Secrets they don’t want you to know, like that weasel Kevin Trudeau says on TV.
This site is read by lawyers and paralegals from coast-to-coast. So, most of the teaching examples I use are Federal. I also rely on examples related to areas of the law for which I have a Godlike knowledge. For me, that’s Federal criminal practice. Criminal practice is filled with drama. People go to prison. Some are put to death. There are real struggles involved and that makes for better stories.
